Phillips has a brand new portable DVD player which will play DVDs that have 100 hours of MP3s encoded on them. Sony is launching MiniDiscs that hold 30 hours of MP3 music which can be played on personal players that Sony will market.

The music industry sees these devices as more bad news in a business dominated by piracy and sluggish sales. The industry continues to blame CD copying and file sharing for its woes.

The irony of the issue is that Sony is part of the music industry and here it is making a device that allows others to pirate Sony artists. Companies like Sony appear to think that people will start paying more and more for their downloads.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993490