The Sony Multimedia CD-ROM Player was a portable CD-ROM-based multimedia player produced by

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

and released in 1992. It was used to run

reference Reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a '' name'' ...

software, such as electronic publications and

encyclopedia An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...

. Before its release, both Sony representatives and the press referred to the device as the Sony Bookman; that name remained in use in later publications. The player was sold concurrently with Sony's

Data Discman The Data Discman is an electronic book player introduced to the Western market in late 1991 or early 1992 by Sony Corporation. It was marketed in the United States to college students and international travelers, but had little success outsid ...

e-book players. Unlike those devices, the MMCD Player could read full-size 120-millimeter CD-ROM discs, including audio CDs. Software format, proprietary to the player, was one of several rich media CD formats released to the market during the early 1990s.

Overview

The MMCD Player has a

clamshell Clamshell may denote anything resembling the bivalve shell of a clam: * Scoop stretcher, another name for this patient transport device * Clamshell design, a form factor used for electronic devices, also known as a "flip" or "flip phone". * Cla ...

form factor with an LCD screen and a QWERTY keyboard, complete with a

numeric keypad A numeric keypad, number pad, numpad, or ten key, is the palm-sized, usually-17-key section of a standard computer keyboard, usually on the far right. It provides calculator-style efficiency for entering numbers. The idea of a 10-key nu ...

, four-way navigation pad, "yes" and "no" buttons and a set of

function key A function key is a key on a computer or terminal keyboard that can be programmed so as to cause an operating system command interpreter or application program to perform certain actions, a form of soft key. On some keyboards/computers, func ...

s (F1 to F5). The keyboard is located on a top of an inner lid which covers a top-loading CD drive. Discs for the player used the

CD-ROM XA A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both compute ...

sector format and a software format proprietary to the player. Software which the player supported was marked by the "MMCD Player Software" logo (not to be confused with

MMCD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

, a high-density disc format proposal by Sony and Philips). Takashi Sugiyama,

Sony Corporation of America Sony Corporation of America (SONAM, also known as SCA), is the American arm of the Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation SONAM, headquartered in New York City, manages the company's US-based businesses. Sony's principal U.S. busines ...

's project manager, attributed the MMCD Player's lack of support for established CD-ROM XA-based multimedia formats to its sub-

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the Personal computer, PC industry within three years ...

display resolution and the lack of hard drive caching support.

Software

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

'' chose the Sony MMCD player as a pilot

platform Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system ...

for ''Newsweek InterActive'', a quarterly CD-ROM magazine initially published in March 1993. The magazine was later released on compact disks for

IBM PC compatible IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones ...

computers. No more than "a few thousand of units" of the MMCD version had reportedly shipped by 1995. Titles by Compton's NewMedia (a CD-ROM publishing arm of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.) and

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Ger ...

were also available, with some disks including software for both the MMCD Player and computer platforms such as DOS and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

. Several companies marketed Sony MMCD Player-based kits to real estate brokers. Digital Data, a company based in

Irving, Texas Irving is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. Located in Dallas County, it is also an inner ring suburb of Dallas. The city of Irving is part of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. According to a 2019 estimate from the United States Census Bur ...

, adapted Austin multiple listing service data as a weekly CD-ROM publication in 1994. In 1995,

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

-based Visual Display Marketing was pitching their MMCD Player-based product to real estate associations, with its owner Gary Ripsco describe the concept of publishing weekly or biweekly home listing discs. Microsoft announced support for the MMCD Player for their multimedia authoring tool, Multimedia Viewer, upon the player's introduction on September 16, 1992.

Reception

The Sony MMCD player was introduced the same month as Kodak's

Photo CD Photo CD is a system designed by Kodak for digitizing and saving photos onto a CD. Launched in 1991, the discs were designed to hold nearly 100 high quality images, scanned prints and slides using special proprietary encoding. Photo CDs are de ...

format and the Tandy VIS multimedia system. ''Multimedia & Videodisc Monitor'' described the interactive multimedia landscape as looking "chaotic" and stated that consumers and commercial end users "probably can't" figure out then-current format situation. '' PC Magazine'' noted that the introduction of multiple CD-ROM format compatibility logos, along with Sony's MMCD one, make shopping for multimedia titles "anything but simple" and go against the goal of

Multimedia PC The Multimedia PC (MPC) was a recommended configuration for a personal computer (PC) with a CD-ROM drive. The standard was set and named by the "Multimedia PC Marketing Council", which was a working group of the Software Publishers Association (SPA ...

program. Later, ''PC Magazine'' advised anyone but corporate purchasers "with a driving need to do away with a paper" against buying the Sony MMCD player, criticizing its high price and the incompatibility with other multimedia formats. ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'' noted the player's ease of use, comparing it favorably to

Walkman Walkman, stylised as , is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese technology company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman was a portable cassette player and its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for ...

compact disk players, but criticized the device's speed and the resolution of its built-in screen. In a 2006 column, Michael Rogers, who was an editor of the ''Newsweek Interactive'' division in the 1990s, said the Sony MMCD player was "far ahead of its time" but "slow as molasses." He noted that, as the device loaded the ''Newsweek'' CD-ROM, it took a long time to display the magazine's logo and play the introductory sound bit.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sony bookman Audiovisual introductions in 1992 Computer-related introductions in 1992 Products introduced in 1992 Sony products Portable media players Ebooks Compact disc New media Multimedia