Memory Cards
The xD-Picture Card is a type of flash memory memory card, used mainly in digital cameras. xD stands for extreme Digital. The cards were introduced into the market in July 2002 and developed by Olympus and Fujifilm. more...
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Toshiba Corporation and Samsung Electronics manufacture the cards for Olympus and Fujifilm. Other brands, including Kodak, SanDisk, and Lexar, now sell xD cards.
Card specifications
xD cards are used in Olympus, and Fujifilm digital cameras and Olympus digital voice recorders; Fujifilm also made an MP3 player that used the cards. As of 2006 xD cards are available in these capacities: 16 MB, 32 MB, 64 MB, 128 MB, 256 MB, 512 MB, 1 GB, and 2 GB. An xD card is 20 mm × 25 mm × 1.78 mm and weighs 2.8 grams.
Type M and Type H cards
The original XD cards were available in 16 MB—512 MB capacities. The Type M card, released in February 2005 , uses Multi Level Cell (MLC) architecture to achieve storage capacities up to 8 GB. As of 2006, Type M cards are available in sizes from 256 MB to 2 GB. However, the Type M suffers slower read-write speeds than the original cards.
The Type H card, first released in November 2005 , offers higher data rates than Type M cards (theoretically as much as 3 times faster). As of 2006, Type H cards are only available in 512 MB and 1 GB capacities. It also includes special \"picture effects\", although most of these are only available in use with Olympus digital cameras.
Due to changes in the cards' storage architecture, newer Type M and H cards may suffer compatibility issues with some older cameras (especially video recording). Compatibility lists are available for Olympus (PDF format) and Fujifilm. The newer cards are also incompatible with some card readers.
Transfer speeds
Picture transfer
Pictures are transferred from the xD card to computer by plugging the camera into the PC (normally with USB) or removing the card and putting it into a card reader. In both these cases, the computer sees the card as a mass storage device with photos on it, although software or firmware can alter this. Card readers may be integrated into the PC or attached by cable. Adapters are available to allow an xD picture card to be plugged into other readers (and in some cases cameras), including PCMCIA, parallel port, CompactFlash and Smart Media.
Comparison with rival formats
The xD format primarily competes with formats such as Secure Digital card (SD), CompactFlash (CF), and Sony's Memory Stick.
Advantages
xD cards are fast in comparison with older formats such as SmartMedia (SM), MultiMediaCard (MMC), and MemoryStick (MS).;
xD cards have a small form-factor in comparison with other formats (although Memory Stick M2 is smaller).;
xD cards have a low power consumption.;
xD cards are very small, which allows devices to be smaller, especially USB flash drives.;
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