History
The technology surfaced around 1995 as a physically smaller alternative to the bulky rubber shock absorbers utilized in portable players at the time. It much reduced the size of the hitherto bulky players designed for use in moving cars, in particular. Small rubber shock absorbers are still used, but are less effective than the bigger pre-1995 ones.
When first introduced, 3 seconds was the maximum buffering time. As of 2006 times range from 10 seconds to "skip-free," where the player will rarely skip.
Due to the nature of the ATRAC compression scheme, and to ensure uninterrupted playback in the presence of fragmentation, all MD decks and portables buffered at least 10 seconds when the format was introduced in 1995. As of 2006, MD units have much bigger buffers.
The advent of flash-based MP3 players has eliminated the need for relatively expensive anti-shock RAM chips.
Read more about this topic: Electronic Skip Protection
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