I have a question about the difference between a magic gate memory stick and a regular one. Are the two interchangeable ?

I have a sony 40xbr800 tv with a memory stick slot it just says memory stick and I have a sony u101 laptop that has a magic gate slot.

I know the magic gate stuff enables some kind of copy protection but I'm not sure what kind to get if I want to use it in both slots. (copy pictures onto the stick in the laptop and view them on the TV)

I believe that Memory Stick is Sony's non-compatible proprietary over-priced regular flash memory, whereas Magic Gate is Sony's non-compatible proprietary over-priced flash memory that additionally supports ATRAC3 and copy protection. I think you can use the regular Memory Sticks in both your devices without problems, presumably you want to transfer JPEG photos to display ? You can't play a Magic-Gate-with-protected-content back in your Memory-stick-only slot, but you can play a Magic-Gate-without-protected-content in it.

Regards

Mark

Correct. My P800 came with a 16MB Sony Memory Stick Duo (crap), and I added to that with two 128MB Sony Memory Stick Duos w/ Magic Gate "technology" (multiple crap).

I have a deep hatred for Sony and their memory sticks. Do you know what's even worse about it all? I can't upgrade to a higher capacity Duo when they come out. Apparently they wanted to make the format so proprietary, they excluded some of their own devices!

If I hadn't wanted this phone so badly, I would have passed on it just because of the memory stick. Cursed format!

I'm not a fan either and never thought I would want to buy one but now I ended up with a laptop and a tv with slots so I have to try them out.