Update: Check this out :).
Okay, it must be said.
I’m old-fashioned.
I’ve been using my mp3 player the last few weeks each day, and I’m getting tired of the thing. I miss all the features and benefits my MD player had… Annoyences of my mp3 player:
I listen to music on a per album basis– my mp3 player refuses to play all the songs of a certain album in the correct order, insisting on playing them alphabetically. It doesn’t even help to put track numbers in the id3 tag, or in the filename!;
It’s too small;
It’s slow as fcuk, especially when skipping through songs.
Look, I’m not out to diss my mp3 player in perticular; I diss them all.
Now, it is no secret, at least not to the the people that know me in Real Life™, that I’ve always been a huge supporter of the Minidisc. As far as I’m concerned, it’s superior to any other portable music medium. And now with HiMD, the competition is eating dust. Let me compare HiMD to portable mp3 players:
They weigh less;
Can record from any source, anytime;
One 5$ HiMD disk holds 1 GB of storage, any storage that is;
MD disks are resiliant, and due to their hard plastic casing virtually scratch-proof;
The internal MD mechanics are much less sensitive to dropping it on the floor etc. than HDDs are. My portable MD recorder fell down stairs numerous times; it got bathed in Cola (don’t ask me how), and it still works. Try that with an mp3 player;
All old MD/NetMD/MDLP disks are automatically reformatted in HiMD format to drastically increase capacity (backwards compatibility).
Expandable: capacity is unlimited because you can always buy new disks;
“Open”: any operating system with USB mass storage drivers is supported by HiMD.
Cheaper!
Can play songs in the order that I want them to. Goddamnit.
As far as I’m concerned, portable mp3 players, both HDD and flash-based, are ridicoulously overrated; Apple’s PR machine is largely in debt for that.
Recently, Sony released their latest portable HiMD recorder: the MZ-RH10. I want one. I need one. I’m gonna buy one. ASAP. Postponing all other purchases.
Music | 
> [mp3 player] It’s too small
That’s a serious advantage, as far as I am concerned.
>portable mp3 players, both HDD and flash-based, are ridicoulously
>overrated; Apple’s PR machine is largely in debt for that.
Well then, maybe SONY should have done a better job promoting their technology, instead of letting Apple/Creative/Rio running rounds around them and taking away their market. Apple’s PR machine is always a given. The question is what the other side (SONY) is going to do about it.
Comment by Eugenia — September 22, 2005 @ 8:03 pm
The question is what the other side (SONY) is going to do about it
Yup, fully agreed. Sony is in a troublesome position; they have a superior technology (HiMD) yet they have to supply the market demand of mp3 players…
It’s a conflict of interest, really. If Sony were to fully market the potential of the HiMD, their mp3 players would sell less well. It would also be pretty hard to sell HiMD properly to less tech-savvy people; they would perceive the need for HiMD disks as a burdon (while in fact it’s a plus as you don’t have to pay for capacity you don’t use, yet are still able to expand whenever you need it).
Also, Sony isn’t exactly really good at designing pretty devices– they are functionally perfect, buttons in all the right places– they just don’t look near as good as an iPod does.
Imagine what Apple could do with Minidisc… Putting readers/recorders in Macs*… Applying proper design to the HiMD… A geek can dream, can’t he?
* You an already buy HiMD drives for computers
Comment by Administrator — September 22, 2005 @ 8:20 pm
Your blog doesn’t let me post a message with a url… :(
Comment by Eugenia — September 22, 2005 @ 9:11 pm
Try again :).
Comment by Administrator — September 22, 2005 @ 9:26 pm
This was posted hours after this discussion started:
http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-5876937.html?part=rss&tag=5876937&subj=news
Comment by Eugenia — September 22, 2005 @ 10:10 pm
I see little, 1 GB disks as a burden for the size of my listenable music library. They would require me to think too much before playing the song I want. I have over 12 GB of good music, and once I add the dozen disks required to hold all of it, the weight argument goes out the window.
Also, a dozen disks (or even 4, to match the iPod nano) is too many to have to sift through to find what I want. What logical groupings could you use that would result in several balanced disks?
I must admit, the virtual invulnerability of the media and player sound nice. However, the rest of your listed advantages are features of the device, not the media (ex: cheaper, ‘open’, and song ordering).
Comment by Tom — September 23, 2005 @ 3:53 am
I have to agree with Tom. The MD devices might be solid, but the software features they have they can be reproduced by any mp3 player. And hard drive mp3 players can have up to 80 GB of music in them, while in the MD case you would need 80 such disks!
I have a hard disk based ipod, an ipod mini 4 GB, and I haven’t had any hdd problems so far… Except the fact that they eat lots of battery though… But Flash is catching up fast…
Comment by Eugenia — September 23, 2005 @ 4:51 am
I do not need all my music with me all day, so that argument doesn’t count for me. I usually listen to only one or two albums per day… And each HiMD can hold up to 45hrs of music, and I only have a travel time of three.
And yes, a HDD can hold much more music, but the price you pay is that it’s *extremely* vulnerable. HDDs aren’t made for portability.
Comment by Administrator — September 23, 2005 @ 5:26 am