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Price of Minidiscs in Australia?
Luke Butcher asks: "I recently moved back to Australia and I'm appalled at the price of blank Minidiscs, here. In the UK they range to about £1 per disc and the US about $1.60 This equates in both cases to roughly AU$3. Over here the cheapest I can find them is $4.50 and average prices are $5-6. I have tried to get blanks sent from the US and UK from several online sites only to find them not able to deliver to Oz, when they can quite happily ship DVDs and the like. I have done some searching and am unable to find anything explaining this "phenomenon", other than it looks like a blatant price fixing situation. I can find no reason why consumer demand would play a part, I wouldn't mind betting all such discs are produced in Asia, so this also rules out transport costs. Perhaps someone out there can provide an explanation as to why we in Australia pay more than double the normal cost blanks."
Such taxes are common elsewhere, perhaps Australia has them too. The neat thing is that the tax is then usually given to private companies. I just love supporting corporations with my tax money, getting nothing in return.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
i can't remember the brand name but you can get them in i think JB hi-fi. they have jewl cases which is pretty cool as well.
It's never really taken off here. Yeah - you can buy players. But the only actual discs tend to be imports - you won't find them on sale in places like HMV or whatnot.
Bullshit. You obviously don't live in Australia.
As an Australian (briefly overseas) I'd have to say that the fact that I don't know anyone with a minidisc player, and have only rarely seen portable players being used, that the format is not popular there. Maybe I just know too many people with CD burners.
It depends largely on the culture you are in.
For example, in certain suburbs you would be able to spot MD players without trying (along with high end phones etc).
As I said before it depends where you are. I agree in some places people would go "minidisc?? what's that??"
Jump on a train in Melbourne, open YOUR eyes and you WILL see lots of minidisc players. Yes a lot of them are "rich asian kids" but a lot of them aren't. I know lots of people in my age group (13-19) who own MDs.
So would I, but there just aren't any practical options at the moment, which is why I'm still using Minidisc. My digital music is all in Ogg format, so an MP3 player isn't really an option (given that I don't want to have to reencode it all). There are currently no portable Ogg players. Also, with Minidisc, I can carry 10 disc around with me, to get lots of hours of music when I'm on the move. With MP3/ogg, the cost of compact flash, smartmedia, memory stick or whatever generally makes that prohibitively expensive. The only alternative is to get a player with a hard drive built in, which is more expensive and loses you many of the benefits of portable digital players (no moving parts, light weight, etc.). In a few years time, I expect to have a portable digital player. But for now, I'll stick with Minidisc.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Some more info here.
I've seen them for around $1 at JB-HIFI. Bought 'em too ...
This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
I have an iPod. I watch out for people wearing headphones each day to check out what they're using. This happens to be something that interests me (once you've spent $1100 on a music player, they quickly become interesting).
I also travel into the CBD each morning and out of it each night via the train, and get around on foot and on trams during the day. (All inside Zone 1, so don't push any of your "cheap suburb" crap onto me).
Almost no-one has Mini-disc players.
The majority of people that are listening to portable music have either CD players, tape players, or tiny radios.
Look, I don't care about your high school age friend and what they happen to be using to listen to music (even though I'm still just inside the age bracket you mentioned). I don't care if three or four of your friends happen to have Mini-disc players, because they are not everyone in Australia.
There is virtually no demand for mini-discs here, because no one uses them. If you'd like to show me otherwise, come to the next Slashdot Meetup and show me some Mini-disc users. Although I've missed the last two meetups due to picking up people from airports for nodermeets, and because of being at work a few hours too long, I'll be at the next one. Really. I'm sure...