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New Sony Minidisc Players
Andy_R writes "Sony's has announced it's new new range of Hi-MD players at the CES show. The range of players (which should hit the shops in April) will start below $200 for a device that can function as a USB hard drive as well as storing a claimed 45 hours of music. The twist is that the data is stored on a new type of removable 1Gb media, a development of the minidisk format, with blanks costing about $7 each. The BBC have some more details including backwards compatibility with old-style minidisks and an ominous mention of 'built-in copyright protection' but I can't find anything on Sony's official site yet." Another reader reader submitted some pictures and specifications (pdf).
The reason I got a HDD mp3 player was because I was tired of carrying media around with me. mp3 CD players can be had for less than $100 for a good one. The media for this thing doesn't hold much more than a CDRW, and each "disc" costs about as much as a spindle of CDRWs. Couple that with the fact that in order to get the capacity of a 20G HDD mp3 player, you'd wind up spending just as much. And carrying discs around. Then add in DRM, in typical Sony fashion. Screw that.
I predict minidisc will continue to be Sony's ed-headed stepchild.
I always thought of MiniDisc medium as the potential to replace the floppydisk. Sort of a wet dream for MO medium in common use. Lack of a drive to read/write to MiniDiscs as computer storage, high prices, and availability of writable CD's killed this one, but i wouldn't be suprised if sony is able to jump on it with a 1gb format.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
I wonder how many people are turned off of personal digital audio players by the compromised sound quality of lossy codecs? The price per megabyte isn't nearly so attractive for those that prefer lossless quality.
When MiniDisc was new (and expensive), manufacturers targeted audiophiles while the advertising emphasized custom mixes and sound quality (even though ATRAC is also lossy). With "MP3 players," the emphasis is usually on quantity, not quality. Being able to accomodate realtime filters like DFX might be a way to find some middle ground.
I realize that most consumers either tolerate or are unaware of the fidelity loss, hence the continued dominance of the now inferior MP3 format. Still, I think that in order for this market to grow more quickly, it should educate consumers about the options available to them with these devices: CD quality if you want it, or OGG (etc.) if you want more tracks per MB.
YEEESH, I was wondering when Sony was going to get off of their butts and use the minidisc as a portable storage device. I know they had some data storage devices based off the minidisc, but the storage capacity was pretty low (sub 200 meg) and VERY expensive. As long as they don't fudge the product like their first 'mp3' players, they oughta have a real winner on their hands.
Adding the capabilities to store other files on it like a USB hard drive is nice, but for less than 200 bucks, you can get yourself a 200gb USB hard drive/enclosure.
What do you think, Mac, Linux compatible?
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
I do not understand why the MD format is still around and Sony releases a new player..
Remember how Sony kept the Beta format around long after it was "dead". (not to argue that VHS > Beta!) Proprietary formats ensure lock in.
Trolling is a art,
However, I don't like the Sony MD, and have always had Sharp. If there is one thing that will definitely prevent me from using this is the DRM.
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At $7/GB, that's quite expensive. CD-Rs are usually free with a rebate, and store nearly a GB for $0.07 otherise. CD-RWs are in the same price neighborhood. Mini-DVDs would pack much more, and would be a lot cheaper than $7/GB.
Why doesn't Sony give up on this technology? Optical discs are the way to go, with flash cards being a good enough technology for the rest. This is like re-incarnating the Betamax.
Besides, you can already get 1GB MP3-playing drives in the size of a keychain, great for jogging or sneaking in class. Sony's are much bigger, being about 3/4 the size of a CD player.
Man, I hate moving. Each time, I have to lug my boxes of hundreds of CD's, it's just ridiculous. Thankfully my new iPod has changed all that.
So I ask, isn't this a step backwards? A 1GB disc for $7 seems like a good deal, but a HD-based digital music player with 40GB is already available... let's do the math.
[$7 (per disc) x 40 (GB)] + $200 (player) = $480
Which, while just over half the cost of a 40GB iPod at the moment, hardly seems worth it given the lack of convenience. Am I missing something? Why move back to a removable storage based system, something we've been moving away from for the last decade?
I am almost astonished to see Sony still barking up the removable media tree. It's good to have an alternative to hard drive based players but I really can't see who the uptake is going to be aimed at. Anyone wanting music with instant access is surely going to buy into the ipod style player or CD walkman for those without computers. If Sony thinks that they're going to sell pre-recorded music on these discs, they must be mad. With each disc holding only 1 Gig, you'll still have a bag full of disks to break and lose. MD struggled as a format in it's early days due to people simply not needing another format and I think this may just be a format too far. If Sony could make the whole thing high resolution, they could replace DAT in the professional arena but I think this will flop as a consumer good.
Computer technology is a series of advancements going from one technology to another until specific issues are solved. For the next two years (and past couple) the problem has been small portable storage.
(Case in point, an average $60 video card can drive a higher resolution, and higher refresh rate than most monitors can now support. Video is a solved technology, especially in light of the issues of the past -- EGA, monochrome high resolution)
I'm seriously jonesing because I can't justify the $200+ a 1gb+ device would cost *cough* iPod mini *cough*. On the other hand, I've got a spool of blank cd-r's and a _$30_ cd/mp3 player that'll play them.
So, 640 mb per $0.05 disk, and $30 for the player and a total library of 22 Gb (12 Gb of which I'll never EVER listen to) it's going to take a LOT of improvement in data density/cost to justify another device purchase.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
" A physically small, 1GB disc in a protective caddy. It's almost too good to be true."
It is too good to be true. If you carry them in your pocket, they get dust, dirt, and stuff in the disc, and you can't wipe it off, so it eventually jams up the player by fscking the lens and servos.
you cannot beat the reliability of a magneto-optical drive (essentially what a minidisc format functions as). i don't trust an unprotected cdrom disc with my data for more than a few minutes, and a protected one will degrade over a few years. some of my early mp3 backup discs have already "faded" with time, despite being kept in their oldschool caddy trays.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
Sony's launching a new online pay music service. I wonder all of a sudden if this new service will be Atrac only (which has been around for awhile, contrary to a couple other posts I've seen here). Would they be that stupid with it?
I still want the Hi-MDs. =^)
Please, do not read this sig
Proprietary formats ensure lock in.
Well, if and only if they catch on.
Also, there is a difference between creating a proprietary format and wanting to be the sole manufacturer/distributor of that format. Plenty of formats are closed/patented, but still in wide wide use and made by many different people.
"I wonder how many people are turned off of personal digital audio players by the compromised sound quality of lossy codecs? The price per megabyte isn't nearly so attractive for those that prefer lossless quality."
Find out how many people in the world own $1000 isolation headphones. There's your answer. Seriously, in a setting where most people use portable music players (outdoors, in a car, in the gym, etc), encoding loss is the least of your sound quality problems. Room noise, cheap headphones, and low-quality ADC chips are all worse degraders of sound quality than well-done mp3/atrac3/ogg encoding.
I've wanted an inexpensive portable method for recording live bands in CD quality (44100KHz) sound for some time now. I never jumped on the mini-disc bandwagon because of a lack of this feature. Now, they offer a new mini-disc standard and still fall short of CD quality recording?!? As a recording artist, this just plain sucks. Guess I'll keep waiting. sigh...
/.ing. If you're not interested in progressive rock, don't even bother clicking. ;-)
Oh, yeah... forgot the obligatory band link. I need a good
It is too good to be true. If you carry them in your pocket, they get dust, dirt, and stuff in the disc, and you can't wipe it off, so it eventually jams up the player by fscking the lens and servos.
Not if you carry them in their cases. I have been carrying them around in my pockets for years with no problems, often without the cases.
As far as the media goes, I have six year old MDs that work perfectly.
that doesn't make much sense.
you can change the music on a hd based player just as easy as you can burn a new cd, except that you can swap in several gigabytes of new music at a time and have fresh music for weeks instead of burning a cdr per day.
.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Sony is late and wrong on everything MD. having bought a MD recorder back in the day (why did they even bother making MD that could only play and not record?) i've always felt it could have been so much better. First of all, it takes however long the track is to transfer it too and from the computer or other device. Maybe it's different with the optical in/out, but i never had anything to plug that into. If they had made it a dual functioning device to begin with (ie, audio read/write AND data read/write with no data loss) it would have been more well recieved. they wouldn't have even needed to allow for both types on the same disc.
How cool would it have been to use a MD recorder as a portable tape drive? i think it would have been very cool. Small, protected discs with decent storage capacity.
Sony over-specialized this product to death. It was nice to use to record an occasional concert, and to record myself and friends musical sessions. It just could have had so many more uses.
You almost had it right, Sony. I'd still consider buying something new and less specialized (no DRM, no one-way USB, better transfer methods in general) from someone if it was able to use minidiscs as the media. I'm still wishing I or someone else was able to do some hardware hack to make the original MD recorders more functional along these terms.
The media cost for MD wouldn't be so bad if it had other uses such as data backup. how much to tapes cost these days? a MD is what, maybe a dollar each? expensive compared to CD's but cheaper than tapes i imagine.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Why would we want to buy another set of binders to hold our media? I'm firmly convinced the similar look and feel of CD's and DVD's contributed to DVD's success.
Eventually smaller is not better, but only... smaller.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Dear Sony,
I don't want your MiniDisc technology anymore. I'm not interested in your proprietary removeable media formats. Miniature hard drives are here to stay.
I've owned 3 MiniDisc recorders in the last 4 years. I thought you were helping me out by putting a USB port on your more recent NetMD devices, but you decided that you can't trust me to upload MY OWN RECORDINGS back to my computer via the USB port. Which has left me in the analog realm, forcing me to plug my recorder into the analog inputs of my sound card to digitize my music. MY MUSIC THAT I RECORDED MYSELF. This is unacceptable in today's all-digital environment.
I will not be purchasing any more of your products in the future. It's not for my lack of trying -- I loved the idea of a small, compact, recording device that I could carry with me anywhere. I bought 3 of them! But now I want more. Now I expect more. I want direct digital USB or Firewire transfers to my computer. And instead of meeting my needs, you've proffered another DRM-crippled, expensive, proprietary format that doesn't do what I want it to.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll be looking elsewhere for my next recording and playback device.
Sincerely,
A disappointed (former) customer
With a $7 disc, you can lend a disc to a friend, ...
Nope. None of my friends have a MD player. I got a MD once from a pen pal and had to find a player. Only one person on a local forum that all my friends are on even had one and they gave it to me because they had no use for it. I listened to the MD once and never touched it again.
Whereas, I can burn my mp3s to CDR and give them away and be pretty sure everybpody can read them and port them to the player of their choice.
Since the only time I get to listen to music is in my car, I cannot tell the diference at all between a prerecorded CD or 128k mp3. The road noise, A/C etc all drown out the fine details.
Vote Quimby!