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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.
What do you think, Mac, Linux compatible?
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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 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.
A few advantages of this system over iPods and the like:
1. lose (or break) your ipod and you lose all the data on it. lose/break your minidisc player and you've lost maximum 1Gb.
2. even with DRM, you can still lend/borrow friends' discs. Without needing a computer or a network.
3. You don't need a computer to take advantage of Gb music storage. Believe or not, there are many people who don't own computers and even more who do own them but only use them for web browsing and email. With an MD player, you can just feed in a signal from any audio source to record tracks. My sister is a musician and uses an MD to record tracks created on an analog multitrack tape recorder.
4. More hardware choice (in the long term) and easier hardware upgrades. Buy a newer player, use the old discs.
5. Less risk when transporting data. Walking around with a $7 minidisc is a lot less worrying than carrying a $250 player.
Finally, if this thing takes off then big price drops are likely. iPods are expensive because miniature HDs are expensive, and Apple's strategy has consistently been to increase capacity rather than drop price. But for most non-musically-obsessed people, who have been using walkmans and discmans happily for years, 1-2Gb will easily fulfill all their mobile music needs. (Apple has finally figured this out, hence the mini-iPod. But theyre still going after the premium market.) 1Gb MD players have the potential to be sold in Wal-Mart in a couple of years for double-digit prices. The disks will probably come down to under a dollar. Apple, to judge by the last 20 years, will never get into the low-margin, high-volume business that is Sony's specialty.
Instead of dissing this, you should hail it as bringing Gb storage to the masses.
Now, where's the real geek argument about whether sony measures GBs as binary or decimal powers?
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