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Why Sony Should've Put Its Weight Behind Hi-MD
An anonymous reader writes "OSNews has an article making a case for Hi-MD: 'Currently, .mp3 players are all the hype. Everyone has one, and if you don't, you're old-fashioned. I do not have an .mp3 player. I tried to have one, but for various reasons it did not please me. I'm a MiniDisc guy. I've always been. MiniDisc has some serious advantages over .mp3 players, whether they be flash or HDD based.'"
About a year and a half or so ago, I was looking semi-seriously at buying a MiniDisc recorder of some kind. A couple of people in the saxophone studio where I study had them, and it could really be handy for portable, off-the-cuff recording and playback of practice sessions, which is what I wanted it for.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find one in production that fit my needs. I could not find any assurance that I could do what I wanted with a MiniDisc player from specs I was seeing online. I eventually figured out that the people who had the MiniDisc recorders all got them overseas (Japan for sure, maybe Australia as well?). I see the article author does have a recorder; I wonder if that's new or something, or if he got it somewhere other than the U.S. as well.
I have no other reason to want one of these devices, and with Sony's reputation of late, I don't need one that badly anyway.
Enough of proprietary formats that lock you into one brand of hardware... whether it's called MD, UMD, ATRA or anything else (frankly, even AAC).
My sig is too lon
As long as Sony continues to be run by the record label division, Sony, the consumer electronics innovator, is going to die.
The article forgets to mention the idiotic copy restrictions that MiniDisc players have along with the mentioned ATRAC/soundstage/can't drag 'n drop files limitations. They are basically shooting themselves in the foot because the record label is paranoid about copying. Nevermind MD, whatever happened to my cheap DAT device?
If Sony wants to survive as a consumer electronics company it should split from the music label.
I've owned 4 MiniDisc players, and I will say that they *could* have been great.
I loved the hardware- for the time they came out they were the smallest thing out there. The removeable disks did provide an 'unlimited' amount of storage. The battery life was awesome.
But as the author of the article mentioned, the achilles heel of the whole operation was the software.
SONIC STAGE *is* a steaming pile of shit. There is no way around that- it is one of the worst pieces of software I have ever used. And because you are forced to use Sonic State to use a MiniDisc player you are completely screwed over.
At the time I bought them (3-4 years ago) the hardware was A++. But the software is so crappy I would give the whole thing a D+.
Sony can really manage to screw some stuff up. And that is one reason I am not excited about the PS3 with Blu-Ray.
(Why did I buy 4? Well, the first one was great, but I lost it after only 2 days. So when I bought another one, I also picked one up for my wife and daughter.)
No reason to lie.
It's painfully obvious that the author of the article is still stuck in the 90s. Of course, most people that haven't owned an iPod also think this way. The main thing with an iPod (or any HDD-based music player) is that you have _all_ your music on it. You are not limited to the songs on a particular disc, and you can find any song in your collection in under 20 seconds. Not to mention, this is all on one compact device. I guess if I wanted to look like a dork and carry around 30 1GB minidiscs, swap them every 5 minutes, and deal with the hassle of remembering which music is on which disc, I would go with that format. Not to mention that at Sony prices, a player and 30 minidiscs would probably run you a lot more than $300. But hey, you get to stand out from the crowd by being the guy with a dorky player.
The hardware looks nice but the overall product is ruined by Sony's greed and paranoia. I'm not going to buy something that was designed on the assumption that the user is a criminal and can't be trusted.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
See, if they would have added MP3 and Mac Support 3 years ago I wouldn't have replaced my minidisc with an iPod.
The reason i dumped it (besides the hardware which eventually died) was because the ONLY way to get software on it was through the buggy Windows-only Sony Software that came with it.
Sorry Sony, even if you do fix the problems with it, you're way too late. I got a taste of the high capacity iPod with the extremely easy to use iTunes software and i'm never going back. Good luck with the whole rootkit things though.
This is one of the problems with Sony, they're in too many businesses. Their Music division has longed forced them to cripple their electronics division, or be exclusive to their record label. When one arm of your company is installing rootkits on your computer to prevent you from ripping CDs to mp3, would you really trust that same company with your mp3 device? I don't.
sony did enuf marketing, if they put their weight behind it. it STILL would have failed. just like CD's are failing. 1 reason, they did not listen to their customers. customers want ease of use, back and forth direct digital copying, mp3 or ogg support (none of this transcode to atrac bull). They dont want unfriendly DRM. They dont want sony's crappy/ugly/bloated software. Other companies offer players that do this, why can't sony?? i dont know why. i wouldn't have hated my minidisc if i could just plug it in, open the drive and drop mp3's on it. but no i had to go through sony's horrible software that everyone hates, just to do what should be the simplest thing in the world. directly copy a file to my minidisk player.
The big failure is Sony's attempt to lock in their own lame software, restrict the functionality, and limit the use of MD. These would have been a great challenge to the Zip disks 10 years ago. Imagine being able to move data and music back and foward on a USB port.
Instead Sony tried to lock MD down, limited licenses to a few partners, and starved any reason to inovate. Sharp is dropping out of the MD business in the US. It's the same story as Betamax, another better quality standard killed by corporate lockdown. You can only buy a limited number of units.
I'll keep using MD until the next big thing comes along. After all, I still have cassette tapes and vinyl. Some of which I've archived on CD. As far as portable music goes Sony blew this big time.
Sony, of course, kept the MD music-only (at least in the consumer market) and the niche that they could have OWNED instead went to Iomega and their shitty ZIP ("click-of-death") carts (which were $20 apiece and held 100MB, still a great deal back then).
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Agreed. You touched on why Sony is probably in a death spiral. Their DRM turns off a bunch of customers, that in turn causes them to loose a bunch of hardware sales, that in turn causes them to rely more on the content side of the business and give them more leverage over Sony corp, which in turn will lead to more restrictions and turn off even more customers.
Sony needs to understand that they can either be a doomed content company or a electronics company, but not both. It simply amazes me to see how hard they have tried to kill their electronics sales in the name of content. I hope it's not lost on them that all this bad will surely has an impact on all Sony products. Somebody up there is clearly out of touch. If I were a Sony share holder, I would be pissed.
A: Doesn't store as much as HD-based MP3 players.
B: Isn't as fast or durable as Flash-based MP3 players, for slightly less space.
C: Isn't as cheap as CD-based MP3 players.
D: Software is so bad it should be criminal. Used Sonic Stage to transfer MP3's to a Sony PDA. I now own a Treo.
E: Zero compatibility with anything but other Sony MD players.
F: Not all that small, really.
Basically, like the Memory Stick, the MiniDisk doesn't do anything better than any of the offerings out there. It tries to be middle-of-the-road, but manages to be nothing special.
The ______ Agenda
the iAudio X5L 30GB should get you at least 25 hours, and with an AAA battery pack you'll have infinite battery life.
Oh, and let us be serious...upgreadeability? It's an audio player we're talking about. Shock resistance? Hmmm...constant vibrations for few minutes will be hazardious to you sooner than playback will skip. Versatility? You know, both MD Walkmans and MP3 players are connected via USB...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Someone cleverly said.
>Nearly all Mp3 players (if they record at all) are limited to voice recordings.
>If you want to record music and lots of it, MiniDisc is the way to go.
Actually, no.
Buy one of the mp3 players that records in great quality.
For example the Iriver H320 models. Then install some open
source software on it and suddenly you have a unit that beats
any minidisc recorder at its own game.
Huh? I have an iPod and I've never bought anything on iTunes.
My new Minidisc from Sony is more open than their previous models.
Works great - musicians, HiMd with Mic Input ! Great sound, on the cheap.
Lk4
I use an already owned laptop and a free copy of CDex. It supports line in recording at all your favorite bitrates. No need to buy a new piece of hardware (unless you need a RCA or 1/4 inch to 1/8th inch adaptor).
Capture to Wave or encode to MP3.
The truth shall set you free!
Need to tell more ? http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilb ert-20060331.html
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
No. I bought an iPod because of the way it integrates with iTunes, which I use as a jukebox/music repository. The automatic syncing works nicely, the podcasting support is nice a quick and simple to set up.
The UI is also, despite your apparent dismissal of aethetics, very nifty and easy to use. I've spent some time fighting the UI from Creative for a friend and yes, UIs are important to me. Oh, and I have the mini, not the nano, so scratching wasn't really an issue.
In summary: am I tool? probably not, though I do like small well-designed toys and yes; this is a toy.
I had a minidisc player, way back in the day, and the article is way off base on a number of points. Where to begin...
First off, durability. I dropped my minidisc player exactly once... and that was the end of it. There is something to be said about all of those mechanical parts, from the ejector mechanism to the laser head reader, etc etc. Thing never played again.
He quotes unlimited storage space... in case 60 gigs isn't enough for you. This same argument could be made for MP3 CDs, which hold almost as much as the 1 gig minidiscs, and are a whole hell of a lot cheaper and easier to find. Either case, nobody wants to carry the stupid things around all over the place.
He comments on how MD users expect high quality but that they put up with SonicStage (and ATRAC/MP3 only recordings)
The author obviously has an illogical bias towards this particular media. To be honest I think the whole thing reeks of fanboy-ism.
I'm sorry, but the article is anything *but* insightful. It smells very much like someone's trying to stress their point by "...this argument. Today, thankfully, its dissipated. Oh, sure, it pops back up once in a while from someone exceptionally clueless" and "Why dont we see people spouting such nonsense today?"
Trying to prove one's point by dissing those that disagree does not a good article make.