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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.'"
Why do I use a HD mp3 player? It stores a large amount of music. I don't want to have to juggle around dozens of cds or in this case minidisks, I have over 15 gigs of music on my mp3 player and I don't have the time to find the disk that I want when I want to listen to certain things, nor does the space it takes to store all the disks appeal to me. I like having a device which can store large amounts of data - after trips with groups I'll normally get a dump of all the pictures that the group has taken and put them on my mp3 player to transfer.
I've tried the mp3 cds (which was giving me 700 megs of storage compared to the 305 megs you get from older minidisks using the hi-md format), but I ended up having too many... and when I wanted to add music to it it meant that I had to burn a whole new disk... and I just plain didn't like using it... and my mp3 player has proven to be a whole lot more solid than any cd player I've come across (I've dropped it many times, left it out in my car through all the extremes of Michigan's weather, and its still been great).
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/05/28 God bless Penny Arcade!
Flash-based MP3 players have the ability to equal or better MiniDisc players on every single count - reliability, size, weight, upgradeability, shock resistance, water resistance, speed, versatility (how many computers have built-in MiniDisc drives, versus built-in flash readers), etc. etc.
I wouldn't trust Sony no matter how good their format is, really, simple because of the fact that their formats, such as Memory Sticks, tend to be compatible only with their hardware, they don't like other formats, and there's none of that competition that makes the free market work so well. If I put music in an unsupported format on a Minidisc, I would have to re-encode, losing quality even more.
MP3 players work fine. As I mentioned before, I purchased an iAudio U2, which cost only a hundred and gets me MP3, WAV, and even Vorbis support (something I'll never see from Sony).
Finally, Sony's prices are a little too high for an item that's sure to get knocked around a lot. I'd rather have to replace a $100 MP3 player than a $300 machine from a company
The last thing Sony needs is a new proprietary format (hardware or software). Hard drives can be re-written much quicker than optical media, and no-one wants to buy a device whose media may become obsolete within a few years. If people want a lot of storage capacity they'll get a hard drive based player, if they want quick loading times and durability they will get a flash based player. If they want to buy preloaded physical media, they will buy a format that's been around a while (cds).
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
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.
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.
I had a NetMD player a couple years ago and I don't think the article goes into enough detail about just how bad SonicStage really is. The interface was some crazy non-standard flash thing that ran really slow, it crashed all the time, and you had to do some weird check-in thing that would only let you burn an mp3 to 3 disks before you had to "check out" one of the copies by removing it for the disk.
It's seriously one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used. I ended up creating 1GB audio cd images of my mp3s and then ripping them using a less offensive piece of Sony software. But eventually, it got to the point that I just stopped making new disks and got tired of the ones I had. The NetMD player ended up in a drawer for many months until I gave it away and bought a Rio Karma.
I read a few reviews before purchasing but I figured the software couldn't be THAT bad. I was wrong. The battery life and the price of media were amazing though and it was a nice little piece of hardware for the $130 I paid.
As an aside, the player skipped whenever I kept it in my shorts pocket, it wasn't as bulletproof as I thought it would be from reading reviews. It skipped way more than my Karma but the Karma's harddrive eventually died so I maybe I unwittingly vibrate like a paintshaker or something.
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.
Leave the expensive DAT for others, a Minidisc can get you up and running with
live recording and onto CD in no time.
Im not a fan of all their Atrac stuff, nor am I a fan of Sony's constant annoying
search to create their own standard. Some day companies will learn there's more to
gain from open standards than a gamble on closed standards. Sony for instance loses
nearly every time.
Betamax, Sony Memory Stick, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
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
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts", Earl Weaver - Legendary Coach of the Baltimore Orioles
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.
MiniDisc offers unlimited storage space.
Sure they do, if you buy unlimited discs. You could also buy more flash drives for your mp3 player and carry them around or you could be satisfied with the hour after hour of songs most mp3 players offer (4 gB with the iPod nano). To say that mini discs have unlimited storage is intelectually dishonest. That's like saying that floppy disks have unlimited storage.
No Sigs!
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).
Yeah, nothing says proprietary formats like the ISO standard MPEG-4 audio layer.
I can also live with about 128 kbps mp3s or even 96 kbps for some songs and I can fit enough albums on this thing to keep me happy for weeks, then I change them around. If I need space to transfer files, I just delete the music folders and use it as a jump drive.
I think the people are buying iPods just because their friends have iPods and they don't know that there other such "toys" out there with a different set of features that might work better for them.
I bought one of these devices back in August of 2005 to replace my portable DAT recorder that finally irrecoverably died. The device is really a hassle to use. Although the disk itself shows up as a removable drive, anything I recorded on it (even my own stuff recored via the microphone) needs to be imported using their special soundstage tool and then exported as a wav file before I can edit it. The soundstage tool is really buggy and cumbersome to use, plus it keeps trying to push me to their online music store.
I've also tried to use it for playing music when I am at the gym but again the soundstage software makes it hard to import the music tracks I want.
Overall the device is mediocre for all it's published uses. This is because of the software and interface.
Peace, or Not?
Okay, I have close to 400 MiniDiscs, so let me tell you why I bought into MD wholeheartedly:
1) CDs suck. There's a reason why we stopped using 5-1/4" floppies. 5" media is just too large. It doesn't fit in your hand. It doesn't fit in your pocket. Carrying a large number of them is about as fun as lugging around a coffee can.
2) CD player with optical out + MD with optical in = perfect sounding copy of a CD in a compact, sturdy package.
3) Human beings covet. They want pretty shiny objects they can hold and line up like conquests on a shelf. While some might argue their directory listing is just as sexy...it's more likely to make eyes glaze over than pop out.
4) It's nice to be able to loan someone part of your collection or make that mix tape without handing them a $300 player (remotely authorizing their computer is again, vastly unsexy as a gift)
5) My high-end MD in 1997 looked better and was smaller than any other audio player, and that includes that newfangled Rio thing that had just come out.
6) Boy, did I love being able to record long classroom lectures without losing key parts while my classmates swapped tapes.
That said, this is the year 2006 and this guy has to be a complete idiot for not realizing that the MD has an incredibly superior replacement:
FLASH MEDIA.
Your average SD card or even CF card makes an MD look like a brick. MDs are not as indestructable as this yahoo would lead you to believe. The door eventually gets flukey just like 3-1/2" floppies did. I mean, it's a moving part and (especially on compact players) takes a lot of force to slide back and forth. Once the door is bent or starts catching, you end up either removing it and fearing that you've essentially rendered the point of having a media caddy useless, or losing your $1-2 investment.
Flash media, meanwhile, is ROCK SOLID. For crying out loud, someone shot a bullet through one and still pulled off the data it. And, MD will never win awards for access times. MD was fine for a linear activity like playing a CD, but jumping tracks is also just like a CD...you wait. The only thing Sony could be doing with Hi-MD is switch to a packet-based system...which is going to be murder on fussy drive mechanics.
Yes, flash media is expensive. But you can fit the equivalent of 8 or 9 MDs on a $35 flash card. True, a 1GB MD costs a lot less but this is the same song as Zip, or Jaz or SyJet or any other removable media. And how well have they worked out? A few years from now, a 1GB removeable media will seem as antiquated as a floppy disc. Meanwhile, flash capacities will continue to grow.
The only missing part of the equation is larger selection of players where you can remove the flash media. This is how they all started out (Rio etc) and honestly, I don't know why they have fallen out of favor. It adds maybe a few dollars to the price of a couple hundred dollar player. It can do the exact same magic, but with the all the advantages I described in the above MD praise.
So I think this guy needs to wake up and smell the present. I still think my 400 MDs look pretty as hell, and evey now and then I'll relax somewhere with my faithful Sony. And if I ever need to record 300 minutes of speaking, it's still the only thing I use. But the music that's on those 400MDs is now held on a portable hard drive and whenever I have a need to share it, I just copy it over to a USB thumbdrive. If I was still a Sony guy, it would be a MemoryStick. Maybe someday Apple will decide to bless a certain form of flash media like Sony has with the PSP but until then, my target platform is still the laptop.
So, while I can appreciate the romance involved in the MD, it's over. There are smaller, faster, sturdier and ($/MB) cheaper options. He can tilt against windmills if he wants to but, I'm ready to look forward to 8GB, 16GB and 32GB flash devices.
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I don't approve of the way MD locks me out of my own music. I didn't give Sony the authority to put DRM on stuff I record, but my MD recorder takes this liberty. I don't want to hear about how I can buy a "pro" deck that turns off DRM, and I certainly don't care about "Soundstage" software or whatever the hell they make you use now, where you get three chances to copy your original or some such, and it's *erased* -- I *certainly* didn't give Sony permission to *erase* my masters.
I loved the idea of MD, but I hate, absolutely seethe with hate, to let Sony abridge my copyrights by putting DRM and copy-limitations on my work, just because I chose to use their cheap media. No thanks. CF-recorders may start at the $400 price point, but at least they don't seek to lock me out of my own work.
I really don't care how badly Sony wants to control things. When they try to control *MY* work, I tend to get very, very upset.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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.
1.) These devices are cheap. Cheap as in, you can buy a CD player that can play MP3s at walmart for $25. These players are much cheaper than the flash/HDD MP3 players making them much more accessible to people who don't want to break the bank on something they won't use every day.
2.) The media is much cheaper than the Mini Discs. Most players can even read from CD-RWs. The cheap media is also a plus over the priceier MDs. (Your "unlimited storage" costs less; MDs don't come on spindles of 100 last time I checked.) You can also play your music in a computer if you wanted to using CDs rather than MDs.
3.) You can use MP3s! You don't need to transcode to Sony's format. But some people will probably want to reencode lower bit rate MP3s anyway.
Summary: Cheaper, non-proprietary, works with your existing hardware and software, some players have excellent battery life.
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
WTF?
Proprietary: Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or patent:
From the aac licensing faq If you want to make or listen too an AAC track, you have to pay the toll (directly or indirectly). While the license is reasonable & non disriminatory - it is most certainly a proprietary format.
My pics.
The new Hi-MD format offers 1GB per disc (which can add up to 45 hours of music on one disc)-- and a disc only costs a few Euros
....) playlists, all using the same music library.
.mp3 player revolution, MDs only competitors were CDs and before that, tapes. :)
45 hours on 1 GB? that's 53kbps... 1 GB (1GiB) is still 18 hours @ 128kbps.
One disk costs EUR 7.00, so here's a little price comparison for people who want an mp3-player (and don't use the recording or video functions) (all prices in Euro's):
1 GB iPod Nano: EUR 159
1 GB hi-MD: 150 + 1*7 = 157 : roughly the same price
2 GB iPod Nano: EUR 209
2 GB hi-MD: 150 + 2*7 = 164 : MD is the best choice, but the iPod has no moving parts.
4 GB iPod Nano: EUR 259
4 GB hi-MD: 150 + 4*7 = 178.00 : MD is the best choice, but the iPod has no moving parts.
Here's the gap between occasional music listeners and music lovers. Non-existing market according to Apple. You either have a handful or a lot of cd's. My iPod 3G 15GB is too big for most people while I can't even put half of my collection on it. Maybe the hi-MD could fill this gap up.
30GB iPod: EUR 329
30GB hi-MD: 150 + 30*7 = 360 : iPod is better
60GB iPod: EUR 439
60GB hi-MD: 150 + 60*7 = 570 : iPod is better
Add to that the ease of selecting playlists (of any size you want, not limited to 1GB) instead of carrying a wallet with md's around, and I don't see why I should buy a hi-MD recorder. The only advantage over mp3-cd players is the size.
Another thing, if you want certain songs on multiple playlists (disks) with the hi-MD player, you need to copy them on multiple disks, decreasing the actual capacity even further. On my iPod I have a couple of similar ("all music", "best", "hard", "easy",
Before the
He forgets DCC
Now, I think that that is a pointless battle: you won't beat Apple in its current winning mood. Forget it. It ain't gonna happen.
True.
Ah, cognitive dissonance at work. Don't like the fact that mp3 players are successful while your beloved MiniDisc isn't? A healthy dose of "lalala I can't hear you" will help with that, and soon you'll have yourself convinced that reality will change just be cause you want it to again...
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Yes, MD had many advantages "back-in-the-day" and even today some may find it to be a suitable platform. But this guy is living in another reality.
2GB SD costs $50 (slickdeals.net/techbargains.com) and nowadays flash MP3 players are dirt cheap, tiny, durable, and feature-rich. Minidisc players have slow access times, inferior interfaces, and cumbersome transfer procedures.
Most people do not want to deal with the hassle of juggling dozens if not hundreds of discs to carry a large collection. A 1.5-ounce 4GB flash player can carry a decent amount of tunes. And there are 60GB hdd-based players coming in at under 5 ounces that are slower than flash, but faster then MD (and are reasonably durable).
He makes one good point: Sony should've used a backward-MD-compatible disc in the PSP. Otherwise his post is simply an example of someone blinded by years of frothing-at-the mouth fanboyism.
I'm a pro audio engineer based in London and got an invite to the unveiling of the Sony MD in 1991 at their newly acquired studio in the West End. Went along, free drinks and all that, and a nervous Japanese guy came out and demoed the amazing new machine. Sound quality wasn't that great (first version of ATRAC I believe) and wasn't well EQ'ed but it was impressive for its size and resistance to jog and shock. The amazing part was when he took the disk out and it still kept playing! I can remember thinking 'we really don't need another format' (cassettes, vinyl, CD were all going strong) and noted that no other music labels seemed to be interested in supporting it. I questioned the engineer at the end who told me the disk was about 100Mb in size and I begged them to release the thing as a super-floppy storage device telling them this is what people really, really needed. Just drew a blank on that suggestion.
The next couple of years saw the release of Iomega Zip drive at 100Mb and was a worldwide smash selling millions of units while the Sony MD limped on like some forgotten part of evolution. They could have taken that market in 1991 but obviously didn't fit in with their music division plans - such a shame.
Of course now, Sony has a unreliable and unattractive reputation in pro-audio and is going nowhere whereas when I started (end of 80s) Sony Broadcast ruled the whole business. Basically a company in decline not helped by different divisions actually competing with each other.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"