Well, perhaps in the States it is, but in the UK it's doing very nicely thank you. I know a great many people with minidisc players and, er, none with MP3 players. Minidisc offers superb sound quality, portability, long battery life and most importantly economical storage media.
I bought a portable minidisc player/recorder just before leaving home for a three month trip. I've got 12 minidiscs with me, the equivalent of about 700 megs of MP3s, all in one pocket of my backpack. OK it's a little bulkier than flash rom cards, but it was also far cheaper (20 dollars US roughly for the lot, compared with about 1000 for that much ROM space).
As for getting MP3 onto minidisc? Burn the MP3 to a CD-RW then copy the CD-RW data onto minidisc, result? Digital copy.
Minidisc is not a perfect medium, 1x copying is a royal pain in the behind, and the lack of a direct PC link really is irritating, but for portability, cheap storage media and quality of sound I have yet to see anything that can touch it. MP3 players are nice toys, but until I can get one that supports more than an album or two of storage I'll pass.
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Is Minidisc dead?
Well, perhaps in the States it is, but in the UK it's doing very nicely thank you. I know a great many people with minidisc players and, er, none with MP3 players. Minidisc offers superb sound quality, portability, long battery life and most importantly economical storage media.
I bought a portable minidisc player/recorder just before leaving home for a three month trip. I've got 12 minidiscs with me, the equivalent of about 700 megs of MP3s, all in one pocket of my backpack. OK it's a little bulkier than flash rom cards, but it was also far cheaper (20 dollars US roughly for the lot, compared with about 1000 for that much ROM space).
As for getting MP3 onto minidisc? Burn the MP3 to a CD-RW then copy the CD-RW data onto minidisc, result? Digital copy.
Minidisc is not a perfect medium, 1x copying is a royal pain in the behind, and the lack of a direct PC link really is irritating, but for portability, cheap storage media and quality of sound I have yet to see anything that can touch it. MP3 players are nice toys, but until I can get one that supports more than an album or two of storage I'll pass.