Leaderboard

I agree that for all intents and purposes, MD is dead, but I still voted for it to be revived. Not just because of my love for the format, but there are some reasons that I think are viable. One, despite the fact that great strides have been made in solid state/flash memory players and recorders, we STILL have CDs, vinyl and even CASSETTES (though blanks) being sold. The latter two don't have a large following of people using them, but there are enough to justify them being put out on the market. I feel the same can be said for MD, particularly if one takes a look at the sales going on in sites like Ebay. Two, it's still a dependable format. From what I've seen, soild state versions of playing/recordable units are still prone to failure, either by units breaking down, and/or memory problems. Granted, this is improving, but considering that even to this day I can take a minidsc out of my player, throw it on the ground, pop it back in and it will still play, and they can last for a pretty long time in storage, and today's tech can't really match that, that says a lot. You have to be careful storing audio files in memory sticks, hard drives and such; one misstep and everything is gone. DVD and CD archiving are better, but they're still prone to scratching. This is the main reason why my albums and songs, as well as old lectures, interviews, and speeches I've recorded, are all backed up on minidisc. Three, the demand is still there. I'm not naive enough to think it's a huge demand, but there is enough of us out there to support a niche market. And considering how cheap it must be to churn out blanks, there is no reason to think Sony or another company stands to lose a whole lot of money... provided they market this correctly. That is, of course, the rub; they haven't done this well in the past. But if they are selling to a group of people who are already bought on the idea, and they do it right, it can make them some money. And word of mouth will attract a few more customers. I'm confidant in that last part, since I still turn heads whenever I pull one of my recorders out, and new people show up here from time to time. So the spark of interest is there, just waiting for someone competent to fan into flames. I'm not saying this could be easy to do... or that we have a chance in hell of ever seeing it happen. But it could be done.