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For me there were tons of reasons why to use the minidisc format as an audio recorder and player through out the 90's. In fact I've been a big fan of the format and used it faithfully up until about 5 or 6 years ago when HDD and flash based memory recorders and players began to be cheaper than owning the minidisc format all together. That with their smaller size, higher audio quality, lack of DRM (no sonic stage) finally pushed me away from the minidisc format. Personally I don't see any reason why I would want to use the Minidisc format if i had a choice today to buy an audio playerrecorder besides the novelity of it... Except for one.. I miss being able to completely manage my audio collection with out the use of a computer. It's not that I hate computers, I am a systems administrator and have been doing this for near 20 years, but I miss being able to go to my CD or Tape collection (back in the day) pulling out what I wanted to hear and listening to it on my home stereo, my car stereo, my audio player at work, at my friends house, and my portable player, with out ever needing to worry about DRM, file transfers, file formats, and or needing to download from the cloud. With the massive success of the MP3 File format, the iPod, and everything else that makes the digital world move, nothing was as easy as pulling a tape or cd from your collection and listening it to on anything you wanted to and sharing it with anyone you wanted to - and the same can be said about video tapes in the VCR days with regards to DVRs. I can't imagine I'm totally alone with this. The blank VCR tape market was huge through out the 80's and 90's and the same was true for blank audio cassettes. It would almost make sense to me that sony would take their exisiting technology of HI-MDs and tweek it a bit so it could become the modern day equivalent of the VCR. Minidiscs wouldn't suffer from degradation from over-writing, storage, or scratches as CDs and DVDs do. By also doing this I believe this could re-introduce MDs for what they were ment to be in the 90's - to re-place audio cassetts (if they could be simply priced cheaply).Of course the damage is already done. Even if Sony did do something like this audio MD's will never become the next "walkman" or "iPod", but I can see these as a cheap replacement for the common audio cassette in a new digital age that will allow you to store you'r audio outside of a computer - again if priced very cheaply. Just wondering what anyone's thoughts on this might be. Below is post I posted on a Sony's forum a while ago, which I will repost here. "Anyone else miss VCRs (not their quality) but being able to easily record a show, save it to tape, than taking the tape and watching it at a friends house or family members house? That's something you can't easily do with current DVRs, or anything else since the VCR. Why doesn't Sony make a modern VCR and use Hi-MD technology to let consumers easily record tv shows? There was a massive vcr market of people recording shows and saving them - just because everything has gone to flash-based memory and hard drives, doesn't mean people still wouldn't want the simplicity of a VCR to record and store their videos and use the Minidisc media to re-write over with out degradation to the media. The Secrete for it's success? No Crazy proprietary format, nor God awful drm schemes, and keeping it reasonably priced."

I agree with Soundbox, I love MD, I love the form factor and I love the sound. I have only ever strayed with a couple of Sony HD based units which used ATRAC any way, same awesome sound. In the past few years I have used mainly SP recorded via optical in real-time. I have an iPhone (my third in four to five years) and I would not waste my time copying music to is because it sounds like crap compared to any SP recorded (or Hi-SP for that matter) content. I do long for the days of the ease of a VCR ... I have a DVR and the OP is right, the ability to be mobile with the recording is not the same. A few years ago, I bought a DVD recorder made by Sony, it records in the same way as a VCR does but uses DVD-R media, it works OK, but it is limited to standard definition (480i in US) and does not really look very good, well, it looks almost as good as a decent SVHS VCR, but it would be nice to have a usable format for easily recording broadcast HD content. I have been experimenting with PC based DVR software and NAS storage on high speed network in the home ... Not optimal yet, but it will come around. Oh yeah, and unless I setup streaming to external networks, I can't really take it to my friends house to watch.

I use my MD's as much as I ever did. Having a physical disk is important to me and I love that I can edit so easily and precisely without resorting to using a computer. The disks last a long time, they are secure and easy to handle and use. What is not to like? Well, I never had problems with DRM - mainly becase I just made one disk via optical or microphone and listened to it. For what I do I cannot see that MP3 players will add anything to my music enjoyment so I've never had one. I'll be honest and say that I never liked audio tapes very much even when they were the only thing around. The fact that any mistake with the pause button or rough edits were impossible to rectify and recording from the radio gave often poor results when the pause button was used to edit out the DJ's waffle. I still use VCR's as my primary video system and the quality is fine to me (I'm in a PAL area and using a CRT TV) and the Hi-Fi sound still impresses. Grab a tape, stuff it in and hit record - no messing with menus. I keep being told VCR's are 'obsolete' and won't work after the April analogue switch-off but with a digibox they are good to go. Just last night I recorded 'REM at the BBC' on my 1983 Betacord (Sanyo Beta machine) using the timer and a digital converter - and will watch it tonight.