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Overwrite head connections are gone. Unless you can find the break in the ribbon cable and fix it (it's doable but very fiddly) the proper market price of that cable/head assembly exceeds the market value of the NF810. One thing you can do is to make it so that you don't try to record. This involves glueing the record button, and the track mark button so they cannot be pressed. Of course you'd have to vow to yourself not to hook up to USB, but at least the player would continue to work. As it's not Hi-MD you may be able to get this one recording off using TOC cloning via another unit (specifics we can discuss). However it's bye-bye to the 810 at least as a recorder.

I suspect the charger is fine (100-240V, 50/60 Hz marked on mine), but you WILL need the right plug (of a somewhat standard type) and cable to connect the charger to the wall. Pause Play Stop are about $60 more than the amazon UK after allowing for the microphone. But some of that $60 may go on postage. Not sure how much.

Your shipping from the UK may be quite expensive. By all means check it out, I have had lots of good deals by getting my ancient papa to send things on. But the MZ-M200 includes a mic valued at $80 or so. So you are comparing apples and oranges. I suspect you might get something resembling a warranty if you buy from Canada, in addition to the "right" wall charger.

Canada isn't outer space, you know

"what I say three times is true" - Lewis Carroll, in The Hunting of the Snark

Typically Amazon refuses to ship electronics outside the country they are being sold in. That's certainly the case for both Canada and the USA. In the past I haven't found that much I cared about on Amazon UK though DVD's are frequently a bargain (and they do not attract this prohibition). You'd need a relative over there.

Indeed, I think the RH1 on its own simply is not available.

I know Montreal isn't in the USA, but these guys are pretty reliable: http://pauseplaystop.com/shopexd.asp?id=776 Cheers Stephen

I have one here (SBC3556 from Philips) that needs a good home, if you would like it. Stephen

Correct. HiMD uses a completely different recording format and the firmware of the previous players is unable to decode it. The reverse is however possible. They kindly put a regular MD header to allow you to have an idea of what is on the disk. HTH Stephen

Well, the ICD-SX750 I have in my hand has rechargeable (of course it takes Alkaline too) AAA's. Granted the flash memory is not removable but I have deep suspicion of the contacts on the removable flash cards. Whilst I use them for my camera, I have a nasty suspicion they (along with differences in specifications) are mostly responsible for the differences (ie failures) in behaviour seen by Bob and others. Maybe a lightweight voice recorder will come out from Sony that also has removable memory cards. Meantime there is the PCM-M10. So, I don't think there's any question of them "going back". I cannot claim expertise on the long term survivability of MD (magnetic) vs flash (charge) but it seems to me at heart they are merely two sides of the same coin. Cheers Stephen And the buttons are definitely high quality (see ozpeter's review)

Sorry, that's way off. Most flash can be (and are guaranteed to be) rewritten 100,000 times and there are new generations (maybe out already) that can do 1,000,000. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory The problem only really comes if the TOC area gets rewritten a lot. Most flash based devices have firmware that will remap blocks just like a HD does, as they wear out.

Sure, but I know you have the unique, special, amazing MDS-W1. I think the ability to record in any quality including PCM and transfer to and from PC was exactly what I wanted out of the MD when I started. The fact we ended up getting this (well minus a small hitch over bass roll-off) from non-MD seems, well, ironic. Even HiMD only has this with significant restrictions and/or work by the user. Enough to defeat the non-technical user, for sure. It has been said that MD and its various features/restrictions has all been about Sony trying to sell devices. Well, they sold me another one today, I plunked down $$$ for the 8GB version. Who knows maybe I should have got the PCM-M10 but a. it doesn't do LPEC and the MP3 specs are poor, still b. it weighs almost 1 pound. Later, maybe... someone is selling it (the PCM-M10) on Amazon for $250!! Stephen

This is really great news, Adrian. Am I to understand that this transfer will take place at x1 always (you say "real time")? If so, I am not sure what is the difference from optical out into the white socket on the MD (except that some units like RH10 resolutely refuse to record SP without major firmware/NVRam hacking). But that is not to lessen the achievement!! Well done. Thanks Stephen

I don't really understand this comment - I think you are arguing "post hoc, propter hoc". In 1998 when the PMD650 was sold (to you, presumably) the hard drive on a PC typically did not have 8 GB. So the "without a PC" seems to me to be shorthand for "make unlimited recordings without needing to transfer to the PC". Now you can have 8GB on board, most days the battery will run out before the memory. Not so back then, with only 160MB on a disk. In the PCM-M10 they've got a cute feature which allows you to change memory cards and keep the recording going by switching instantaneously to the internal memory; if I ever get the PCM-M10 I will try it out. In fact most MD users have been begging for transparent access to music files on a recordable unit. Now they have it. But (coming back to the "unlimited recordings" issue) surely in most cases you ended up transferring to the PC, somehow or other? I suppose digital out from a deck ca. 1998, but otherwise you're losing the digital character of the recording if you insist on mixing them into something else via the analog output of whatever MD device you're using. You can certainly do that with these too via the line-out/headphone socket. And I looked again, there really are a host of useful features offered patchily or not at all by MD, such as a noise cut switch, DPC for playback, large visible recording meters with numeric dB display, etc. ozpeter's review covers all this quite nicely.

That's not exactly the point. The PMD650 is not a HiMD device, and HiMD is the biggest culprit here. If you run out of power before or during the calculation of the disk id/encrypted TOC/checksum no amount of TOC cloning will save you (at least until the linux-minidisc guys finish their project). Countless stories exist of frustrated people who lost whole recordings this way. They always wind up here ready to throw bricks through windows (that's a small W). The PMD650 is a very nice pro model but how can it compete with LPCM for pro recordings? I can get 12 hours LPCM on the ICD-SX950. Anyway we were talking about using MD for voice recordings. I can't see how an 80m SP disk is that much use, to be honest, when for $123 I can get 17 hours of music quality recording (way more than that for speech only, like 750 hours!), dictation software as an optional extra (or with some models).

Instead of all the posturing, why don't you go and try one out? Buy it from somewhere with a good return policy. I admit that the fixed interval time mark thing is not there. Your other complaints seem insignificant to me. Once you get reliable flash recording you will find that the 10 minute thing is no longer necessary. None of this nonsense of losing tracks because of power loss. Even the PCM-M10 doesn't have the fixed interval time mark.

Dividing tracks YES Combining tracks NO (but it comes with a free copy of Sound Forge - the fact that for MD it was inconvenient to edit tracks on the PC doesn't make this one into a virtue IMHO) Renaming tracks YES (has to be connected to PC but so what?) Erasing tracks YES Changing track order: this one is interesting. If you want it as a player then there is a file system dependent ordering. Sorry. For recording purposes, presumably a non-issue. However you can create a new folder and move tracks into that folder in order, so you can easily achieve the result you want, I think. Inserting track marks while recording YES Overwriting or adding to existing tracks (one you didn't mention) YES. Stephen

Hmmm, I guess you haven't been reading my posts. 1. Superior editing features. Nope, you can divide quite nicely, and the rest is drag and drop with no restrictions. What we have been begging for, in fact. 2. Smaller size... no way. The unit which hold up to 8GB (depends on model) weighs 55g. Half the weight of a MD recorder, generally. 3. Better sound quality. Perhaps, but the inbuilt mics do a pretty good job, with external mike-ing possible. The major and only defect seems to be there is a bit of a bass roll off. For most purposes this can be compensated after the fact. For anything which isn't bass-heavy, I find the higher frequencies actually better on the flash recorder, and the graphs from CoolEdit (Audition) bear me out. Go ahead, flame away! But really, Sony has finally done something just about dead right. If you can't stand the loss of bass, use the PCM-M10 which has all the same attributes but weighs 400g (just short of a pound). But for lecture notes... no way, Jose, MD is as dead as a duck IMO. Stephen

Actually I cannot imagine anyone using MD for this purpose when they can have one of Sony's extensive line of (flash) Voice recorders, some of which are "almost" as good as MD. Not to mention the many other companies in that market.

well.. get rid of all files in the folder that you were working with. If you have them in ATRAC format, but NOT .wav format, convert them first. If you have them already in WAV then delete them from Sonic Stage. The folder should itself disappear. Don't at this point delete the music files (the check box on "delete" dialog). Try re-adding them first as ATRAC files (assuming you have them). If they were wav files to begin with, just add them again. In addition if you ever converted to send to MD, you might try to find the optimized files and delete the lot. You can do this by looking at the File Info tab after you opened the properties display for each file listed in SonicStage (ie right click a track within SS). Especially if you find more than 1 file listed that, the extra ones may be gumming up the works. I haven't used WMA much, but I do recall something weird with MP3. IN ADDITION (BIG WARNING!!!!) some software players (I think RealPlayer is a case in point) WRITE DATA TO MP3'3. Sigh. This will muck up a lot of things, as you can imagine. Try using file copies wherever possible.

Type-R (note the hyphen in Sony-speak) is included in Type-S, it's a fundamental property of all the chips past a certain date. Type-S only matters on playback, and (I have a pretty shrewd hunch, he asserted modestly) only when that playback is out of the ANALOG output of the deck or portable in question. If you are playing back over USB, or from deck opti-out, I **think** it makes no difference. Even then it's only for MDLP, and doesn't apply at all to SP.

Sonic stage has this weird little db it uses. Sometimes the only way to clear it is to delete everything of interest from sonicstage (preferably making sure you have files which are not ATRAC, first, saved).

I bought one for next to nothing and it was fine; I paid three times that for one that the guy claimed he had inspected, and it was garbage. No way to be sure.

This simple question has been asked enough times (and answered the exact same way) that it perhaps needs some kind soul to "sticky" it on our behalf. Here's my answer FWIW: http://forums.sonyinsider.com/index.php?showtopic=25307&view=findpost&p=171973 Although the Sony from 2001 looks silly, the recent Sony models much less so. The 510 I mention has the best size (nice and large) font for the display, though it is all uppercase. Cheers Stephen