BearBoy

Amazing. Stuff like this completely blows my, non-technical, mind. Will be very interested to see how you get on with this, Kevin.

😂 sfbp's a "Rookie" and he's got 6,579 posts 😲

Quite long titles then 😉 If I've counted correctly that's 45 characters, which will actually consume 49 of the 1700 available. I can see how you'd run out of characters if the 40 or so tracks all have similarly lengthy titles. Glad you found a solution in HiMD though.

Yeah, the BIN prices are almost always over the top and, in some cases, utterly ridiculous. There were a couple of 980s on there recently. One was £2000 and the other was £1000 😲 I spent some time looking at 930s a while back and the average sold auction price (including postage) was around £150 but the BINs at the time were generally more than double that. I think patience is the key to getting one for a reasonable price and, as M1JWR has done, maybe picking up one in need of some work.

They’re still going, Kevin. My niece, who is 13, has one.

Got it. Thanks Kevin 🙂 All somewhat hypothetical for me tbh as I only use MiniDisc to record music (at an average of four to four-and-a-half minutes per song?) and have never really used LP4. So I'm probably looking at a maximum of 35-40 tracks per disc at LP2 to use up those 1700 characters (average of 42 available per track if I had 40 tracks). I don't think most song titles are that long. Obviously a different scenario if you're using MDs in the manner Freddyjollo is or for things like sound effects etc. Still, it's good to know these things 😀

Ah, I see what you mean. I think 🤔 So if I used a single character title (e.g. A), it would still take up 7 of the 1700 available characters? Or am I still being dim?

Not sure if I've misunderstood what you're saying here Kevin but I've just done a test and was able to name tracks with a single character: A, B, C etc

Good work 🙂 I'd checked the manual for one of my decks and found the 255 track limit information but had missed the 1700 character limit (it was a few pages further on - and not in the section about naming tracks) 🤦‍♂️

How many tracks were you able to title before you started encountering blanks?

Hi Joe. The PC connecting kit for the MDS-JE470 is the PCLK-MN10. There is some information regarding the kit, including links to the user manual, on MiniDisc.org The kit will allow you to control the deck using a PC and transfer music from PC to the MD deck but, as sfbp pointed out, it doesn't allow you to transfer music the other way (i.e. from MiniDisc deck to PC). The MDS-JE470 doesn't have a digital output (either optical or coaxial) so the only way to transfer music off it would be via the analogue outputs. You would be likely to get better quality transfers if you found a deck with a digital output. The other option is to find an MZ-RH1 (also available as the MZ-M200), which is the only MiniDisc device that allows you to upload standard MiniDisc recordings to a PC. They're not cheap though... Links for the MZ-RH1/MZ-M200: MiniDisc.org and MiniDisc Wiki

Would be great to see more pictures of your collection, Richard. I'll take a look at the unit forum and see if I've got anything that can fill any of the gaps.

Doh, of course 🤦‍♂️ Sadly, like you say, many of the picture links are not currently working. Thanks for all your efforts to restore the pictures (and the ones of MiniDisc players in the Product Reviews/Pictorials sub-forum).

I found a couple of sites that document, with pictures, a large number of the different types of blank MiniDisc that were available. Neither are exhaustive, not surprising given the huge variety of blanks that were produced, but I have found them very useful in identifying down what a sealed copy of one of my old discs looks like (so I could buy some more on eBay) or what the actual discs themselves look like if you've only seen sealed copies for sale. First up is: https://juri.su/minidisc.htm The site is in Russian but Chrome translates it into English well enough. The other is: https://minidiscdb.co.uk/ Hopefully someone else will also find them useful 💽

Have you checked the output of your adapter? Is it 6V DC? I'm not sure if feeding 120V AC into an adapter designed for 100V is dangerous or not but as long as it's not outputting more than 6V DC then I would assume it won't damage your MiniDisc player? It might damage the adapter itself though. I'm not an electrician though so probably best to take this with a pinch of salt...

That looks very impressive, G4KQK. Probably beyond my level of competence tbh but I am sure there are others here who would be very interested.

Might be worth putting something in the Announcements sub forum about this? People might not see it here?

Absolutely 😀

I just tried a couple of things using a Sony BDP-S580 into a Sony MDS-JB940 over digital coaxial. First up I tried a music concert on Blu-ray and got a C41 error. Tried a DVD of the same concert (it came in a double pack) and got a C41 error again. Was beginning to think I must have imagined ever being able to do this...😧 I then tried a different DVD and no C41 error. Finally, tried a third DVD and no C41 error. So it looks like it depends on whether the record label "enabled" copy protection on the disc?

Ah, so it's a Blu-ray thing. I did make an MD of a DVD the other day but used the other method you suggested (i.e. ripping the DVD to my PC and then transferring to MiniDisc using Stefano's Web MiniDisc app). I don't think I had a PC with a DVD drive during my original MiniDisc phase. With your Onkyo, does it make any difference whether you're recording PCM to a HiMD or ATRAC?

That's interesting. I'm sure I've made digital copies of soundtracks of live music DVDs etc in the past without SCMS rearing its ugly head. Don't think I've ever tried it with a Blu-ray though. I'll have to do some tests and see if I have misremembered (I've definitely got some MDs that I recorded from DVDs many years ago but maybe I ended up using analogue).

Sooo,

Techmoan posted a new MiniDisc video whilst we were off air:

They are now? 😀

Emojis still don't seem to be working for me.