Richard

Mika Nakashima (中島 美嘉) | 2004 Sony Walkman Campaign Posters The Japanese singer Mika Nakashima was the "campaign character" for Sony Walkman in Japan in 2004 and featured on promotional materials for the launch of Hi-MD in spring of that year, together with the launch of the MZ-E630 in October 2004 and for the first Network HDD Walkman's. This is a collection of promotional posters, a store counter display card and the August 2004 Sony Walkman catalog.

Daiso MD | Ocean Series I am not 100% sure of the exact date of this series, but it must have been around 2001 I think. Another interesting series from Daiso, only available in 74 minute variants and sold as single sealed discs. The colors are Blue, Light Blue, Green, Orange and Gray.

Thanks. These low cost discs in retail hangers are quite hard to find in the original packaging. They were literally throw away items I guess, but paradoxically they are now quite sought after. Thanks also for the compliment. Stay tuned as I have many more discs to post pictures of. I'll try and do a few each week, time permitting. 🙂

Daiei MD | 「暮らしの８８」"Kurashi no 88" Made in Korea by Saehan for the Japanese supermarket chain Daiei, these discs are from around 2000 / 2001. The range was called 「暮らしの８８」 (Lifestyle 88 or Living 88). According to the news release, this was a range of around 300 everyday products within Daiei stores, which as the name (and the product contents and packaging suggest) was designed to be cost-conscious and sold at the very low price of 88 yen each (hence the name). Of the two I have there are a couple of slight differences on the rear of the wrappers, but nothing major of interest. Very basic labels too and no cases of course. Also available in blue (which I don't yet have). Blue Disc with Alternative shutter variation Yellow banded wrapper Variants These appear to be the least common of the 3 variants and this variant was also available in yellow and green which seem to be rarer still than the clear, blue and red ones.

Maxell MD | Gold & Platinum Nanase Aikawa (相川七瀬), "Live Emotion Tour" Limited Edition These 1998 limited edition 3 packs contain the standard 74 minute Maxell Gold and Platinum discs, but feature Japanese singer Nanase Aikawa and come in limited edition packaging to promote her "Live Emotion" tour from that year. The discs also feature a set of custom index cards and stickers featuring the tour dates.

Nice to see the old logo back too.. I remember when you designed that.. 😉

Looks good! 👍

Same here! I'm also completely non-technical and the ingenuity of these kinds of projects always amazes and impresses me too.

great minds think alike! (and at the same time it seems) 😁

Yes, there is a limit to the total number of characters per disc (see below from the NH900 manual). It's much lower on standard MD's vs. Hi-MD formatted discs.

Sounds good! Even if it's something that has already been posted by someone else, don't worry - the more the merrier!

I'll try and update some of the info in the posts as well regarding release dates for discs and other information. If I can't recreate the original threads for now, I'll make new versions of the ones I can, as I have quite a lot of the same sets that Ishii already posted and a few he didn't get a chance to do. I was also thinking to maybe update some of my own MD unit pictorials as well

Incidentally if you have any questions regarding blanks or need help identifying anything, manufacturers, release dates etc.. just ask away! 🙂 PS: If you use Facebook, I would 100% recommend the Facebook group "Students of The Little Disc", run by Jeremy. Incredibly useful and a great community of MD blank collectors.

Thanks - definitely very useful sites. Of course you can also check out our own Discs Pictorials section. Many of the image links are broken, but I have been able to restore a few, will try my best to work on the others (if possible to recover them) and I will also be adding more pictorials from my own extensive collection of blanks as well in the coming weeks. 😉

Daiso MD | 1st Color Series "Clear Sound" The first colour series from Daiso, only available as 74 minute singles. In 3 colours - Purple, Pink and Yellow. Made in Taiwan by Ritek. When I get the sealed yellow I will add it to this topic.

Axia MD | MD.PS Natural Sound [Dolphin] - 2001 Series (Revisted 2021) This Axia series from 2001 was available in packs of 3, 5 and as individually wrapped, single discs. The index cards on each disc randomly featured one of nine unique designs showing a tropical beach or ocean scene (pictures of these to follow in the future). The 3 disc colors were purple, blue and white, available in 80 minutes only. 3 Pack Mix Single Discs

I have the NH1, but with an Australian charger (240V input) and the NH3D with the 100v input. However, a Google image search turned up the below - perhaps it's this one for the US.

Indeed.. (re)bonjour Philippe! Sounds like a good idea 👍

Hmm.. Could be? 🤔 I'll have to do some more comprehensive testing when I get back home from holiday. I only tried 2 or 3 discs (all BD's) so far..

I tried Hi-SP and PCM and it's the same. Didn't try traditional SP yet, but I presume it works in the same way and that the audio stream from the BD player is always the same and the deck just converts it to whatever target bit rate you want. In my case I recorded it all PCM on the Onkyo to a 1GB disc and I think another standard disc as even after editing out the talk tracks between songs, it was still over 2 hours of music. I then used Sony X-App to convert the PCM to Atrac3+ 352k so that I could fit it on to a couple of standard MD's.

DVD's are normally fine, even over optical I think as well. Sometimes it's also just easier to extract the audio track using software and then convert it to Atrac on the computer. I guess also with Blu-Ray you can do the same with a portable BD-R drive hooked up to the PC.

Yes, the plugs were different (although I think JP and US are the same), but all the old JP domestic units came with chargers that were 100v input only (vs 120 I think for the US). It was only from around 2005 onwards they went with 100-240v input. No comment 😆

Prospec MD Saver Pro (SCMS stripper) I was always curious about these (curious to see if they actually worked that is). This is the MD Saver Pro "Digital Editor" from Prospec, that was sold legally in Japan for a period in the early 2000's. It is basically an SCMS stripper. As the packaging illustrates it was designed to allow people to make digital copies from MD to MD, DAT to MD or from satellite TV to MD. I managed to pick up a "new" one that is essentially unused, but has obviously been sitting around for the last 20 years or so. Happy to confirm it works as expected. I was also able to make a copy of the PCM audio track of a blu-ray via coaxial out from my Sony BD player into a coax to toslink converter then through this into my Onkyo MD-105FX in PCM. Bypassing this unit and going direct to the Onkyo doesn't allow the copy to be made.

Hi there... I guess there are a few different questions in here: 1. If you want to know what the original part no. is for the US NH1 charger, you can see below from the service manual: 2. Do you need the original US charger? Not necessarily - you could get one like the one from the DH10P (AC-ES608K3) for example which is 100-240v input. You could also get a 110-100v step down transformer and use your JP NH1 charger. I generally just charge all my Li-Ion batteries for Hi-MD units in the RH1 because you can use any USB charger with it. 3. Damage to your unit / ac adaptor by putting 115v or so into the 100v charger? Not 100% sure, but I would avoid it if possible.

Likewise, it's good to be back!