lamewing

Well, these are issues folks can have, yes. But with the Cown X5L that i bought I can address your concerns. 1. It will never get full as I don't have that much music. 15GB at most and all my music is ripped from my CDs. 2. If it was broken, I would replace it and just copy my entire library back over with simple drag and drop. There is nothing to reorganize as it is already set up by folders: Music/Artist/Album 3. See #2 4. See #2 5. I don't use playlists, instead I just listen to albums or a specific artist. I am not organized enough to deal with playlists. 6. I have no DRM with this DAP. 7. I can record to mp3, but I only record internet radio and voice, so that is more than adequate 8. I cannot display Extended Chinese or Hangul on a minidisc unit. Sony just isn't interested in providing this option. Grrrrrr. This is the only problem I REALLY have with any type of minidisc. This includes Sony gimping units outside of Japan so they cannot display Kanji/Kana. You would think it would be simpler to have ONE hardware design and ONE firmware. I just don't understand sometimes. Now THIS is something I can 100% agree with. I just don't see why we could get a comperable AA powered unit like the tourist version of the MZ-NH700 (with a metal body like the MZ-R70- wishful thinking, I know). I have never like the slim batteries, but the idea of the AA units always were top shelf in my book. It is too bad that after the R70, Sony started adding more and more plastic to the units. "cry" The AA are especially nice now that HiMD can record from the USB power versus back when compared to say, the MZ-S1. Oh, your comment about the feel of a unit. 100% agree. I want a solid metal body on my units (the X5L is solid aluminum - heavy too) with buttons that have a solid feel and make a real "click" when I use them. I guess that is why I still use 20 year old HP calculators compared to the $3.00 crap in the stores today. Ooops, showing my age.

Unfortunetly, tuition is coming up for hte spring and I really only should keep one of them. To answer your question, the X5L only records to .mp3. This seems odd since it would take more processing power to do this, and it isn't like there isn't a lot of HDD space. The storage idea is nice. Too bad there isn't more room on the discs. You sound like me, trying to determine every little detail regarding the units. "Which goes first, the HDD or the optical block....etc, etc". I also am a BIG fan of the six month rule and it drives my wife insane, epecially since her parents are packrats. She definately picked up that genetic trait from them!!! More decisions to make. OH, I have 10 minidiscs that I will sell ya for $10 each...and a bridge in Arizona too...

Guys and gals, I have been using minidisc, on and off, since my first Sony MZ-R70. That was followed by a slew of MD units; R900, R909, R910, Sharp DR7, N1, S1, N910 and N920, NH600, NH900, NH1, and EH1. Each one pretty much repleaced the next model, so until now, I have never had more than two MD units at any one time. Last September I sold my last MD unit, the Sharp DR7. I guess I kept it for nostalgia more than anything. After selling it I tried a used 2nd gen iPod, which I quickly sold off. After the iPod came the Sony HD1, which I also returned due to construction issues (and price at the time). The next DAP I played with was the Pocket Vaio; but I didn't like being tied to a heavy dock for transfers and charging. It was a BEAUTIFUL player. I wish Sony would have refined it versus just dropping the device. "sigh" Finally, I bought a Cowon X5L, and it seems to be very well built, has tons of features, and is straight drag-and-drop. It can play mp3, flac, ogg, plus video (anime works very well - short episodes and anime isn't affected by the 15fps). I thought I was done with MD, but I finally tried the NH1 and was really impressed by the build quality. I ended up returning this to the seller on ebay since it had a horrible smoke smell, plus it had "Sun Microsystems" silkscreen on the front. I definately didn't want that on my recorder! Still it was a fine player. So...in the last month I have picked up a few new HiMD units...2 x NH900 and an EH1 HiMD player. Now I am on the fence. Why, I just cannot justify spendiing $350.00 on the DAP and about $675.00 on the three MD units. To be truthful, the only thing I record is lectures and internet radio. My X5L has line in and a built in mic, which both work okay (not as well as HiMD), but then again, I am not a professional so it really doesn't matter that much. What to do? What to do? The smart thing would be to sell off the two NH900s and the NEW EH1 and just use the X5L. All of my music is from CD, so if the X5L's HDD goes south, no biggie. I keep the music on two different HD and on DVD as well. Is there REALLY any reason to keep with HiMD (not trying to be over emotional now - compared to after the Sony webconference a few weeks ago) for my uses? The nostalgia of MD is nice. The use of MD keeps me from being a Pod person. The MD has a very (imagined?) "Japanesy" feel to it. The Cowon is WELL built The Cowon uses USB 2.0 The Cowon has true drag-and-drop The Cowon is one device and I am not tied to any particular software or DRM strategy. Oh, I listne to Korean, Japanese, English and Chinese music. EASY titling of my music is wanted. It is very easy with the Cowon and a pain with SS 3.2. Plus, I cannot do Korean at all and limited Chinese on the HiMD. What do you folks think? I realize it sounds as if I have already talked myself out of it, but I value the opionions of the MD users here. Anyone need NH900s or a new EH1??? Joe Edwards

Blueraja, So you WERE able to get the black one? They told me that they couldn't do it at all!!!! Instead, I finally agreed on a silver one. This is not a good thing. Twice now AC has screwed up and I had to pay for shipping back to them. I think this will be the last time I will use them, especially since I now have a friend living in Osaka and I am going there this summer anyway. Congrats on your Black EH1. lamewing

Hey guys, I just rebuilt my computer and when I installed the full install version of SS 3.2 from here I find I cannot rip into PCM format. What is going on? Any help would be appreciated. Joe

Ha!! Ha!!! You might want to take what your Japanese instructor says with a grain of salt. After listening to my japanese instructor for 1.5 years and finally meeting more japanese folks who are younger (plus friends who now live in Japan) I have come to the conclusion that she really is out of touch with her own country. Sure she goes back every summer for three months, but she really is more Amercianized than she realizes. smkranz, I spoke with Chad-san and addressed some of your issues. He spoke with about 100 people. Almost all were college age (90%). The rest were parents, facuilty, and his home-stay family. About 65% would choose the Apple iPod over Sony DAPs/MD units.

A friend in Japan did an informal survey in the area where he is attending school...Kansai Gaidai. Here is his email... "Here are the results of the survey you asked me to do. Sorry it took so long, but I was trying to ask as many people as possible. The people I asked are Kansai Gaidai students The Japanese students I talked to either like the iPod or Sony's minidisk. People like the iPod because they believed it was the best MP3 Player, but the Sony results were very interesting. Most of the students who chose Sony did it for nationalistic reasons. When asked why they chose Sony the answer, about 99% of the time, was "Sony is Japanese." When asked why they did not like the iPod the answer was "iPod is NOT Japanese." Only a couple said they think the Sony product is better. They others chose based on nationalism. " Joe

I can confirm that as well. I thought the japanese NH1 had the connections. I am glad I didn't go to the trouble of ordering one from overseas. I guess the local model will do after all. Joe

Blue Raja, they contacted me before shipment and asked if the silver was okay. They aren't going to ship it without your permission. Having said that, I wish they would take the black choice off their website if they cannot deliver it.

SAME THING happened to me. Ordered the black one and after a week they told me they cannot get the black ones any more. Silver is on the way!!!

I also have a X5L, and while it is a great player with many options, the recorder is purely for voice. Even on high sensitivity the range is very limited and you get quite a bit of HDD whine. I just (today) using my X5L for class lectures and instead switched to a RH900 and a The Reactive Sounds Delta mic. MUCH MUCH better choice.

Hey guys, Tell me what you think of this: 1. Sony RH900 mint condition, about a month old, and a 2. The Reactive Sounds Delta for ... 3. $175.00 I found it on ebay and it turns out the guy goes to school at my university. I picked it up before class today and all is great. WOW is this microphone sensitive. It makes the built-in mic in my Cowon X5L DAP pale in comparison. Joe

Sorry to be negative, but I cannot imagine Sony thinking that these "gumdrops" will beat the iPod. 1. Hard to read in directly light...just like the RH10. 2. Edit 3. Will scratch, scratch, scratch. 4. Fingerprint magnet. 5. Back to a non-replaceable battery. 6. WAY to "glitzy" I was hoping that Sony wouldn't go for the pretty, fashionable look like Apple did. Oh, Sony, whatever happened to the LOVELY Pocket Vaio??? I am VERY interested in the new software! Thanks for the pics.

I am really looking forward to this Sharp unit. I will let you know when it arrives. Joe

Well, I am going to add a positive comment instead of adding a negative one. Hey guys and gals? What was your first MD experience? Mine was in 1998, while living in Korea. There are electronics stores in the subways and you can shop, shop, shop! I would always walk past the minidisc units (all the colorful units and media!!!) experiencing a wonder at how something so small could hold so much music. AND..it was so revolutionary (at I thought so - had no idea it had been around for 7 years) and quasi-futuristic! I didn't buy one til I came back to the States, a Sony player of some sort - I don't even remember which one it was. It would have been better to buy one there since they had so many more choices in Korea. I quickly replaced it with a Sony MZ-R70. I loved that unit. Solid aluminum construction, AA capability, made in Japan. It was my baby. I ended up selling it for a MZ-R900 and still regret getting rid of it to this day. Sure it was limited but it was my baby!!!! If the admin wants to move this and start a new thread..that is cool. Joe

And we can accept the end of the MD. BUT, my concern is that Sony will continue to make poor judgement calls on their new equpiment, dooming more equipment to a short life cycle. I was looking at the HD5, but the 9 - 12 month life cycle and the numerous cracking buttons has scared me away from one. I would expect a new iteration after 1 year, but to drop the product and totally replace it after such a short time. Why not fix what is wrong instead of making a new product with new problems? Sony did this to me (and many others) with the PS2 hard drive. Support in japan, but none in the states. Also, they killed the Sava-7 speaker set which was out in 98. I still have them and they are the best multimedia speakers I have ever heard! Sony PLEASE get it together and look to the future...LONG TERM.

And folks say I am negative! Guy, just because someone uses a HDD DAP versus a MD unit doesn't mean that they are stealing the music to put on their player. There isn't anything inherently evil with mp3. This just happened to be the format that was used on the P2P networks. It could have eaisly been something else. I also have a HDD unit now and I also own over 900 CD. I have been buying CDs since 1984. The only time I used a P2P network was to test out music for my wedding and to test out Jpop music. Now I don't even have to do that since the iTunes store lets me hear 30 second clips from japanese artists right through iTunes. Of course I have to import the CD (won't touch DRMed/compressed digital downloads) from yesasia.com or cdjapan.com. Please don't act like those who use HDD units are all unwashed sheep. THAT is the kind of additude I see on the Mac sites when they talk about Windows users. Oh, that borrowed from a friend thing is interesting. I grew up with cassette and I cannot imagine how many mixes I gave out and collected. The 80's style P2P. I would have done the same with MD, but the only people I have met who use MD are in Korea and Japan. That type of trading was a godsend as it opened me up to so many styles of music I would never have thought to try...or even have access to with my limited teenage funds. The P2P idea wasn't a bad thing and it could have been used for the same thing as swapping cassettes, but the problem came from peoples' GREED. It is one thing to download a song or two of a new band compared to downloading ALL of their albums!!! Also, recently the RIAA admitted that more pirating came (and still comes from) the sale of CDRs. After all the nonsense regarding the P2P networks they admit this...rather funny to hear.

If it comes to UMD replacing HiMD, that is fine as long as they put a shutter on the back of the disc.

I doubt that sony with drop ATRAC as the development is already complete (if they don't improve it) and it isn't any more trouble to add it to a player when compared to mp3, etc.

I BELIEVE I did mention that we shouldn't just send angry emails. I don't think that waiting until the announcemnt is made makes much sense. By that time it is too late. Sure, make the contact as polite as possible and to the correct people, but sending it now isn't going to force Sony do drop MD any more so than before we contact them. That smacks of sandbox politics..."Oh, I don't like the way to talk to me so I am taking my shovel and leaving." ... and while I believe Sony is seriously confused, I really hope that they would fall prey to such thinking. While is may seem disturbing to you (do you have a soft hide or something), you might want to look at the deeper reason behind such posts. These are PEOPLE who have trusted Sony to provide them with a tool, a tool that they have put much trust into. If Sony drops MD, they are going to feel hurt. Why? Because it comes down to human nature....you take someone's trust and break it...of course they are going to get emotional. Also factor in the lack of information to the MDers from Sony. You would think that they would have a liason with this forum. Instead, we MDers are being presented with the ugly reality of the situation...it is a cold-hearted business decision and we, as people, don't matter to Sony..at all. The only time we even show up on their radar is when we give them revenue or when we take our hard earned money elsewhere.

Hey Volta, I have seen this comment from others as well and I don't understand the logic at all. Okay, if Sony is considering dropping MD, you say we shouldn't contact them and let them know that there are so many folks who use the format. How is not contacting them going provide them with our feelings and need regarding MD? Also, it makes no sense to think that Sony, after getting hundreads of emails (or many, many more) would then decide to cancel the product. Why would a company make a decision to cancel a product after folks show their support for it? Maybe the money just isn't there in MD, I can understand that, but to say that Sony will more likely cancel the product lines because we write in seems rather...silly. Having said that I don't think that rude emails are the answer, but how is just posting here regarding what we want and use it for going to make a difference? It would seem to make better sense to collect that information and send it directly to Sony. It is obvious that Kurisu has connections to Sony. Maybe other folks do as well. But, it seems folks would rather just wait for Sony to cancel the product line and just live with it versus at least contacting them regarding the issue. I seriously doubt that just posting here will do much. Of course the email may not make a difference either, but at least we can say we tried versus just lying down to die. If Sony does decide to drop MD I through with Sony. Not because of the end of MD specificially, but it will be a final straw regarding all the mistakes they have made regarding digital music. If other companies can do drag and drop, the Sony can (and better still) as well. They just choose not to. It is pretty obvious that DAPs (even drag and drop) are a significant source of piracy of digital content. Any old hard drive can do that just as a HiMD used as a data drive can be. It confuses me even more when Sony even advertises the idea of sharing MDs!!!! Sony also burnt me on the PS2 hard drive. $100.00 wasted on a product that wasn't supporeted except for one game. Now hear me out...the reason I am angry abou this is because in Japan, the HD could at least be used for music, digital pictures, etc. We, those not in Japan, were left in the cold. This can also be seen in the limitations of software and hardware for MD oustide of Japan; lesser remotes, no remotes, no charging stands, no Kanji support, fewer colors, etc. Sony's arrogance has put them in a bind and now they are paying the price. In the end, I will use my Cowon X5L and also pick up some more Sharp Auvi players and/or recorders. I really hate to see Sony fail us MDers, but there is a bigger picture too...Sony has fallen to its own hubris and may never recover, especially if they continue to make bone-head decisons. Cutting jobs isn't always the best solution to a financial problem. I find it interesting that these large companies will bring someone in (Stringer maybe?), pay them millions and expect them to come up with a magic formula. Yet in Sony's case, we were given the solution of cutting jobs and products. YET at the same time (!!!!) Sony is creating UMD movies, another new proprietary memory card format, and a new series of mp3/atrac players that are butt-ugly, will eaisly scratch and attract fingerprints, even though they just released the NW-HD5 a few months ago (and now Sony stops using removeable batteries after just implementing them in the HD5!). Here are examples of the same bad decisions and confusion that Sony is famous for...but they are sure to do better. More products or less products, it doesn't matter. If the decsion makers still make bad calls, nothing will change...except they will find something new to blame the problems on. You can see I am very upset about this. Why? Because this is SONY! I grew up with nothing but Sony equipment in my home. In my view, SONY was always some of the best consumer (and pro) equipment around. Until about 5 years ago, everything in my home was SONY as well. But,with their slide into oblivion, my wife and I have chosen non SONY replacments when we go shopping. I wish SONY the best of luck, but I don't see anything but stupidity and greed continuting to destroy the once great company.

I have to agree with you on this one. I have use MD for several years, since my first Sony MZ-R70. I loved that unit. Since then, I have owned Sony's R900, R909, N1, NH600, NH900, and DH10P (which is going back) and a Sharp MD-DR7. Of all of them, the MDLP (non NetMD or HiMD) were my favorites. Why? I really didn't care for the idea of transferring music to MD from my computer, especially since the encoder isn't as good as the hardware encoder AND the nonsense about displaying asian fonts on the MD. It is a pain to do, only certian units do it, and NONE do Hangul. So, the old models worked great. Grab a CD and an optical cable and hook up the DR7, etc up to my PS2 or use my MD/CD dubbing unit. I also was never fond of the sound the NetMD and HiMDs made when they were accessing while attached to my PC. It sounded like they were always ready to implode or something. What I am saying is that I like using the older MDLP units for music listening since I loved the japanesy feel of the MD and the quasi-futuristic idea of so much music on a little disc. BUT, reality is reality and 160 minutes of music on a MD is rather limiting, especially since I don't archive my music to disc. At best I would have 5 or 6 MD ready at any one time. Now, with flash units that have no moving parts and HDD units that hold so much data and are so fast to load, it seems that the NetMD and HiMD are pretty much outclassed. It is funny that the older MDLP units aren't as easy to compare to the HDD units since they are completely audio recorders. The NetMD and HiMD, being a hybrid which can be used with a PC, are easily compared to the newer equipment and just don't compare. For recording, these new flash recorders seem great. 8 hours is a long time and the time will only get better. Remember, with the advent of HiMD the battery life WORSENED considerably - partically due to the crappy battery choices and partically due to the nature of the HiMD media. Unlike HiMD, I do see the battery life getting better in future iterations of these flash recorders. I think we are getting a bit confused here. Like jazmaan said, he records and then transfers the data immediately at USB 2.0 speeds. He doesn't use the drive inside the Microtrack for archving while many of the MDers here do use MD as an archive system. I cannot imagine owning 900 CDs and then also owning even half that number in MD for listening at home. I would rather just load up the CD. That brings back to many memories of my room filled with stacks and stacks of cassette tapes! After the Sony "announcement" I have decided to go with a flash recorder for my recording needs. For listening I will go back to "the old ways" and pick up a few more MDLP recorders and players for the near future. I always liked the sound of SP better than Hi-SP anyway. Please guys, don't start defending MD as the be-all-end-all like some of the pod people do on the iPod and Mac sites. It is scary there since they cannot see the limitations to their units. I hope we can see the limits to the MD and be honest about it. If Sony did decide to keep even one or two units around per year, I would LOVE for them to go back to the idea of the MD as a recorder/player. The PC connection stuff is nice, but it shouldn't be the main focus of the unit - that should be a bonus. Then again, what do I know, I am old.

I have to call foul on that one. Flash memory can usually be written to about 100,000 times. At 10 times a day (writing), your card will last about 27 years. So by the time the card loses its ability to save data, Iam sure the discussion will no longer be valid.

I would like to see a 3rg gen model that has: 1. Solide aluminum body (not magnesium) - I don't care if it is heavy. 2. Internal AA battery - I don't care if it is a bit bulky 3. Same support for languages as the Japanese models - no nerfed U.S. model 4. A color screen like the DH10P has - that should be standard across the line 5. True line out. 6. Univerals power supply 7. The same remote that the Japanese get - not the gimped U.S. models

The NHF800 is a rebaged NH700 with a radio remote, nothing more really. BUT both it and the NH700 do have that lovely AA battery!!! My first unit was a R70 and I loved the AA internal battery. My choice was the NH1 as well. I am a sucker for a solid, all-metal body. Been hooked on that since the R70. It just feels so much more solid versus a plastic or half plastic unit.