plainsman

well, i guess it is what it is. maybe sony psp's umd movie portion failing is just part of the cycle of things... if psp's gaming & wireless internet features takes a respectable ( and profitable) share of the portable handheld market, i guess it will still offset the former's failure to gain a foothold on the market. since this probably will not kill sony, i hope they think very carefully about introducing any new proprietary media formats in future.

i don't know if this question sounds a little silly... i've been using the copy of openmg jukebox that came with my N1 .. will openmg 4.2 and sonic stage 3.2 work on my netmd? warm regards

ditto here. i bought an ipod photo 60GB 2 months ago and i've filled it with 3000 songs so far. it still has space for another 9000 more. going by my regular usage patterns: battery life heavy usage (on and off all day long) i charge once in 2 days. moderately heavy usage (approx 4 hrs a day) i charge every 4 days. moderate usage (approx 2 hrs a day - commuting listening) i charge once a week. the battery life (12-15 hrs depending on backlight frequency) has reached a point where its satisfactory for me (not terrific so they have room for improvement) sound quality sound quality wise, nothing to shout about. you can't compare the ipod sound quality to say, a 1-bit auvi sharp. from personal listening experience, a 112kb lp2 on the sharp MD sounds way better than 192kb mp3 on the ipod, especially piano numbers (there's some mysterious ambient ringing which is independent of whichever earphones i use) but, bottom line, for a full range of music genres the ipod will sound fine. now imagine if sharp comes out with a 1-bit auvi hard disk based player?

First of all, hello everyone =) I am from the island of Singapore, a small city state just south of Peninsula Malaysia in Southeast Asia. I have been a big fan of MiniDisc since I was given a Sharp MD-MS702 back in the summer of '97, i have loved MD over the years, started a fan site in 1998 (which died sometime in 2000) Personally, I've always felt like MD never really took off commercially except in Hong Kong and Japan. Still it has never diminished my passion for it, as a musician I love the recording feature, and so much more I am sure all of you fans know in big and small ways. With regards to Sony's recent moves, I think what a company CEO would do is, speak about the biggest issues facing his company such as the playstation, HD TV and so on. I don't really feel hurt that Sir Howard did not mention about the minidisc, except mention the Network Walkman, which I believe is being position as the centrestone of the fight against Apple for the MP3 player marketplace. I think if Sony loses the MP3 player fight, the console fight and the electronics fight, it will probably be reduced to a much smaller company than it is now. I think it is trying now, to be more focused than ever. Sure, some of their moves have been really crap. They had such a good advantage with MD for the longest time, if only they had enabled drap n drop MP3 together with ATRAC support from the start and placed the 'choice' in the hands of the consumer things would have been so different for them now. In fact, they had so many chances, but it seemed like they blew it all till now all thats left to do is to simply duplicate Apple's efforts and try to beat them (i observed the similarity of the new software interface, emphasis on hard disk, flash memory-based player, and Sony Walkman vs. Apple iPod concept) As for Hi-MD, my guess is that they will marginalise but keep it alive for a long while more. Going by the history that some of you have said, that Sony continues to sell cassette tapes even though hardly anybody uses a cassette player/recorder (or has one) I think Hi-MD blanks and accessories will be sold for a long while yet (short of a decade maybe?) Thing is, technology does get dated some day. MD has been around for a long time, and if flash-memory recorders (as well as media prices) keep falling like they do now, Hard disk players keep getting better battery life and higher capacities, it appears that finally it will be squeezed out. I am sad, and I will always support MD, but I think the time has come for it to be retired to the illustrious hall of wonderful geek treasures that could have seen a longer, more dominant reign. warm regards