AgMattRed

So in other words you're going to have to buy a new player but it can use your old discs.

You should be happy about this safeguard being there. It is only a minor inconvience for the legal defense it gives us. What do you think is going to happen in about 5 years with how the RIAA is going. Think all these other players other than the IPOD are not going to become blacklisted. Its easy to get around if you can create virtual drives on your computer which is simple software to obtain yet you have a music player that has a large record labels approval (Sony duh). Plus who knows, maybe this is all just a bunch of bull and the RIAA will get what it deserves in the near future and future MD players won't have the check-in/check-out problem.

Just do what I did. Spend some time looking at this forum and the T-station forum for about a month. Really with any of the new players, Sony, Sharp, or the many other fine Japanese companies, you will have people with complaints, especially with the newer NetMD enabled recorders, but don't let that get to you. Figure out why exactly you want to go with MD and what you are going to use it for. With Live recording I see many people lean more toward the Sharp players, but I have been having no trouble and getting great quality live recordings with my Mz-N 707 and a simple lavier microphone. While people won't say its a new technology since it has a decade under its belt, its still one that is very much developing, and should in the near future once more of the digital rights controversy gets worked out have a larger portable audio niche.

I actually had a problem like this the first time I used Simple Burner. At about 9% the thing clunked out and the MD player said that is Failed Format. I had the MD player at the time plugged into a USB Hub that was a part of my sound card, so I moved it to one of my mobo's straight USB connections. I also went to Sony's site and downloaded the newest Simple Burner update. I haven't had any trouble after this with Simple Burner and never with Real Player. Hope this at least a little help.

Howdy, I would actually like to thank everyone who posts regularly on this forum for helping me along with my decision in choosing a personal audio player. Minidisc has always interested me because of its ultra portability and live recordability. It definately beat out the MP3 Harddrive and CD Players in the end (and has started changing my opinions about online music). For my purposes I ended up going with the MZ-N707 over the other Sony and the Sharp models availible in the US (since I did not wish to import from Japan). Haven't had any problems so far except I haven't been able to get the virtual cd drive/ simple burner trick to work yet, but using Real One for the few MP3's I have does the trick for me. Anyway thanks and hopefully once I start experiencing more of this technology I can contribute to the discussion scene.