clonmult

MD is a fantastic medium - sony should get their collective back sides into gear and start promoting it as an all round storage medium. Sony do the Mavica CD cameras - they take the 3"/8cm recordable CDs, about 180 meg a piece. Why haven't they decided on their own, in house, MD format? Its absolutely perfect for the job. Smaller than the CD, considerably more robust, media cost is generally lower (and better availaility - have you see the price of re-writeable 3" CDs???), and power consumption is generally better. Sony have some great products, and some potentially great products that have completely missed the boat.

I'd figure that the problem with the old Walkman could be fixed with a little soldering - I know that my old unit was easy enough to open and work on (as is the pro-walkman). Possibly pick up a new socket for hardly anything, swap it over, or take out the old socket, fix it off the PCB, put it back in - the reason why its not staying in is (probably) caused by the lips/whatever that hold the stereo jack in have been abused too much, and have been forced in. Having said that, all the soldering and electrical hacking I did was in my school/college/university days, which are well behind me now. I got the old Pro Walkman out of the loft a few days back, time to get it back into use ... I've still got a few of the old tapes I put together on the (stupidly) expensive metal (Sony and Maxell) tapes that I loved when I was young.

What does the 510 hack give you on the menus?

I've tended to be pro-Sony for quite a while - got my first personal stereo in about '85 (which did have fairly decent sound). Then picked up a Pro Walkman (WM-D6C) for University use (still one of the best sounding tapedecks around), and NetMD is fantastic. Won't ever use a VAIO though, can't stand the stuff. Prefer my (archaic) Compaq Armada M300 laptop. What flaws does the PS2 have? Apart from the lousy DVD support (it screws up the aspect ratio on our kids PS2 - Star Wars Ep 1 shows as full screen, but its a wide-screen release). Its more expensive that the competition, who don't really have anything over it, specs, looks, however you look at it. Games are THE most important thing on a console, and the range of games (for me, and our kids at least) is pretty strong on the PS2. Sony won't drop the PS2 price for quite a while - sales are still strong, well ahead of the competition, why bother cutting the price?

I'd figure with its various DSPs and processors, that the PS2 would be quite good/quick at doing CDA to Atrac3 codec conversion, so it does (to a point) make sense for some sort of PS2 interface to MD (why not via USB/Firewire)? And how can you substantiate the statement that the "PS2 is crap"? Its by far away the best selling console, has a decent selection of games. So, the X-Box has a hard drive? The Nintendo Gamecube uses smaller DVD discs (which was a real major marketing mistake). Please, don't start casting such phrases without any sort of backing.

Thats cool, I just thought that it used the web-based side for DRM type purposes.

I'm (hopefully) going to be buying a NetMD deck soon, just got one niggling question. My only net access is via work, and due to the firewalls in place, not much can "get out" to the net. Does the OpenMG/SonicStage actually NEED to connect to CDDB/other net services?

You can download the manual from the website : http://80.88.32.101/aiwa/uk/amnx9.asp

I've got a relatively limited budget, so far I've narrowed down my options to these : Sony MZ-N510 Sony MZ-N710 Aiwa AMX9L or a Nokia HDR-1 MP3 player. I can get the Nokia for next to nothing, it weighs hardly anything, has a radio. The Aiwa can only record via the PC. No mention anywhere of it having any sort of remote either. No mentions of battery life on the aiwa website. And the decision on the Sonys ultimately depends on a buddy who does Hi-Fi Reviews, and his contacts at Sony. Which would you go for?