exvaxman

A while ago I saw an article that stated that the Hi-MD media had been accepted by the FCC (or Sony submitted enough data) that it could contain "secure" video data through use of the damned "broadcast flag". The article was non-technical, and was based on storage media for video. Anyway - a DiVX movie of decent quality for a portable device is easily under 1gig. Any rumors of a small video playback unit? Other than the non-compatible and low battery life PSP? I currently carry around a hard disk unit to catch up on TV in travels, but being able to have a media that is far more durable.... I have taken my kid's Gameboy advance with a video adapter (lik-sang) ontrips for movies.... but the CF cards are still a little more expensive then Hi-MDs.

I will be getting a unit just for the durability - in my travels I have seen a number of dropped ipods that no longer function. All I will say is that my 8 year old handles my equipment as well, and has never broken a minidisc yet. I am going to keep my 1st gen unit since it has replaceable batteries (ever get stuck in an airport and have all of the AC outlets taken?) as well as probably getting another (hopefully cheaper by then) 1st gen unit for my father since I send him quite a few disks every month of lectures and OTR.

Glad to hear that there is someone else who uses MD for OTR. Due to a medical condition since middle-school, I need to have noise in the bedroom to mask the noise in my ears to get me to sleep. Unfortunatly, I have been conditioned that if there is not a noise, I wake up. 48K is so bad that even bad OTR recordings sound worse. 64 is what I use. Great for the old shows. I agree on the fact that I have no problem transcoding from the usenet groups that I download from - what gets downloaded today gets listened to tomorrow. I have several MP3 players, but the battery life and capacity of the hi-md has been a lifesaver. Many times I have been stuck in a hotel room as part of the job where radio reception is bad - and I cannot sleep. But with the older MDLP (waking up once to swap disks) and the now Hi-MD at 64 for "better" quality - I actually get to sleep without interruption (with the exception of the family cat that often needs petting & comfort at 4:AM - not all that bad since I usually get up at 6). Of course, being stuck a few times in an airport and laughing at the IPOD users whose batteries have died (I do carry a couple of adapters that allow for sharing of headphones - have been used more than a few times by bored IPOD people). Only issue I have is with the crappy quality of the memorex disks. My father gave me a lifetime supply of the memorex disks (500+) i 80 minute format when his local "Best Lie" was closing them out. About 1/4 of them fail the Hi-MD formatting. "As for the 48kbps, what is it good for? I honestly have not tried it for music but I do ALOT of ilstening to audio books and OldTimeRadio. I used to use a small mp3 player for this but now I can load the whole CD of shows (about 45 hours/CD) practically onto 1 HiMD disk and enjoy."

bought one. feels cheap. i suspect that the silver will wear off soon. on the plus side - I like the volume control. I suspect taht I will do with this what i did with my Net-MD units. Use the cheap unit as something that is connected to the computer full time. and I will be purchasing a fancier unit later on for portability.

I was told that it is only stocked in the "larger" targets and they are severely limited. Picked up the only one in Germantown, WI. As opposed to the rest of the units there, only the Hi-MD unit did not have a picture description. I did geta kick out of the fact that the minidisc blanks there from Sony had a sticker on them saying "Hi-MD compatible". Now to start converting my OTR shows for the rest of the week

I am looking for a waterproof case - I have several from aquapac (www.aquapak.com I think) that I use for a lot of things (ebooks, PDAs, GPS, ETC), but I am looking for a waterproof small case for the MD that will allow for a headphone connection. Any help appreciated.....