Rumz

Agreed. I have a fever, and the only perscription is more cowbell! On a more serious note, maybe it's just me but I'm partial to having the navigation / links that you've got on the left side on the right side, or possibly even have a 3 column layout to help further chunk the data into different categories. The way you've got it right now it somewhat resembles a blog. White space, need some white space-- it does feel like all of the elements on the page are really crowded together. Chris how much does the software you're wanting to use (the same software the forum uses, I take it) allow you to manipulate the objects on your page? I'm assuming it uses cascading style sheets to oraginze data, and if so you should be able to do really anything in the world you want with the layout. You probably weren't planning to have avatars, but yeah they clutter the news space. I'd love to see MD.org's design updated. What I'm still trying to figure out (and maybe you and the webmaster are still hammering this out) is how much emphasis you want placed on different items (news, etc.... it sounds like you don't want the news to be the primary focus as much as just one of the main features among others-- am I off base?) I'm really interested in this from a design standpoint. We'll be in touch Chris, I'm sure

Kung Fu Hustle. HILARIOUS, I will be watching this one again. Love the parodies on other action flicks like Matrix and Spiderman, but the movie itself was just a blast.

My yellow lab Indy, sleeping with his head hanging off the couch

I'm gonna go with money just because that at least gives you some time if you don't make up your mind on either of the 2 soon enough. Or is something else comes up you want After seeing the 30" apple cinema display, my 20" cinema display @ work seems so trivial in comparison... but i have to admit I secretly hope my 19" CRT dies so I can get an LCD. And no I haven't gone to look at the PSP yet

Copeland - Beneath Medicine Tree Copeland - In Motion Magnetic Fields - The Wayward Bus / Distant Plastic Trees

Just dabbling with FLAC for the first time-- any quick recommendations software-wise for converting FLAC to wav? What about DVD-audio ripping? I'm not talking about DVD-Audio discs, but just audio from standard DVDs. Any utilities there that anyone uses, or should I just hook up the old Hi-MD and do it old school?

Very nice pics... the red and blue E400 series is calling out to me more now

Without actually doing a top 10 list, here are some of the major things I like about MD, in no particular order: 1) One format, different manufacturers (Panasonic, Sony, Sharp, etc. I know so far only Sony has made Hi-MD... I'm waiting for Sharp, hehe. 2) Removable media 3) going along with #2, the prospect of having a deck, minisystem and/ or car deck to play discs back. Rather than having a portable HDD unit and having to have special interfaces made for it to be operated by car or home stereo, I like the idea of taking discs and just playing them back, not needing to hook the portable up to another system. I love having a full sized deck as well as a mini system for regular MD, though I never did get a car deck. It's kinda like mp3 cd players only much smaller form facter-- more portable than regular CDs, plus the discs are durable. I toss my discs all over and I've never had a problem with them. Can't say the same for CDs. 4) going along with #1, you'll see a variety of features and designs for one format. There are some HOT md units out there. Because it uses removable media you're not stuck with one manufacturer's designs. 5) portable recording. It's just so smooth using removable media record on MD and Hi-MD. Add Hi-MD's upload capability and it's even better. Those are just some of the main reasons why I continue to be addicted to MD even though I use HDD and other formats. The cool factor remains while I grow tired of iPods, etc Maybe it's just the old-school mix-taper in me...

Definitely drooling in anticipation of April over here. So glad I never caved and bought a shuffle

I'm interested in said improvements in encoding quality. How significant would you say they are for Hi-SP? I may have to give LP2 @ 132k another listen too... I've yet to download SS 3.0 English, I'm afraid of what it'll do to my library

Many people rip entire CD collections to mp3 and carry them around. And to be honest, a 20gig iPod is really not big at all if you've ever held one in your hand. The 40gig one is a bit thicker, maybe not quite as pocketable but certainly not huge. I can see the draw of not carrying around a ton of discs, but on the other hand, you're right-- I really don't need much more than a few 1GB discs for any trip. The HDD music juke box (iPod or otherwise) is just the lazy man's convenience-- they dont have to really guess at what they'll want to listen to, they can bring so much in such a small space. There are definitely arguments for and against using 1GB removable discs-- in the end it's up to the user to decide what fits them best

Well as MD is a recording medium and somewhat of a niche market in and of itself, it would make sense to get it to work on Apple-- lots of people that use Mac for multimedia authoring that could benefit from some digital uploading of recorded material. Maybe not as many as they can sell it to just as a music player on the PC side of things though, right? You are right though about PC's being necessary for iPod's success.

Still-- it's nice to hear a review on a (Hi)MD unit that's more positive than negative for once. More support for the format is a good thing IMO-- I want me a legit deck and a car head unit

Ok Chris cleared this up for me. What seems to be gone is NetMD mode for making discs that can be played back in old units. I was only taking thought for playback on current units, silly me

I've yet to have a problem with any of my self-encoded VBR mp3s in Sonic Stage / on the Vaio Pocket. Hopefully MD won't have a problem with them. With regards to recording, here's my 2 cents. Can the 1st gen Hi-MD units record in old Type R SP? I thought they couldn't. lp2? Well they've thrown on mp3 @ 128kbps, so having lp2 would be a little redundant. Lp4? Sounds like crap compared to the Hi-LP modes IMO, so really I could do without that. I'll be interested to see how mp3 recording works, though I'm no more likely to use it than other Atrac methods. So I guess the main drawback is that you can't record, in realtime, lp discs compatible with older non Hi-MD units, right? This really is of little consequence to me, especially since we can still get those tracks in lp2 via Sonic Stage. Again, correct me if I've got it wrong or I'm missing something.

That's what I thought, and I could care less-- I will probably only record in PCM in real time. But is this limited to realtime recording or is it saying that you'll no longer be able to transfer 132kbps atrac3 tracks via SonicStage? Now that would be stupid considering Sony's connect service

Hmm... I haven't heard Sony's regular digital amp. Whatever is in it is probably what the D-NE20 is using, I'd bet... I guess we'll see how it sounds. I'm not really in love with Sony's HD amp-- it's really good but unless their regular digital amp really stinks then I'm sure it won't make too big of difference to me.

What do you mean? Recording in Lp2/lp4 or is this generation of Hi-MD no longer compatible with 74/80 min blanks? Did I miss something?

Wow... ok the RH10 is hot. I don't mind that it's taller, thickness is what I'm more concerned about. Remember this is still a recorder, and hey-- for that hot OLED I'm pretty happy

Sadly I think a lot of my purchases could be considered "impulse" buys, Back in 2002 I went in search of my first player-only unit, and ended up with the Sharp DS8. It was maybe only a week or 2 after that all the hype had me buying a pair of D66 eggos... fairly impulsive buy but I still love these phones. Didn't get a screaming deal on them or anything... but they're worth every penny to me.

I have no major qualms with Sonic Stage. Ultimately I like it better than iTunes for the way in which it allows me to control what's on my hdd player. However it does need some work like playlist support (and I'd like the tracks on the player to mirror any changes made to tracks in Sonic Stage's library).

My guess is that the units will be bundled with Ss 3.0 as this flash player will be. I don't recall how long it took before 2.0 was available for download after it became available with Hi-MD, though.

Ooh I'm seeing also an E503 and E507 listed... perhaps a 1GB version of the same unit? NICE Sorry I'm more excited about this flash player than Sonic Stage 3, heh. But it makes sense that the new Hi-MD units will ship with 3.0 as I'm seeing April as the release date for this flash player as well...

Maybe this is simple, but I'd like to see a) playlist support b)better syncing-- for example, if I update a track with album art in sonic stage, the next time I connect my player I'd like it to update the file on my player accordingly. Hmmm can't really think of much else I'd want at the moment.

Yeah I think MD is still kind of a niche format, but definitely usable as a DAP, esp. with 1GB discs. Maybe some people don't mind rigging their iPod up to their car or their home stereo, but I still like having removable media to play in the car or on a mini system without having to worry about carrying the actual player with me everywhere. I'd love to see a Hi-MD car deck