pata2001

You can get a blu-ray player under $200 now, and many blu-ray movies are priced at $20, only a few dollars more than the DVD version. I do agree that it's not selling as well as it could, simply because there isn't much push for it to be a medium for data on PCs, unlike DVD. In Japan you can buy blu-ray camcorders and blu-ray DVRs. MD, both the hardware and media, on the other hand remain expensive, even till today.

Even funnier, people that keep giving Sony money even though they know Sony won't care supporting the products outside Japan... Go figure.

Transcoding reduces quality, DRM or not. You're transcoding MP3 to Atrac, that process is the one that reduces quality. Most methods of removing DRM involves transcoding, thus reducing quality.

Yes. Just make sure that you use old MD blanks (not HiMD blanks), and format them as NetMD (not HiMD). I don't use Sonicstage anymore so I cannot give you the details, but the option is there. I believe there is a drop down box on the transfer screen where you can select the disc mode, HiMD or NetMD.

The RH1 body won't scratch, but dents are possible. The OLED screen is prone to scratch though.

If you think the speed transfer of a USB 1.1 thumbdrive is murder, then the transfer speed of HiMD would be a massacre. HiMD transfer speed is not even at full USB1.1 speed. Although the RH1 seems to have faster transfer speed than older HiMD units, it is still slower than USB1.1. Good luck spending your time waiting for those big WAV files to be transferred. I'd rather spend my time to actually listen to my music, not waiting for them to be transferred. Using uncompressed PCM is a waste of space, time, and battery life for little benefit of sound quality. Using HiSP would give you smaller file size and better battery life with good sound quality. The remaining need of clarification is whether HiMD units can play PCM/WAV gaplessly. Funny how people are still trying to figure out gapless playback, while there are obvious alternatives that can do gapless playback perfectly fine. Sony NWZ-A/S series can play WAV files gaplessly, and they are smaller, less expensive, drag-n-drop, no Sonicstage, and have better battery life than the RH1. It IS that slow, not even the max speed of USB1.1.

Well, that's your fault for getting the "I-Pod." My iPod 5G, nano 2G-4G, and Touch can all play gapless MP3 and AAC perfecly fine. The new Sony NWZ DAPs can play WAV gaplessly. The surest way to achieve gapless on HiMD are to use Atrac, avoid any kind of transcoding, avoid different Atrac bitrates between tracks, and rip straight from the CD at 1 go. Any kind of deviation from those can result in gaps.

Sony no longer support Sonicstage outside Japan. The short answer for you is to re-rip your music. There is no way to recover those protected tracks. Lesson learned, I hope.

What's great about the kindle? Here's one: You can subscribe to newspaper, and they are downloaded wirelessly every morning to your kindle. This means instant new newspaper every morning. It even beats regular newspaper delivery (great for international newspaper). This is 1 thing that nobody seems to have done before, aside from its built-in EVDO. The only issue is the price upfront, which turns off a lot of people. On the other hand, maybe this is just a ploy to clear out 1st gen kindles as the 2nd gen one is coming.

I don't (never claim I did), and neither do 99.9% of the consumers, which are the target of these products. All I see is I can play music on the device for x hours vs y hours. I don't care how the manufacture achieve that, and neither does everybody else. All I want is long battery life, and to me 36 hours is longer than 12 hours, simple. To me, a device with high-res color screen, higher output, a hard-drive, proper music playback, and video playback capability, yet can still achieve that sort of battery life is still a marvel. The original question is about headphone output. Having something that can drive more headphones and still have a good battery life is a plus for many.

What battery life? The iPod classic is rated for 36hours of audio. I don't see that as "struggling." Higher output means iPods can drive higher impedance headphones. Other players have around the same output too. Cowon products like the D2 even has 37mW output.

5mW. It's in the manual.

Dunno about the Touch, but the I think the regular iPods deliver 30mW on the headphone out.

Gapless CD to gapless MD (Atrac) is only achievable via: 1. Direct realtime recording. 2. Ripping all the tracks at once via Simpleburner/Sonicstage Ripping the tracks individually (not at the same time) from the CD will introduce gaps. Ripping the tracks from CD into different bitrates will introduce gaps. Encoding/transcoding tracks from a file may introduce gaps. Since you mentioned iPod, iPods (5G and later, nano 2G and later, Touch, iPhone) are perfectly gapless with MP3 (encoded via Lame/iTunes) and AAC (encoded via iTunes). There is no problems in ripping the tracks individually or using different/VBR bitrates, gapless playback is retained.

Everybody moved to Sony Insider.

FLAC is lossless. Atrac is lossy (MD/HiMD don't support Atrac lossless). If somebody thinks that lossy is better than lossless, than it's a hardware issue, not the codec. That's like saying Atrac being better than the original CD itself.

Whooosh, Yeah, I didn't know why I used "Airport security" as an example. What I meant was "border security." I have traveled to most SE Asia countries, and Australia. Pardon my misuse of words. In the end, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Copyright laws are only going to get worse because people are taking things lightly every time (as shown in this thread) by assuming that the law is unenforceable, or that they won't be caught/affected/can get around it. iPod or not iPod doesn't matter.

1. install EAC: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ 2. Rip the CD with EAC to WAV. This will ensure you get a more secure and accurate rip vs simpleburner/sonicstage. 3. Transfer the WAV to the RH1 using Sonicstage. There is no advantage doing realtime recording in your scenario other than you can listen to the music at the same time.

Huh? If that is not what we're discussing, then where the "iPod Police" comes from? You're talking on how "easy" to get by the proposed trade agreement if you have MD. I merely stated that it's not that simple, and don't take it lightly just because you feel proud that you can fool airport security with your MD. Don't assume that it is only for iPods.

So, from MD vs hard-drive, now it's iPod. What are we discussing again? And then there's memory stick? Spinrite works with hard-drives. There are testimonials on people using it to fix iPods. I don't see a similar program for MD.

I completely understand what you said, and my questions still stand. Let's say you're on the go, doing live recording, you're down to your last disc. You cannot just walk into a Target store and buy a blank, can you. It's more likely that they will sell CF/MS/xD/SD cards than MD. And let's say 5 years from now, your RH1 broke, and you still have some recordings that you have not uploaded yet. Seeing that even Compact Flash is still widely supported today, I don't see media like SD card will suddenly be not supported in 5 years. In 5 years, I can still probably buy a cheap card reader. Couldn't say the same thing for MD. Of course, if you only plan to use MD for short term, and move to another media soon, I don't see a problem. I don't know why you are comparing MD with hard-drive, but okay. Backup is always important, so not backing up your hard-drive is not wise anyway. Even if I have a corrupt hard-drive, I can use Spinrite to attempt data recovery. What can you do if you have an MD disc that is not readable? As shown in this forum and others, MD is not 100% error proof. In 5 years, do you think you can still buy a device to read your MD?

Let's back up. How do you know that .oma can contain MP3 or WMA? That could just be an Atrac file transcoded from MP3/WMA.

To me, it seems you just don't understand the frightening issue of the proposed legislation, from the way you're taking it lightly like that. Well, with that kind of attitude, more and more draconian laws and trade agreements will pass.

Think about it. In the next couple of years, would you still be able to buy the media if you want to? And what would happen if your RH1 broke, would you be able to get it repaired or replaced? Once you have answers to those, then you can decide.

Err, how hard is it to encode those yourself?