bobdibest

We shall see, we shall see. for now ill stick with NetMD and an Ipod, when Sony get serious about HiMD ill consider it

Firstly id like to say the appearance of these forums is changing literally by the minute, one minute halloween then this, then standard! i cant cope anyway! lol your point, dex otaku, is a very interesting one! I didnt realise that was the difference between the technologies, so I have learnt something new, thank you however the age old saying where there's a will, there's a way stands here and if they wanted to they could, im sure of it, combine the two! stranger things have happened after all anyway, your right, UMD is aiming at the entertainment market whilst HiMD goes pro, but ill be interested to see where HiMD goes, what codec supports are added and what the next gen machines are capable of, as I have not had a new md walkman since buying the e10 and really want one now

Whilst i agree with you on the space required for movies, and the fact that an mpeg4 movie will display 'fine' on my 17" lcd the problem is: i originally wondered why sony didnt use himd at current or higher capacity for psp, the reason? because umd can be pressed like dvds and mass produced, himd discs need to be recorded and cannot be pressed in the same way! hence they are great for consumer recording but not for mass production so the umd was neccessary for the psp, plus its smaller! but if umd have films at 1.8gig resolution then they would, i imagine, display 'fine' on an lcd of tv size! (maybe not models larger than 28" however) anyway, a combined device is wishful thinking as nice as it would be

ok if we are gonna be picky: it depends on what way u look at it! if someone added dvd compatability to the discman would you begin calling it a dvd-man or a discman with dvd compatability? sony have released a dvd walkman before that read both dvds and cds (as well as dvd-a) so my point stands, if you make an md player umd compatable then would you call it a umd walkman that is backwards compatable and reads mds? or like ivebeen saying a himd/umd walkman? the terminology doesnt make a difference, its the fact that it can be done thats important. i think most people understand my point, if a dvd player reads cds, then a umd player with a slightly larger disc loading machanism could potentially read himds! therefore uniting the technology is whats needed! how can umd video ever succeed if the only device they work on is a psp? they wont and on another note sony need to drop royalties on mds and himds! sell some more units through other companies, make it popular! if sony have the likes of dell, compaq and hp in their blu-ray camp, why not shove a himd drive in every computer sold by these companies too! That way you would have the drag and drop floppy equivalent at a much higher capacity (himd) and the hi-capacity 50 gig bluray discs for movies, games etc etc. essentially replacing the two original drives a computer came with (floppy and cd) for a much higher capacity pair

But whether sony can produce walkmans of high quality that have low prices remains to be seen. The technology cannot be that expensive to manufacture anymore, and when the ipod is chromed up walkmans in the same price range are usually plastic! if sony could sell their 'top range' cd and md walkmans for the price of a 2 gig ipod nano (ie sub £130 as opposed to £260 in the case of the dh10p) then people may look. But will it happen, probably not ps I wasnt saying himd and umd WERE the same technology, I was suggesting that if a a dvd player plays dvds, cds, sacds, dualdiscs (all of different disc structure), essentially any cd sized disc thrown at it, then why cant an md player play umds? its only a matter of accomodating the different sized casings! the laser would manage to read both fine ho hum

i just dont understand, these units dont offer anything that appeals to what i belive the european and american consumer markets are demanding and getting (to an extent with apple) it would appear the psp has firmware v2.5 out which adds support for file protected videos, ie here comes tv and movie downloads from connect, so why not introduce himd walkmans with that support? once again the films will be a gig or more which is expensive in memory cards. If less than a gig films on himd discs are far more economical, given the size screen of the psp and nothing else that himd walkman would be a smaller, thinner, better battery (probably) and lighter non-gaming alternative, and that way sony open the market to another deivce that, given umd playback capabilities sells more of their new format and promotes Its popularity. They need it to stick in a mainstream consumer market for it to work. i personally would not buy a umd music album where my only listening ability is to trek round a heavy (compared to md walkmans) psp. if I could play it back on a 3rd gen himd player id consider it.

agreed no 3G just yet!

ok to be honest ive lost the 1st, 2nd, 3rd generation plot now! all i know is that new models are coming and models only ever released to the japanese dont count :-) so nerr to you all

hahaha now u mention it, it could have been a 'you loser' smile! but i dont think so basically ive never had himd so i asked if it copies like any other external storage ie drag and drop, and not like a cd with the laborious task of setting up copy lists etc. he said yes then i said ok well is there a 3rd gen on its way or should I forget md existed and buy hard drive, he said they were expecting 3rd gen but no other news, its all hear say! and no i would consider these 2.5 gen basically because they wont export outside of japan and they dont offer any advances on 2nd gen, infact they go backwards! hence the farse

What a farse (however that is spelt) They might aswell remove MD from the equation everywhere but Japan because noone anywhere else would buy one! I have the MZE10 and instead of upgrading to HiMD I bought an ipod. Why? A million reasons but this is a few: They are cheaper to buy with storage built in (infact the sony HD5 is only £170 on amazon.co.uk and thats 20gig with player, whilst the gimmicky DH10p is £250 with nothing at all). Sony has a perfectly good portable video market now, with a disc (UMD) that is an MD in a different plastic case (they removed the sliding metal disc protector is about it), so why have they not combined the two formats? two discs almost the same under one company, both competeing for customers, seems mad to me. If UMD is to work for video and music where MD albums failed sony need more non-psp devices to play back umd for non gamers. So a HiMD/UMD walkman for HiMD recording and UMD playback is a natural progression to be honest Also the new hard drive walkmans from sony support non-encrypted wma, so why dont the new himd devices? maybe the new european models due soon will, who knows! All I know is sony announced to have connect selling music, movies and music videos asap and its not here yet If connect sold music, music videos and movies sony would begin to gain an edge. All would be playbackable on a PSP and with last years HiMD players supporting JPEG playback adding MP4 support is kind of a natural progression(esp. as psp supports anyway). Sony keep introuducing new hard drive players with no colour screens when the whole market is saturated with colour screen models now. Frustration sums it up. All digital cameras shoot movies in mp4 mode or avi mode, so why not support these codecs on other devices capable of holding the data anyway, all hdd and himd players in other words! ahhhhhhhhh if sony brought out a new himd walkman which was the screen of the psp but thinner and with himd recording capabilities as well as umd playback and more codec supported id buy back into walkman, as it is ill play movies on the psp and music on the ipod!!!!! this is why sony fail because they cant recognize a consumer market and put out products for that market. ps when i spoke to sony centres uk they were expecting new models in before the end of 2005. I asked the man if the 2006 walkman range would see new HiMD devices and he said sony were releasing new himd devices by end-2005, which he said with a smile as if he knew something this is all speculation but hey bring on super himd, 5 gig! now that i would buy

well we dont know its getting canned. to be honest id be surprised if it went. time we tell

haha Yea im a major MD fan, and whilst I now use an ipod for my out and about listening I still record all my albums to an MD in SP because the quality is unrivelled by mp3 at such low bitrates. However Sony never managed to convert me to HiMD, why? Because year after year Sony release new products each with small baby steps towards what the customer wants, this year came direct mp3 and jpeg. If we see a third generation im sure we will see all the codecs supported by the PSP supported by MD, Id hope for mpeg support anyway. The new hard drive players they announced now support direct wma (unencrypted) another baby step! If sony were clever they would combine himd and umd to make a multimedia format, that plays high quality music and movies (umd) and allows you to mix and make your own (himd)! But alas, lo-fi is the future

This is a long forum and I cant possibly read it all so apologies if this question has been asked before but: If i download ss 3.2 is it the jap version that is all in japanese? and will it let me connect to sonys european connect because when i downloaded 3.0 from the us site it wudnt let me, i had to redownload 3.1 european version?? thanks

However I do have a european rh10, maybe the US models are different somehow! cant see how tho, no region coding etc to consider!? and now to update my psp......

RH10, no problems at all. i do keep my gadgets nice and safe tho, my mz-e10 still doesnt have a scratch on it and its travelled globally in the 3 years (almost) ive had it!