Fray Adjacent

Green, I hear ya, most people (sheeple) will go for whatever is trendy, and don't want to mess with anything more complicated. So MOST people will go with Ipods and clones. I find the drawbacks being that if the drive in that device fails, all of your stuff is gone. With MD, if your device fails, you have not lost your music. Anyway, if Sony marketed this like they SHOULD, we'd have unrestricted copying/playback of commonly used audio files. We'd have home stereo decks and car head units. The ease of portability of music on SUPERIOR removeable media between multiple playback device formats (home, portable, PC, car...) would appeal to many people. Ideally, I'd have a portable player/recorder, a data/recording drive for my PC, a home stereo component unit, and a car head unit. Buy me a dozen or so discs, and I'm set. With the Ipod and like, sure, you only have one device, which may end up being less expensive, but then you need cables and adapters and you need to have a stereo or car deck that can interface with it, and have to have the cables and adapters for those. I'd rather just take my disc out, and put it in another device. BAM. Sony is going to screw the pooch on this... again... I fear

Yep... this seems to go back to how Sony crippled MD in the first place. They ONLY wanted it to be a recording medium to replace cassettes, when it could have been SO MUCH MORE! It could have been as versatile as CDs, but NO. Sony had to cripple it. HiMD has potential to compete with the likes of Ipod and it's clones, but NO, it's got to be crippled. Wake the **** up Sony!

I've only seen a few NetMD players at the Fry's here. No blanks now either. I checked at a Target in Houston, and only found one NetMD player and no blanks either. Walmarts around here in Austin carry some blank MDs, but only standard MDs. I haven't really checked any Radio Shacks, but one I was in a few months ago didn't have squat. I am really afraid Sony screwed the pooch on this one. What could be a GREAT portable player solution will be relegated to a niche market of enthusiasts like us. Damnit Sony! Pull your head out your a$$!!

I think your experience is the exception rather than the rule. That is to say, you got a defective unit, and not all of them will behave the way yours did. If you were still in the US, I would be calling the exact store you purchased the unit from, and see if they could exchange it. I have my RH910 right here on my desk. Had it about a week, and it works great. No problems or complaints.

LOL about the head unit. It wouldn't surprise me if Sony did do something like that! I'd still love to have a car HiMD deck. As far as the MP3s go, if you have the original CDs, and don't tend to change around what's on your discs frequently, I'd just use Simple Burner to rip straight to disc in ATRAC. Then you won't suffer any loss through transcoding.

I had figured the NiMH would have some small amount of memory. It would be nice if the units could do a 'recondition' cycle. I guess it should be done manually. (like, put in an MD on Shuffle, with Repeat on, throw some unpowered speakers on it at moderate volume, and let it play at home while you go out and run errands) I have been charging mine through USB since I connect it to my laptop every night anyway. I think I'll try my 'recondition' procedure and use the AC adapter to charge it up. I also have a couple more batteries on the way. I'll charge them up via AC charger for the first couple times.

Having my RH910 and using the way I use it, I don't think I'll ever notice a difference between ATRAC and MP3. Maybe if Sony ends up putting out a car deck, where I can listen to things AT VOLUME, I would be able to tell. Since I just plug my 910 into my computer at work and listen to it through the PC speakers, and I have to keep the volume down, I won't be able to tell a difference. (and they are decent speakers) I'm just glad the MP3 playback functionality was added. Now for Sony to get the rest of it right!

I have a 910, which is practically the same unit. If you're charging it up for the first time, you should connect the AC power charger to the unit, the press the stop (cancel/chg) button, and the battery indicator will blink and 'fill' up. Or you can just plug it into a USB port on your computer with the USB cable. It should automatically start charging, again with the battery indicator filling. The battery that came with the unit shouldn't take too long to charge... it doesn't appear to have a great capacity.

http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prod...aitem=4&mitem=6 The price of $2.99 is still valid... I just ordered 2 of them... we'll see how long it takes to get here.

I got my 910 yesterday, and I'm loving it. Compared to my 600D, it's great! I like that it charges via USB, I like that I can transfer MP3s to it (keeps my database of MP3s from becoming redundant with transcoded copies), I like that I can have shuffle mode on, got to a specific song, and shuffle mode stays on. I think it sounds a bit better, too, but it's hard to tell because I plug it into one of my computers at work and play it through the PC speakers. (they are decent speakers, tho) A charging/USB cradle would be nice, but I can live without. Now Sony just needs to nix the DRM/SonicStage requirement for copying MP3s to disc, come out with a deck and a car head unit, and I'll be happy!

No. MP3 files copied to HiMD via Explorer will NOT be playable on a HiMD unit. They need to be transferred via SonicStage in order to be playable by the HiMD unit.

Well, I have my other solution! I got my RH910, and installed the version of SS that came with it (3.0), and it is working fine connected to my laptop. I'm transferring some MP3s as a test right now. So far I really like the RH910.. it's way better than the 600D. As an aside, since I use my player for data (I download TV shows, and put them on MD, connect the player to my laptop, and play them directly from MD.) I figured out a little trick... Since I have two HiMD players, and two cables... just plug BOTH into my computer at home and transfer files. Voila! Double the transfer rate!

That may be it... I could install it when I get home, but then I'd just install it on my desktop. I was just hoping to get it working while I was here at work. I may try installing the version that will be with my RH910. We'll see if that sees my 600d. (the plan is to use the 600d at home as a data drive, and bring the RH910 with me to work to use for music and video files when connected to my laptop)

I may end up doing that. I'll have to find a full version to download, and put it on a USB memory stick then take it to my laptop. I may just give up for tonight...

Sebastian, I'm still messing with it, going on three hours... I've tried un/reinstalling it... both with the 600d connected and without... I've uninstalled it from Windows, and let it redetect... My reason for metioning the error that came up was that the program is reacting to the 600D being there, it's just not acknowledging it. Simple Burner knows something is there, but fails to display the device/disc. SS complains if I press the Download button on the device... but won't show the device under the Transfer menu... Ugh.. I'm just messing around with this because I bought a few CDs on the way in to work today, and thought it would be nice to listen to them via my MD player, since I already have some music recorded to MD. My RH910 should be in tomorrow or Tuesday. Maybe SS3.1 will like that unit better?

Ok, I was able to download the full installer version of SS3.1. The install went through normally. I selected everything but the optional Misc stuff. After restarting, both Simple Burner and SonicStage open, but they do not see my NH600D connected via my USB port. This is installed on my laptop, and I am at work right now, so I do not have an internet connection on the laptop. The OS sees the device and will read discs normally. Funny things are... The icon for the Simple Burner shows grey, but when I plug in my 600D, it goes Red. It gives me a popup saying that an unknown CD is in the drive, and it can't get to the CDDB (again, no internet connection). If I open Simple Burner and go to the full view, it does not acknowledge that my MD player is connected. When I go to SonicStage, it does not acknowledge that the device is connected. However, when I hit the Download button on the device, SonicStage pops up a warning basically saying that downloading won't work with SonicStage open. Got any ideas??

I'd definitely think that is a problem. The unit should definitely NOT give you ANY sort of shock or buzz, no matter how minor. I'd suspect you're right, something internally in the unit is not grounding. I think if this were a design flaw, more people would have noticed it already, so I suspect yours is just a defective unit. (I don't have one, but I have a 910 on the way... I'll check it out when I get it to make sure it is not exhibiting similar behavior)

I voted that I am not getting errors, but I must also account for the fact that I do not record audio, and have only used a few discs for transferring audio to. I have actually used HiMD discs for data more than music. Occasionally when I plug my unit into the PC, and insert a disc, the player displays some format error, then it goes away, and the PC accesses the disc normally.

Not sure about that problem, but someone mentioned they changed it so that if you manually seek to a track, it does not turn off shuffle.

This is all the same song and dance we keep doing, and Sony doesn't respond. It's really rather frustrating to see such a great company keep fumbling around with what could be a great product. QUIT GIVING US CRIPPLEWARE, SONY!!!

What amount of storage would we be seeing with a MD sized disc using HD-DVD or BlueRay? Wasn't it somewhere around 4-5GB? I think the MD media format with a DVD type disc would be great. Use existing technology to support a superior media format.

And Sony is known to do things that make sense since when??

I figured it probably would do that. It would detect the 600D and since it can't play MP3 back, it wouldn't record to it. I wonder if the data drives will be able to.

I'd like one of the data drives to keep at home, and one of the gen 2 units to take to work... I do have an NH600D right now, but I wonder if Sonic Stage will write MP3s to it for playback in a newer unit? Hmm... if that does work, then my NH600D can be my 'data' drive at home.

That's a good question. I'm sure with internal drives, and power consumption not really being an issue, write and seek times could be reduced. I'd LOVE an internal HiMD drive that performed better than a portable running on a USB port.