hobgoblin

hrmf, well it would be to good to expect sony to allow drag and drop playback of raw (unwrapped) mp3s... still, i wonder how long it will take for someone on this board to come up with a nice way to unwrap the mp3s stored on a hi-md when you have a copy of the pure data going in then you an figure out whats being doing with it when it comes out. just look for changes. hmm, i just ended up wondering about vbr support. yes its just a extention of the normal mp3 format but still? more and more mp3s i run into are vbr...

hmm, im guessing its a sound techie checking the quality of the output sound from the hardware rather then a programmer working on the atrac code. allso the equipment stack to the right of the person is the same as shown in the image under the SME heading, again pointing towards a sound techie (some SME most likely) doing quality testing of the output...

oggs most likely will not happen as its a mostly unknown format and its much heavyer on the floating point maths then mp3 is. funny thing is that media and similar mostly refer to any unit, that can play back music stored as files, as mp3 players... ie, mp3 have become a synonym for music files just as ipod have become a synonym for hardisk based music players...

edit: never mind this post, should have googled before i posted

or you could package the whole thing in lead. marketing only have to strech the definition of portable then hmm, given the power levels we are talking about, how much lead would one need to stop the laser?

write speed is a problem of mo media sadly. but they are still able to do better then the current himd units do. i think the agreed on reason for that is that the engine driveing the disk is underpowerd so to not kill the battery. it would have been interesting if they was able to make a setup with two engines. the second one would kick in if the himd was hooked to a usb port so that it could draw more power and therefor spin the disk faster.

unless they can move some amounts of atrac decoder chips the use of a dedicated chip is a waste of production costs. its allso becomeing more and more common with programable chips these days where the chip itself gets reconfigured by software but after that acts works as if the chip was made for the task. basicly your not running a software on top of a general cpu but rather rebuilds the chip useing software. atleast for tasks like music format decodeing a system like that would make sense. drmless drag and drop mp3 support will not happen, ever. for that sony have to much invested in their record label. still, whats stopping people from doubleing up the device? or makeing one himd with playback on and one with the mp3s stored as datafiles? when you get to the place your going to, change mds and copy the music over

1GB is very low for video if your aiming for dvd quality useing lossless compression. and now that sony have blueray and there is hd-dvd out there it shows even more. but for a divx/xvid compressed film (a format the big corps will never use as it have no drm at all) its nice, alltho i wonder what the usb1 data rate will have to say for playback...

while i dont have a player to test (holding back to see what happens to mp3 playback) i think dex is right, produceing diffrent hardware for diffrent areas are costly so most likely sony have gone for the cheap route and put in a software switch that should not normaly be available to the user. the fact that info is out here is cool 8) this is one of the first things im going to do when i finaly get a hi-md unit...

and this is why im getting damn mad at sony, here they have a format that can put perform cd-rw media in storage and flexibility, turn it into a drag&drop mp3 player and data unit and they would have outsold ipods. but no, they have to bow to the paranoia of their record label and add one of the most silly and failure sensitive drm system known. if only the upload and download bit was written after the file was verified safe on either end then i would have understood but they have to write it before they do the copying to make sure that noone intercepts the signal and therefor allow for unlimited uploads, dont worry at if a upload fails the bit isnt reset oh and may i ask what unit your talking about skradgee? and do you know if it available in europe?

or basicly, burn your mp3s to cd and buy a portable cd player that can allso play mp3s

drms make a mess of everything. one small error and one cant use any music, payed for or not. the companys may say though luck, i say lawsuit or avoidance... to bad realy as the minidisc is a excelent storage media...

hmm, it would be interesting if sony or sharps refurbished that idea now that we have 1GB minidiscs think about it, cheap storage, handy size (i like em better then the flash chips as they are so damn small you drop em they are gone).

remeber, sony is not only one of the biggest electronics corps, they allso own one of the biggest music portfolios on this planet. hell, the music department used the electronics department indirectly over equipment being used to pirate music (or some shit like that). basicly its a mess and the ceo had to step in and tell them to clean up and present a common front or else. sony have become to big for their own good, they risk stepping on their own fingers no matter what... as for dumping sonicstage and allowing for direct upload? fat chance. not only does it leave em open for pirateing abuse (selling a metallica mp3 collection on the street maybe?) but it allso makes them unable to create a rival to apples online music shop and itunes

hmm, this is interesting reading. a bit pissed that they will most likely not support drag and drop mp3 transfers but i guess one can live with a drm cage...

basicly when you upload a track, sonicstage alters some bits somewhere to mark the file as uploaded. sadly this seems to happen without verification that the track in fact got uploaded properly

hmm, as long as the bridge supports any device that acts as a sub storage device then i would belive so. didnt sony make a flash card reader that one can hook up to a hi-md for the transfer of images?

or learn to secure the hardware to your body properly...

sony can still save the himd format. but what they need to do is to relase a player with true native mp3 playback. preferably one that allows for drag and drop upload of mp3s without the need for sonicstage. this will make himd THE ipod killer (alltho i start to hate the use of that expression).

sounds like sony is going the way of burger king and macdonalds or something...

dont see why it should be. its the same magneto-optical tech, only with a new way to read it so that the pits can be smaller...

the problem i guess, comes from the fact that sony is so many things. and like all manyheaded things they cant fully make up their mind. allso, isnt the minidisk system under the part of sony that handles home entertainment in the form of music and video/dvd devices? i have a feel that if it was from the part that deals with computer parts it would not be a problem at all...

i have a feel that if hi-md got native mp3 playback (hopefully with non-SS upload) the number of units sold would skyrocket. the size of player and storage media can rival most other units outside of the ipod mini. and the fact that you have a virtual limitless storage capasity (as long as you have a handy supply of hi-md media) will make its very flexible. allso, rember that its companys like TDK that do bulk production of storage media. and have they started to produce hi-md media yet? we still have to see if hi-md is picked up by the likes of sharp or the other companys that make md players right now on licence to...

im with andy about what would make md great. i have portable cd player right now that can do just that (minus reading id3 info, no big loss) and its excelent for the job. useing cd-rw media makes it even better but haveing the fact that a hi-md unit acts as a usb storage device and that the media itself is fully rw it would rule my cd player. and the size would be nice to (i can barely fit 2-3 cds with cover in my pocket, with md's it would be near 10+). basicly md as a media format is pure genius (small, true RW), but sony is strangleing it with the use of SS and atrac only...

it seems right now that a lot of people are buying apple laptops. i guess half the reason is that with a quick crossover cable or a hub/switch and the use of samba and you can access any windows network out there. and a apple item allways is a fashion statement more then a utility, perfect for students.