Harper

I Still prefer Ni-MH AAs to any Nicad, Gumstick or not. Ni-MH are alot better than Nicads and I just wish sony would either go to Li-Ion or go back to AA formfactor so we can use NiMh AAs. I dont like being without power and waiting for hours for a built in battery to charge. I can leave a NiMh trickle charing and have a battery ready any time and even almost anywhere! Cant do that with Gumsticks. I will not buy a 2nd Gen unless they make a version that uses AAs AND has recording capabilities! Ill go bnack to my 707 and NetMD before I by a gumstick version. Sorry folks, just my opinion! >> 2nd gen Hi-MDs are already too big. I dont agree. Besides. AA formfactor builtin, instead of the gumstick only adds about 1/4 to 1/3 inch bump in the back. NOT A BIG DEAL, IMHO!

What is Sony's deal against convenience. FIRST we have the MP3 problem.And even now they refuse to allow simple Drag/Drop MP3 support. You still need to use their program like Sonicstage to import the files. My second complaint is the battery issue. Ni-MH are almost up to standard Alkaline capacity and you can now buy chargers which will charge almost any standard Ni-MH standard in 30 minutes or an hour. And special batteries in as little as 15minutes. Then get 20-30 hours out of them!!! That is why I stick with my 800! Ill take the convenience or rechargeable NiMH and have the comfort of knowing Energizers are everywhere in an emergency. I ended up getting a second mp3 player just because sometimes I dont want to wait to listen to an mp3 lecture to take an hour to be converted before I can listen to it. And I only recently switched to a GameboySP with its lithium battery because I needed one with a backlight bad enough. I REALLY hope that there is a 2nd gen recorder which uses AA internal coming. I wont deal with a AA battery external pack. It sort of defeats the great compact size! My 800 gains only about 1/4 inch because of an internal AA and is inherently more sturdy than having an external compartment which also is a bit bigger. Phillip

I installed SS2.3 Friday. I live in the US and wondered if there woulf be a problem loading this version from Sony's Connect-Europe. The US Sony Connect is still at 2.2. All this talk about speed improvement made it work while. I installed it and right away notice the speed improvement. I then connected to the myusic store, bought an album and everything went well until today. I used SS23 to go to the music store again this morning and was taken to a page claiming I was from a country not covered by SS. I changed NO settings over the weekend. I used my browser and went to connect com and everything looked good. Then it occured to me I got this version from Connect-Europe. So I pointed my browser to Connect-Europe and got the same denial page I got in SS23 (http://www.connect-europe.com/landingpages/static/node108_lang_NextRowEN.html) So Now I must revert back to my US version 22. UNLESS anyone knows how to change the SS23 Homepage? Or has any other ideas?

I had a similar problem EXCEPT I solved mine by Buying Sony CDRs. I have LESS problems with them. I also use a CDrom Cleaner Disk in my tray when problems start. :grin:

HiMD units are now reading a FAT table and abuot 700kbs of System File info. Where as the older units simply had a short TOC to deal with. I dont mind th trade off for 7-9 times the storage space on HiMD disks and 2 Times the space on 80m MDs compared to MDLP. :cool:

Actually yes. As well as Atrac3+ at 64kbps. The 64 is very comparible to between 96 and 128kbps to my ears. And this is perfectly acceptable for use in normal conditions if you view it as somewhere between portable cassettes and portable CDs. We all use to use portable cassette players in all kinds of conditions and were ok with that. Most of my listening is done to enjoy or pass time more than it is for technical enjoyment. As for the 48kbps, what is it good for? I honestly have not tried it for music but I do ALOT of ilstening to audio books and OldTimeRadio. I used to use a small mp3 player for this but now I can load the whole CD of shows (about 45 hours/CD) practically onto 1 HiMD disk and enjoy. My only small complaint is that without native MP3 support it takes an overnighter to leave the computer on and transfer the whole thing. ITs done when I get up the next morning. Not terrible bad. But I actually figure it is a little better this way. Disadvandatages of MP3 native support for large volumes would probably be decreased battery life and decreased diskspace (Atrac seems to take less space than and equivalent mp3). So Ild only maybe get 35 hours of MP3s instead of 45hours in Atrac3+. Advantage of MP3 native support would be noticed on small groups of mp3s of no larger than 1 or 2 albums. You could quickly transfer these from any computer. But for a larger Audio Collection Ill stick with Atrac. I only wish converting BOTH ways was easier. I am thankful for MarCs HimdRenderer. :smile:

ALSO, My WMA files use DRM (I know, my mistake.) I only got them from Walmart because the songs were not available from Sony (Connect.com) I burned them physically to CDrs and then reripped them to WAV and then converted to ATRAC. Ild like to do this virtual WITHOUT physical CDRs. Can Nero recognize DRM WMAs or not? I dont seem to be able to unless I am just missing something. I have M$ Media Player 9 and Nero 6.3 Thanks

IS this SS 2.3 version english or Japanese like the earlier posted version? Also what advantages are there between 2.2 and 2.3?

Thats news to me :grin:, Because the link from the Home page says News as RSS/XML. So I was lead to believe that meant the link was for News as RSS/XML. But I could not get any RSS readers to work with it. Maybe the RSS should be removed from the link. But I would sure like to see RSS of the site. Thanks

Im stubborn. I ONLY by MD units which use AA formfactor so I can use my NiMH and 30min charger. The 50min charger probably makes charging IN my NHF800 pretty useless. ANYWAY in an emergency it is good to know. How long is the charging generally for NiMH batters INSIDE an MD unit? I am using some 2300mah AA NiMH by Sony I saw at Minidisco.

I see there is a link on the forum homepage for an XML/RSS news feed. I upgraded to Firefox last week when I found the link on the forum and decided to investigate. I am very happy with Firefox. But VERY supprised when I tried using the above link to add MD RSS news to firefox and then to Thunderbird and both failed. Is something up? I mean it is not that hard to add a feed to Fx or TB. I have done so already except XML feeds dont work. I just thought that if this forum/site was going to support Firefox then it should have an RSS feed which works in it or am I missing something. Thanks

My concern was about blowing a NiMH in my new unit. I got a 707 a couple years ago and it came with a puny 700ma NiCaD. I never used the nicad, only NiMH. But I also never tried recharging my NiMH in the unit as they have different compositions and most chargers on the market are labled NiCaD OR NiMH. The ones which charge both usually have a switch to set for CD or MH. So that tells me they recharge differenly. Everything in my 707s manual stated charging only NiCaD so I never tried NiMH. My new 800 did not come with a battery but I saw the CHG label under the Stop button and found in the manual also about charging NiCaDs only. So some of you have charged NiMH's in your unit without problem? I use an external 30 minute charger for my NiMH which is quicker anyway but it would be nice to know in an emergency I could use my MD player. Anyone figured out time to charge MHs?

Your idea of a listing program would be excellent since with the 1g disc we can have hundreds of tracks. It would be a help to have a listing which could easily be search as well as a backup list incase one needed to recreate a disk's contents. Best format for your lister to save would be a tab delimited format. commas and quotes COULD find themselves in a listing thereby making it much harder for you to use them as a comma delimited format. TABS on the otherhand would not be use or confused and this format is easily read into databases and spreadsheets. I will use a t for a TAB in my example below. data format should be something like this. First line of file would contain disk specific info (Disk ID and Disk Title) perhapse Total time recorded on Disk and Total number of tracks. I am not sure exactly what info you are able to retrieve. But I believe all these are useful. Then a blank line followed by the track listings. <group> t <track title> t <album> t <artist> t <track time/length> t <compression> I got my first MD player ( actually two R500s for my wife and I) which finally died last year (I tried reseting the system defaults after it had sever tracking problems with the laser and now it will not exit the test mode). Replaced it with a mzn707a for myself and a NetMD player for my wife. Now this year I gained an MZ-NH800 and I love it. So much so that I made a PDF comparing it with MP3 players (perhaps you can post it or use it). Back in 1992 I had serious doubts about the new technology but now I think it will hold its own especially if Sony adds native MP3 support. I feel Atrac is supperior but for those who are in doubt laggnig behind still, It may help boost market share. Allowing Upload was a smart decision (Even if they are taking their time about these things). Your renderer is alot easier and more useful to me than Sony's WAV converter. I think you realize that since people are still looking to your program even with the SONY converter available. Keep up the good work and Ill paypal you when I get my holiday bonus. Phillip

All my CD rips are MP3 at 96 or 160bps (depends on my need) and primarily backed up onto CD-Rs. Only then will I use them in Sonic Stage. ALWAYS have backups of anything important. Ild use an MD recorder for a concert if I were you. If the upload fails for some wierd reason you can always transfer realtime anyway. Assuming youre using a HI-MD recorder. The key is after the transfer use Sony's wav converter or MarC's himdrenderer to convert the file in Sonic stage to Wav or MP3 and the BACKUP somewhere.

Anyone tried rechardging OTHER batteries in their MD rather than just the 1 HIMH that came with it?