Dinko

It should. As long as it's a 60, 74 or 80 minutes disc, SonicStage (or Simple Burner) should be able to reformat it to NetMD once your NetMD player is connected and the disc inserted.

No it will not play. A standard disc formatted to HiMD will not play on a NetMD-only device. A HiMD disc loaded with LP4 contents will not play on a NetMD-only device. If I remember correctly from my old NetMD player, if you take a regular disc which has been formatted in HiMD mode and then you format it using the NetMD player, it will be compatible with NetMD. However: if you take a HiMD (1GB) disc, the NetMD player will not recognize the disc. There's nothing you can do about that.

I went to the Sony Store today. I fell in love. With a Vaio, that is... yummy... Aaaaaanyway... After I finished bothering the poor dude about the colourful FJ Vaios, I asked if he had any blank HiMDs in stock. I was sure he would give me the usual "No, I'm sorry" reply they give me everytime I ask. Instead, he immediately said that they had them in stock. So then he said that after having some supply troubles, the discs were finally flowing smoothly again. I asked "Do people still buy MD's?" He enthusiastically said that yes, the Sony Store sells (Hi)MDs regularly, and people ask for MD stuff. The positive tone he answered with and the look he gave me made me feel like a moron. I felt like someone who goes to the Apple store and asks "Do you guys ever sell iPods?". It seemed at that moment that higher MD sales was such an obvious fact. It makes me feel better about the format's next couple of years, if not its long term future. A warning though: other electronics stores in the area seem to have discontinued minidisc products. I would find it natural then, for MD enthusiasts to concentrate on the Sony Store, as other retail locations are no longer viable alternatives for buying MD products. On a related note, after the hordes of zombies walking around carrying iPods in their hands - thus completely negating the idea of a non cumbersome portable music player (if you're holding the damn thing and your whole arm is busy with that, you might as well bring a boombox!) - I see more people exhibiting minidisc players in their hands than a few years ago when only the remote controls were visible on certain people. I don't know the reasons. But it's what I see on the street and in public transit.

A switch from SACD to SDDS-CD for the home audio market? :bigsmile:

Some iPods (including the new ones) are made in Taiwan. http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20051014PR204.html

Cool!

The only thing this means for me is... the temporary death of the compact portable audio device. I'm sad to see MD go. I still think it is a superior format to HDD players. Losing MD means no more portable gadgets in my pocket except an NW-E99 which I go to work with (that play/stop button is really well positioned when the player is in your pocket). MD had everything I never cared for in HDD based players: - if a truck runs over your player: MD: you lose the player and the disc inside, but not your other discs HDD: you lose everything - even the stuff not on your PC - battery life MD: on 1 AA battery I can play twice more music than an iPod (or similar non-Sony device) can. HDD: not really portable is it? You're stuck to an electric plug every 10-12 hours. - media life MD: I only bought my first MD five years ago. But I have a couple of 10-year old MDs from friends. Still work perfectly. HDD: In the past 10 years, I've dealt with 9 broken computer hard drives. The current Maxtor drive on my Gateway desktop is the longest-lasting of them all... a whopping 2 years without failure... knock on wood. I just don't trust HDD players: losing 20GB of music is a lot. My RCA Lyra hold some 35GB of radio recordings... if the HDD fails... I can only hope the CDRs I use as back ups won't do the same... but I've encountered quite a few dead CDRs too. - cuteness factor MD: No, there will never be a Neige mp3 player. There's a cuteness factor about the different blank media models that is absent from most mp3 players. HDD: Most aren't much different from cell phones. Rectangular shape. Screen on top. Controls on bottom. Yawn. - unlimited storage MD: as long as there are blanks... HDD: Oh sure, you can get another newer model. For twice the price of 20 blank 1 GB HiMDs. Flash: fantastic... except when it's so small you can neither label it nor see it. That Memory Stick Micro thing? It needs a box three times its size so you can label the contents. No more than five letters please! I think regular memory stick is the lowest size that practical removal media can drop to. Anything smaller is too small. But yes, I'm excited by flash cards as a replacement for MD. It's the only thing I see myself replacing MD with. HDD has too many disadvantages. Flash players with internal memory are too limited. Flash cards are the only alternative that I find appealing. But so far, players have been few, cards are expensive and transfer speeds are pathetic. The other alternative will be a large capacity flash drive. Something like a 100GB flash player. I'm sure Samsung will come up with it soon enough. Hopefully by the time my last MD unit dies permanently. Then maybe Sony can take the NW-A1000 and upgrade that cute thing to 100GB of flash. Then I'd buy one. Until then, OLED screens look fantastic, but gigantic players like the NW-A3000 that don't do anything are totally retarded. Replacing HiMD with that, and going after the iPod with it is totally nuts. MD is the only thing that set Sony apart from the crowd. Its death is perfectly understandable. But Sony as a company may easily follow. They're already making crazy decisions, so what's to stop them from continuing? Stringers' big plan was a load of hot air. SACD was doomed from the start by the twits at Sony Music. I'll enjoy the SACDs I have so far, but I'm not crazy about buying new ones (thus contributing to the death of that format as well). In the end... the best thing Sony can do at this point, after dropping MD, is dropping ATRAC, dropping Memory Stick, Blu-Ray and everything else and just forming a joint venture with Samsung. Samsung ideas. Sony engineering. like.no.other

Not so sure. Warner Bros, Paramount and Universal back HD-DVD. I wouldn't discount those studios' power. As for the list of BRD supporters above... some of those are in both camps. Onkyo, Fuji & Sanyo for example. Samsung is backing BRD but is also ready to switch to producing both.

Nano cracked? No problem! Next time, just buy the carrying case. $19.99 + S&H.

tekdroid, I see what you mean now.

Well... I've never subscribed to the "market should lead development" doctrine. For one thing, the market is driven by the masses, and the masses tend to be stupid (due to ignorance, itself a result of not caring about what they're buying and the effect of some advertisements). The masses resulted in us using VHS over Betamax for many years. What do you prefer? Better picture, better sound and smaller size, or less good picture, less good sound and a huge cartridge you need both hands to handle. The masses eat junk food, then we complain about heart disease to our doctors. Put differently, did the masses ask for an iPod? Everyone was happy with CDRs. What was Apple thinking about? What were Sony and Philips thinking when they developed the CD? Everyone was happy with 8-tracks and LPs. Who needed shiny frisbees, right? If you let the masses dictate the market, we'll never get any new R&D. Now I'm not saying that you should do what Sony does: completely ignore its customers. But at some point, I'm pretty sure that people and companies who devote part of their lives to developing new gizmos know better than the masses. My position is that once you develop a good product, you should educate the masses about its advantages and then let the masses use their voting might. Something Sony is completely incompetent at. They develop fantastic gadgets and then hope that somehow, with no advertising, no marketing campaign at all, the products will magically catch on with the masses who have no idea that the product exists, and if they do, they're more intimidated than interested. A week after the Nano hit stores, TV commercials began appearing on Canadian channels. It's featured in newspaper ads, and Apple dealers are running iPod ads in the public transit system in Montreal. I have never seen a print, TV or public transit advertisement for the Network Walkman products. Never. The average person does not check SonyStyle website once a week to see what else is new. But Sony doesn't seem to know that. Educate the market before letting the market decide, but certainly don't let the market dictate your whole strategy otherwise we'll be stuck with no progress forever.

Too bad. What's happening there is probably going elsewhere too. I can't imagine them keeping HiMD just for the Japanese market which is now moving towards flash and HDD players as well. Sony should now look at how fantastic products like SACD, minidisc and Betamax (all superior to the competition) failed in the marketplace and learn from their marketing mistakes. Some stores need to figure out how to push their own inventories. The FutureShop.ca website says that a number of FutureShop locations have HiMD blanks in stock. When you go to the store, the employees just tell you "No, we don't carry those anymore". They probably don't even know what I'm asking for. When I push them to go to their computer terminals and find out if they really don't carry them anymore, the blanks suddenly pop up on their screen. "Oh yeah, we do have some! Who knew?". Sony's bigger problem I fear is that they're not in touch with the HDD side of the market either. Instead of churning out half baked ideas every six months, they should probably devote more resources in producing the ultimate DAP. The new NW-A3000s look fantastic... but that's all they do... look cute. They're huge (a step backward given the small NWHD1/3/5 series). They're relatively expensive (not a problem if Made in Japan, but a problem if Made in [third world country of your choice]). No removable battery (a step backward from the HD5). No colour screen. No extra features (radio, video, text files). iPod killers they certainly are not and if Sony thinks so, I'm afraid they need another corporate shake up ASAP. No wonder the Nano is attracting attention. It's small. Has a colour screen. Isn't *that* expensive. And it works with the existing software & accessories. Maybe Sony should just let Samsung come up with the ideas, while Sony implements them.

I have an RH10 and an E407. Sound is definitely a lot better on the HiMD player. The Network Walkman has very good sound, but the RH10 is better. And I don't just mean louder. The RH10 reproduces nuances much better. The E407 can sometimes sound a little harsh in upper frequencies (trumpets for example).

Regarding the Onkyos, there is no USB connection on the 105. You can't connect it to your computer and transfer music to a MD through the USB port. It will however play NetMD discs. I think one (or more) of the Sony HiMD micro systems are NetMD capable, but I'm not sure.

That's a matter of opinion. When I rip a CD with iTunes at 128kbps AAC, and the same tracks using SonicStage and ATRAC3 at 132 kbps, I much prefer the ATRAC3 version to the AAC version. To my ears, the iTunes AAC tracks sound glossy, icy and just plain bad. Especially with orchestral sounds. I find ATRAC3 is much warmer and closer to the CD version.