Dinko

They're transparent, and they come in the standard Sony slip-in cases, not the bulky boxes the first generation of HiMD discs came in. The labels on the other hand... yucky. Tiny oval little bastards with barely enough room to write two or three artists. 3 white, 3 blue labels...

I'd call it a typo. Or someone counting the number of programs supported. I think Windows Media Player is long, long past the WMP 2 stage.

It may not necessarily be just the battery. It might be a combination of battery & mp3. If I were you, I'd compare how the battery behaves with atrac files. For example, on my Sony NW-E99 Network Walkman, which runs on one AAA battery, I can get nearly a month out of one battery if I only play atrac3@132kbps files. mp3s (128kbps - 192 kbps) eat up the AAA battery in about 8 days, under similar usage.

Can't speak for other people, but... I for one refuse to keep 20GB of music on my hard drive just in case my portable player dies. It's a complete and total waste of space. As for having the CDs... sure I have them. And it took me a week burning CDs to my PC just so I could transfer them to a 20GB portable. I'd much rather just buy another MD unit and play the discs I have, than buy another HDD player and spend another week transfering CDs. Then of course the HDD player is inherently limited. I have 30 GB of radio recordings. That needs two 20GB players. I'll soon pass the 40GB line. What then? A third HDD player? I think not. HDD players are good if you don't have more than 20GB worth of music (whichever bit rate you use), which I suspect is the majority of the population. The moment you exceed 20GB, MDs are better. If you have 25 GB, you're better off with HiMD adding discs as your needs require. On the other hand, if you have very little music, you're still better off with HiMD. Why pay for the 17 GB you'll never use? When you get more music, just get more discs. Most HDD players couldn't last for more than 12 hours on one battery charge. Since a HiMD disc can contain 16 hours at LP2, and the minidisc battery lasts longer than the HDD battery, you get more music and you get to listen to it for longer than on the HDD player. You can have 20000 songs on your HDD. What's the use if you can only listen to 180 of them at any given time? I don't see many advantages of HDD players over HiMD other than a small size. Truth be told, I'd much rather get rid of both MD and HDD and move to flash cards. Except those don't make any sense right now. At current price levels, I can get 13 HiMD discs for the price of one 1GB SD card or MemoryStick. Of course 13 HiMD discs would be much bulkier than 13 flash cards, but then given the price gap, I'll gladly put up with the extra size. Stuff like this excites me more than either the MZRH10 or the next generation of i(Video?)Pods: http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/topstory/000792 Flash cards... all the advantages of minidisc, but even smaller. Take your flash card anywhere. PC > Portable Player > Home Stereo > car > digital camera > TV > fax/printer ...

Legal download stores have one advantage over regular stores and CDs: get just the tracks you want. When you just want one track from one album, it's 99cents and that's the end of that. That's the only part about download stores that I find appealing - not the players associated with one store (Apple iPods) or another (Samsung Napsterized Yepp players) ; not the heavily compressed format (most of the tracks I got from iTMS suffer heavily from digitalitis with glossy upper ends, and complete lack of bass or bloom) ; nor any other characteristic of legal download sites. But in about a dozen cases, I've found it more convenient to give 99 cents per track to Apple, than spend 20$ on a dozed used CDs, or look for the tracks on the P2P networks.

The Sony press release for Canada: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive...5/07/c1597.html "The MZ-RH910 Hi-MD Walkman will be available in April at a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $249.99." "The MZ-RH10 Hi-MD Walkman will be available in April at an MSRP of $399.99." "The MZ-DN430 will be available this month at an MSRP of $129.99" Prices seem pretty low. Are these things Made in China?

Sure, but even with fully loaded HDD players, you still might not have what you want to listen to at the right moment. I had a 40GB RCA Lyra. Fully loaded with 192kbps mp3s & wmas. But then my "mood changed" and the works I wanted to listen to weren't on the Lyra... 40GB of music or not. Your're perfectly right though. The chance of having the songs you want on a 20 or 40 GB player is greater than if you only bring one 1GB HiMD disc, and HDD players are certainly more compact than 1 HiMD player and 40 HiMD discs.

Tried it. HiSP mode worked fine on an 80-min MD in HiMD mode. In HiLP, about 14 seconds from the deleted track came back. When I cut up a 00:02:01 track in three parts, portions of the deleted track returned. After the first edit (cutting), track 1 ended at 59 seconds. Track 2 ran 22 seconds. Track 3 was the rest. Track 2 was then erased. Tracks 1 & 3 were combined at the 1min 13 seconds mark instead of the 59 seconds mark. I did it on a MZ-NH700 using a Sony colour collection 80-min disc in Hi-MD mode. Recorded in analog.

HDD players are highly overrated I think. The Sony NWHD1 has excellent battery life for an HDD player, but it's still short, and pretty annoying when you need to recharge it every two or three days. HDD players are good if you go on travel: no need to bring a load of MDs with you. But then... as previously said, it's horrible if you go travelling with it: how do you recharge it in the middle of the forest? Just bring an AA battery for the MD player and you're all set. Even in the city, you'd almost need a spare iPod/HDD player in case your battery dies. When you could just enter any store and buy a couple of AA batteries. I quickly came to grips with reality: I didn't even need LP4. 300 minutes of music was too much for the average day in the city. 20GB HDD players are overkill if you leave in the morning and come back in the evening. But then, given battery life, you don't have much choice but to use them like that. They're a pain to browse through, no matter how well organised. There's too much content for too small a screen. Putting 20GB of music on it at a decent rate (say 128 or 132kbps) takes a long time. That's a few hundred CDs you need to spend hours ripping to your PC before transfering them to the HDD player in a couple of minutes. If it breaks, it's over. Not only do I need to get a new player (even if it is a warranty replacement), I also need to spend at least a day filling it with music (unless I keep a back up 20GB of music on my PC, but I have better things to do with my hard drive than keep it as a back up for my portable music player). On the other hand, if the MD player breaks, you still keep your music. With the advent of HiMD, HDD players are even less attractive. 16 hours of good quality audio (132kbps on 1GB HiMD) & long battery life. I considered getting an iPod. Costco now has them for a very low price. But what's the point? I see very few advantages to iPods over HiMD (or even NetMD) players to justify buying one.