Breepee2

1) Lossless format like Apple, Atrac Lossless or something 2) Usable, stable and reliable software like iTunes 3) Personal wish: Linux software (if software is still needed)

1001% agreed. Don't know how the mac works, but you just put your music anywhere on the drive. No extra software needed at all. It indexes everything on startup and then you can browse though your music in an iPod-like manner.

Recording seems to give better quality than downloading.

Creating a custom firmware witch ditches everything but mp3 playback (and adds FLAC playback) would be the easiest I think.

Looks nice, but I hope I can hook my HDD full of music up on it and play it back nicely.

Looks OK, but what I really miss is a distinct minidisc.org skin/theme/layout. It looks too generic now (forum too).

Take the Rio Carbon. It's HDD is accessable as a standard USB disk. You drag n drop the files over, no matter how, where, under what name or under what OS, and on startup it indexes everything. This first index takes a while, but each next time you startup it's only 10 secs. (it still checks for new, removed and changed songs). Perfect system if you ask me.

You got it

If Sony had just incorporated a ROM format, which uses a DVD-like die, it would have been made no difference. They put effort in the new UMD, which they could have put in a new HiMD/UMD hybride that would have supported ROM discs and writable discs.

Then please support Linux while you're at it, Sony.

Easy one. When will you acknowledge my suspicions ?

So fast that there's no HDD out there able to use the standards full bandwidth If you want to be compatible with 99.9% of the PC's, make sure it knows what USB(2) is.

The biggest stick is 2GB, a little bigger than the 1.8GB of the UMD, so it's possible. And the isos currently cracked are ~500MB. Very good that it's already cracked. Power to the people.

The only solution other than recording realtime via the unit is stated in my first reply.

I guess you havn't checked either if there firewire available on your work-PC? Most PC's don't have it. And it's almost as convenient as recording real-time.

Read the title. I wish there was a dr580-like HiMD unit to fill the HiMD-deck-gap which currently existss (and does not appear to go away soon).

Virtual PC is known to work, but if you want to do that the legal way, it's expensive. I wonder why you didn't check this out before you made the switch. Sony doesn't really hide the fact it only works with Windows.

It indeed has no digital out, hmm I wonder how I came to that. Woulb be nice anyhow, or at least a decemt line-out (like the Sharp). Read again, smarty

Since Sony isn't selling (fullsize) HiMD decks anytime soon, isn't this a nice idea? The Sharp IM-DR580 has a nice and functional dock, with a digital out even. It would allow me to use a portable in a deck-like manner, like some iPod-thing out there where you sop them in and you have instant HiFi. Nice ej?

If you buy pre-recorded MD's you're not lazy (it's quite an adventures to get some) and they're of better quality than 128kbit iTunes-shit. So buying pre-recorded MD's is not/less pointless than buying online.

If that's so, please explain the succes of iTunes (and the other many online music stores out there) selling DRMed 128kbit music (MUCH worse than a prerecorded MD) for the same price as a CD?

And that seems to me like you have your priorities wrong. This site is supposed te be for anything and everything MD, including rumors. It's appears that negative things tend to be muffled away, as if this site is more worried with Sony's salesfigures than providing information. On the minidiscforum.de it's also on 'prime-time'. And I'm perfectly aware of this site's position in views and links and I think that's why this shouldn't be in the much less viewed OT forum.

MD being possibly/likely discontinued is *very* ontopic. Is this your standard procedure for bad-weather topics? Just ban it to offtopic? Hmm, for a moment a was thinking you were a zealot.

Someone on minidiscforum.de has talked to someone from SOny Germany Product Developemnt who's said Sony and Denon (?) will cut all money to MiniDisc research and development soon and stop production in 2 to 3 years. Then they'll put the format to sleep. If discs will still be manufactured is not yet clear, and although this technically is all a rumor, I think it's something most of us know doesn't come totally out of the blue. http://www.minidiscforum.de/viewtopic.php?...ight=sony+denon Well, time's up I guess... I hope they'll add FLAC as a nice anti-climax

30GB version of the HD5 is confirmed.