Breepee2

Sidenote: you have every right to interfere in evolution. Existing is interfering. I suppose most of us here do. Then why are all other removable mass-market technologies even much older than that? The CD is 25, cassette over 40 if I'm not mistaken. These things do not compare at all and 15 years sure is not a long time for a standard. And the latest update (HiMD) is not even 2 years old...

If it wasn't for it's terrible battery life, I think I'd be already having one.

Sony sure wasn't trying to get the units as small as possible.

The backwards compatibility issue, is a nonissue, because Blu-ray device can be (and probably will be, else no one will buy them) equipped with lasers that can read also standard DVD's.

It does. Strange, isn't it?

Well, I would never have though it possible, but let me be Sony's advocate: They have added MP3-playback to their NH1 and NH2 HDD-MP3-players.

I think that along with MD, portable audio with removable media, will die. There are practically no MP3-players which runs on removable flash. Every thing is integrated flash or HDD, and I don't see that changing. Most people see cassettes/CDs as a hassle and like their iTunes musiclibraries and iPods. Add that HiMD's still costs a fraction of flash-based solutions.

I did not even have to train myself to do that I don't have a lot of money, so when I buy something, I buy to last (and don't mind to spend a little extra if it'll prolong the lifespan of the system/unit). I already came to the point this year that my old MD unit (non netMD/HiMD) does not suit my needs anymore. Times have changed since I bought it in 2001. I've moved my 'music business' to the PC and my unit is a little bulky to slip in my pocket. So since this spring (!) I've been looking out to a new DAP. There are none who are precisely what I want, so it's a matter of deciding what's the least worst (and what is really important and what not). At first I wanted to buy a HiMD, but I always thought they were still a bit bulky, didn't work with Linux and had low outputs (and no FLAC/OGG-support). Some MP3-players do, but they don't have removable media, removeable batteries or are suitable to backup a music archive losslessy. I'm now thinking of the Sony NW-HD1. No Ogg or Linux support, but has a good battery life, is small, has enough space and is not so expensive.

OK, it's not 100% official, but if you have read the Hi-MD, Bye-MD?-thread, you know that it's about 90% certain: MD is no more. No new units until further notice. Now, that leaves us with 2 options: 1) Stop with MD, and go with an MP3-player (even the recorders here can find a unit that can record with the same quality MD can). 2) Stock up as much discs/hardware as you can and hope it lasts happily ever after (MD's are durable hardware, and should/could last for many years if you treat it right). What are you going to do? I'd like to see some arguments why you'll choose whatever you choose (if you've chosen already). I'm very much in doubt what to do. As some might know I always wanted MD to offer me a way to let me losslessy and retrievably archive music on MD's. I kind of was hanging out for such a unit (portable AND deck). Now, there won't be any unit/deck that can do what I wanted. I could buy a lot of 1GB discs and store everything in PCM, but that's kind of expensive and still very difficult to digitally and bitperfectly retrieve. It's cheaper to buy a (few) big hard drive(s) to back everything up in FLAC and use an MP3-player on the go. The MP3-player would preferably support Linux (by just being a drag-n-drop player and indexing itself on startup) and Ogg Vorbis (the aoTuv 4 compiles seems to be the best codec ever, outperforming practically every codec at any bitrate). A big plus is the size, most MP3-players are very small (smaller than MD-units). A big issue with MP3-players is battery-life though. Most don't come even close to 20 hrs. and do not have screw-on AA-compartments like most (Hi-)MD's do. And when the battery is dead, you have a problem (you can't just change the gumstick for 10 bucks). In short, I can't go too long without access to a power-connection. On the other hand, I don't think I'll be sticking with MD, if it's really dead. What is your view?

Unit: 1x Sharp MD-MT190, 80 Minidiscs Daily use: Listening to music while in transit and when performing cleaning tasks in the house. Favorite use: Archiving music. Professional use: None. Alternatives? None with removeable storage. Request: Take the iPod-like approach: write good software, sell just one consumermarket player, make it as small as you can (~10mm thickness for example is very possible), and add a compressed lossless codec (such a codec makes real sense when archiving on MD in this millenium). Try to involve more companies in HiMD, Sharp for example. Get rid of the crippled MP3 playback.

Anyone interested in starting this petition?

I was being a little cynical. But I think you got the point. As a big fan of MD, I'm sure no connection will blame him for giving out the information on this board.

Apart from buying a Mac-unit there's simply no other option. And there will be very probably not one ever either.

Looks like that doesn't matter any longer...

No definitive announcements. Why aren't they more concrete in such matters?

These could be MD's final hours, let's all put on our MD's and hope for the best...

Hmm, what's that in CET?

Indeed. DVD, WMAv9, WMAv10, iTunes, iPod, all were hacked within days. Seems MD just isn't interesting enough (or they use an extremely hack-proof encoding system, but I do not think so). That's why I consider Sony a perfect example of the fact that security through obscurity does work!

It's probably more accurate to say Minidisc uses Real. Atrac3Plus has some similarities with older Real codecs.

I don't know what country you are in, but overhere in Europa the DVD has most certainly not replaced the CD. That's mostly because DVD-A pratically doesn't exist (SACD is even bigger). If you want music, there's only 1 way to go: CD's. Movie's of course are on DVD, but all DVD players can read CD's. Add that the next step (whichever that may be, HD-DVD/BluRay, nothing is sure yet) will be backwards compatible with CD's and DVD's, CD has proven to be a pretty sustainable archival method. Sure, it won't live forever, but there's no sign of dying (it's so called replacements DVD-A and SACD are, like I said, not really competing). So if MD is over, it's lasted a little too short.

We already knew MD was dead in .au, the question is now if it's gonna be dead in .int.

I certainly hope so, and I hope it to be good news for MD.

Just use your creativity to design. The AA can go (instead of under) somewhere beside the disc (so that the unit is more rectangular). iPod nano's screen scatching is somthing with Apple not adding screenprotectors (a half a mm of some plastic can fix this and won't make it much thicker).

Why oh why is Sony silent about this?

I certainly hope so. HiMD is just too fat! Look at iPod nano. That's a portable size, not 80x80x30mm. OK, MD can never be that small, but SOny sure isn't trying. Remember those expensive player-only Pioneer units of <10mm thickness? That's the way it should be.