Mr Bass Man

Why do ATRAC/Sony enthusiasts have to suffer the software so badly? First the unit worked fine on my laptop running WinXP Pro/SS 4.0. Then I left it connected to my main machine for a few hours, and next thing I notice is that it cannot play the ATRAC tracks on the unit itself (DRM issue?), but only when connected to my main machinen (Win98SE/SS3.2). It can play the only MP3 album on it fine? So I thought "what the heck" and formatted the unit and now it works fine with my main machine running WinXP Pro/SS 4.0 but refuses to work with the same machine's Win98SE (dual boot) and SS3.2, but refused to play as a standalone an MP3 file transferred under SS4.0. This appears to be a DRM issue, but can anyone see any logic with any of this? My younger son with his Creative Zen Micro never has any such problem with that. Grrrrrrrrrrrr ................. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Surely for downloading and playback, DRM shouldn't be an issue, arguably only if uploading to a different machine (NetMD users have had this to deal with for years)

Thanks for all the posters, fellow contributors (I know some of you from mindisc.org already ...) The suggestion about region may have some merit, but as I run three different computers (actually the 3.2 I referred to and the 4.0CP giving the error message are on the same physical machine but dual-booted with W98SE and WinXP Pro) and I have a mixture of downloads from the internet via links on minidisc.org and the standalone downloader from that same source, I am not too sure which region/version is what (is there a good way to tell?) Although the HD3 is less than 5% full, I am NOT going to reformat yet, as it would seem to be unnecessary as it works fine with 3.2, although I know for sure that some of the material was ripped from my laptop, which was running 3.4. When the laptop comes home from work I will see if it works with the HD3, and as it has since been upgraded to 4.0CP from 3.4 via the same route as my XP desktop machine, the result will be of interest. BTW I spotted the posting on the "4.0 bugs" thread after I posted my problem, sorry about that. I'll post here any progress I happen to make, if any. Thanks again [P.S. I guess there are technical people from Sony who monitor this forum for feedback on problems with their products ...]

I upgraded my SS to 4.0CP recently, and tonight I wanted to to dump some mp3 files onto my NW-HD3 for evaluation. (I am more of a MD user, btw ...) Connecting up the HD3 I was greeted by the following message :- Connecting the same unit to a different computer with SS v 3.2 is fine. Anyone any ideas? Surely this is not a DRM issue?