feralchimp

Although this isn't good news for people who need parts for their current / past generations of Sony MD hardware, this could be good news for the format overall. Due to various awful product design choices brought on by Sony Music's perceived conflict of interest, MD never really lived up to its potential. If someone else licenses Hi-MD (or even UMD?), they'll be much more likely to build products free of DRM, with generic USB storage device support, etc.

As a Mac/PC user who's been thinking of buying a 910, and weighing MD versus relatively hassle-free (but more expensive) CompactFlash options for recording... This is SUCH a half-assed product release on Sony's part. They finally bothered coding up a Mac-compatible version of their ultra-top-secret protocol for pulling data out of the device over USB, and what do they do? They force anyone who wants to use that software to purchase a new recorder that's ONLY available bundled with one of their microphones. Furthermore, it's pretty obvious that the "new" hardware is just RH10 and RH910 guts with slightly different case design. So if the new Mac upload utility doesn't work with the RH10 and RH910, it's only because some marketing genius at Sony CHOSE to explicitly make the utility incompatible with the "old" models. So rather than reward their existing customers with some functionality that EVERY other recording option provides by default (basic mac support), they decided to screw everyone to cost-justify a software project that never should have been necessary in the first place. Forcing everyone to buy it with a bundled mic just adds insult to injury. Rant over!