My story, FWIW: I bought a minidisc recorder (MZ-RH10) after dithering around for a long time, trying to find a portable player/recorder that would record in stereo from a microphone. The recording quality meant a lot to me, and all of the recorders that I'd seen would either record in compressed mono, GSM or other low-fi format. I'd recently upgraded my Playstation 2 and felt that on the whole, things were going well between me and Sony: there was a local shop available, they knew what they were talking about and I wasn't conned into buying something that I didn't need. So, into the shop I go, and I consider all of the options - finally buying the MZ-RH10 because it's on offer, with £50 knocked off the RRP. In retrospect, I should have asked myself why this was, but I was happy with it - it'd do everything that I wanted: it'd record from a microphone and it'd even play my mp3s (I already have a couple of Zaurus PDAs that'll do that, so it wasn't important). Two weeks later, my friendly Sony retailer closed down, and a couple of months after that, I hear the news that the minidisc format is to be discontinued. I feel as if I've been left in limbo; I can continue to use SonicStage to transfer my recordings from the minidisc and I can go on recording - but how long will these discs last and where can I get more? And then there was the debacle with the equalizer settings and the missing text when editing titles. Thanks to this site, I've fixed those issues - but it hardly inspires me with confidence when a large, professional corporation like Sony lets these things slip through the net.
