I agree on points two and three. My history: I loved the idea of mini-disc when it first came out back in '92, but I was, too young and too poor to afford such a device. They are much more affordable now, but the only thing they are competive in is battery life and size. I got my NE410 because it could easily fit in my pocket, and I only had to charge the batteries once a week based on my listenening patterns. When the 1g Hi-MDs came out, I broke down and got the NH600D, because I figured I would be able to get by on putting in one himd disc for an entire week, which I can repeat a couple times and be perfectly happy with it. I have had my share of joys and nightmares with sony products over the years. I would like to see the Hi-MD mature into a more competitive product, and letting either Sharp, or Panasonic, or AIWA, or whomever work with Sony to make it a better product is a great idea. I can only see a market for four models: 1. a Hi-MD editing deck with Std stereo RCA in/out, Optical In/Out, USB 2.0, and maybe Ethernet connection, and high speed dubbing ability, also maybe XLR input. 2. a top end metal cased portable recorder for musicians and live music recording people a semi-pro model. 3. a decent usb device ala NH600D - a long battery life player(>40 hours) which can record via usb2.0 4. a car deck hi-md play only, maybe controls a mult-disc changer. That covers it all. Any more and they are really duplicating effort and they will end up skimping on quality, Shoot, they could even outsource to Sharp or Denon, or someone else to build it. They way the competitor could use the same internals, but add extra stuff like longer battery life, or less features,or am/fm tuner, or other different levels. Shoot, I'd buy a deck, a car player, and a decent usb only device as I don't really do much live music recording, but I know that is a big market for them. but that's just my take on it.
