first I would say that I'm the most unfortunate taiwanese guy living in France given that my european model mz-rh10 comes without a LCD remote (what a surprise for me!)- any mentally normal people in Taiwan would ask for a Jp model with LCD remote. In Fnac (the biggest cultural/hi-tech chain store in western europe) where I buy my rh10, they don't have many stock of the 2nd generation of hi-md from Sony- every ten days or so when the 910s or the rh10s arrive they are sold out almost immediatly. Some of the buyers are like me, simply the archiver of daily life pieces who wants to record different sounds, conversations and manipulate the recordings, the others (they are many) are most of them people into their music band and look for high-quality live-music recordings. And believe me, people who are into these specific purpos exist, of course they are few compare to the sales figure of flashplayers or HDplayers but to be honest, I still cannot find any other decent machine to replace the reliability, facility, quality, flexibility of a (Hi-)MD player. I had a MZR900 who got retired recently to be only a player (the recording just doesn't work anymore after 4 1/2 yrs decent service), I then was tempted by the flashplayers and HDplayers with recording function but finally still chose Hi-MD because I'm not convinced that other options can offer me good recording quality and flexible manipulations. I'm agree with 'the MD recorder is declining' compare to MP3 things but there're still solid supporters who care about a MD recorder as a 'recorder' afterall.
