jty2

It's hard to see on most of the images but on the higher resolution ones of the displays you can see that the MZ-RH1 is using two small displays instead of a single wide display. I would guess that they did this for cost reasons, because even though MZ-RH10/MZ-M100 costs more than the MZ-RH910/MZ-M10, the OLED display is smaller than the LCD display. Still loads better than backlit LCD. Note: Hi-speed USB 2.0 is the 480 mbits/sec while full-speed is the 12.0 mbits/sec. Don't use phrases like "MZ-RH1 is capable of full USB2.0" when you don't really mean it. Besides, the press releases clearly say "Hi-Speed USB". However, the JP press release also lists the recording times for transferring from computer, and the numbers match the ones given for the MZ-RH10 in its manual. So, the MZ-RH1 may not be any faster than what we already have available to us. This looks to be an upgraded MZ-NH1, since they list SP recording onto Regular MD. I wonder if it will also have time stamping. Hope at least it drives MZ-NH1 prices down.

I did the mod over the weekend. It works. Thanks, Todd and MDCF! I finger-drilled the holes in the board because I was too cheap to buy a real drill. I bought the bits and twirled it on the PCB to make the holes. It took a while but the results were good and I didn't have to worry about wielding a heavy drill on a populated PCB. The biggest pain was with making a hole in the back plate. I had to ask a friend with a real drill to make the holes in the metal for the optical transmitter. Then I used a Dremel to corner-out the round hole into a square. I'm still not sure how the really nice square holes in pictures were made.

A few weeks ago, I bought an MZ-M100, which is physically identical to the MZ-RH10. The first disc I put into it was an MD from '97 that I had recorded in my MZ-R30. I was really careful in putting in the disc, so I was pretty surprised when I ejected the disc the shutter remained open. Not sure if it was just the unit, but it's interesting that you had the same problem. I also noticed that the M100 had scratched the top surface of the disc -- not the casing, but the actual disc media itself. This also happened to the (transparent blue cased) Hi-MD that came with the M100. But it didn't happen for the other MDs I had -- some other new blue Hi-MDs and some '98-'99 sony, memorex, and maxells. You might want to check your discs if it keeps leaving the shutter open. I got an MZ-RH910 last week, and it's been treating the discs better. I actually like it better than the M100 because it doesn't hide the track title. Is there some long-term reliability issue with OLED? Why does the M100 turn off most pixels when it's playing while the MZ-RH910 doesn't? I'm quite dissappointed though -- I didn't realize that the second-gen Hi-MD units were so mechanically loud compared to the R30, especially with the pre-reading that it does. Yes yes I know R30 doesn't pre-read it just buffers. But the pre-reading scratching noises are so much louder than the disc spinning it's just annoying. Again, might just be my units, but I saw the other post from someone who made a recording of the track changing noise. I did so as well to compare the R30 and M100 noise, each recording the other using the mic that came with the M100. It was pretty obviuous to me which one was mechanically louder.