minidix

Good job, Superboy! Better than most of the "professional" views on the minidisc phenomenon. And you put the finger on the problem (unfortunetely, the problem is Sony itself, or at least Sony electronics/Sony Music schizophrenia). Very good point about the addictiveness of the minidisc (the disc, if not the machines). I don't find the discs exactly as sexy as you do , but I agree they spell a fetish-like charm over everyone. They' re the bastard children of the 3.5' floppy disc and the CD and got an inborn charisma they parents don't have , but it's natural, they were born in the times when the music wasn't yet completely dematerialised and were meant to be the audiophile's ultimate dream. (The 1GB Hi-md still is. Something like a several bucks Microdrive disk, but not as damn fragile). And it's not fair they have no legitimate succesor (the ugly and ubreliable CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs are not the ones, nor those phone SIMM-like flash memory cards, nor the bulky harddisks)... P.S. After reading your blog, I have now the strenght to confess: My name is Minidix and I'm a minidisc addict...

I don't want to upset the Atrac fans, but maybe the best compromise between sound quality and space is the 160 kb\s VBR bitrate, considered "transparent" even by some "golden ears" (192 Kb\s minimum for CBR). And, of course, it's MP3. Is's not a disadvantage, on the contrary, maybe some day you'll want that disk or track back on your computer and if that MD is the only copy you kept of your music, you may spare the quality loss or effort of transcoding or playing digitally and re-encoding it for another player. By the way, can someone tell me, which Lame should I choose to encode mp3s at 160 kb\s VBR ? Sorry, the question should sound "which Lame setting should I choose..."

The problem is no matter how brilliant an idea or broduct is, America makes or breaks it. And for those fat ass Americans Jay Leno talks about (almost every night ) ) the notion of portable means in-car portable, because they rarely get out of their fat car, only for sleeping (but not always for eating ) Because of them one could see in people's bulged pockets, even few years ago, those gigantic analog cell phones and I still see people with those huge, ridiculous "portable" mp3 CD players banging on their hip, hanged on their shoulder like a purse and often IN a normal size purse (they can't be actually carried on the belt) Not even the 8 cm CD-ROM (there were few portable players for them, I remember one from Philips, there was even a portable 8cm CD player/writer) did't catch up, even they were "almost" portable... Remember Divx? Not the software, few years before that it was a new DVD standard, meant for film rental, which allowed every one to get a film from any superstore but not buying it, just paying the same price as at video renting shops (actually less, because they didn't need to pay those wise guys that always say "sorry, we don't keep foreign language films" or "you have to try again Monday, maybe someone returns the (only) copy". You simply could keep the disk home for ever and pay (thru the modem included into the player) the same modest wiewing tax every (few) times you wanted to watch the fim again, or even the "silver tax"which unlocked the film for ever if you even wanted to watch the film 1001 times (but still was cheaper than is buying a film on DVD today). But Divx Company bankrupted soon (and generously unlocked online all the disks it ever saled), because of the same fat ass-hole people which couldn't accept to pay again (even it was only a fraction from the price of buying a film DVD) for an object they thought they already owned because it was in their shopping cart at the supermarket . So if it didn't bother them to queue at the video rental shop twice a week (no problem. If you don't have to walk to, why not? ), the people from the rest of the world (and I mean Europe and Asia) was deprived of this briliant renting system I'm shure they were smart(er) enough to embrace Instead there are today some stupid video renting ideas, like the DVD whose metal layer oxidises some hours after you get it out from his plastic bag !!!!!

I don't own a RH1, but according to the first test, which I read some time ago, it wasn't much higher. Anyway, far below USB 2.0

The RH1 is capable of ~1MB\s transfer speed. As you can see, is faster than realtime. It's the same or better than a 6X CD-RW burner

It's a shame Sony gave use the ultimate recording tool, the RH1, but without ATRAC lossless RECORDING (or, at least for playback, a REAL Atrac Lossless format). The problem of the lossless archiving cold be a problem no more. Maybe for the next generation Hi-MD. And, why not, hardware playback support for other codecs like AAC and WMA (which both have a lossless option) ...

Check this out: http//usbcell.com. Don't you whish, now more than ever, RH1 had a side-car for battery ?

- No, it won't make the unit thicker. Like camcorders, it will have the zoom on one side, not perpendicular to the face of the unit. And it's no need for the lens to swivel , the display will. 180 degrees better. So it will be just little longer, but have that camcorder feel. Just to emphasize its video capabilities, like some clamshell cell phones do . - Battery life for flash and video will be better with a better battery . It's the one and only reason good enough to ditch the sidecar box for alkaline battery like they did for RH1 (but for no reason) - Using Mpeg4 not Mpeg2, 1 MB\s sustained rate like RH1 has it's more than enough for full NTSC and PAL video resolution. But I agree with the need for advertising. It's just a matter of will for Sony to make a video Ipod killer. But they do not have the will, not the power

I agree with Lecram. Without new media or codecs, it can't be considered a new generation. To be a third gen Hi-MD device, it has at least to record in Atrac Loseless. Anyway, it would be stupid to record only in disk hungry PCM or lossy (lousy) bitrates again.

Not only me, but MILIONS would buy a 3-rd gen Hi-MD unit, which should make it an i-pod killer if: 1. It willl be MARKETED. People don't know hi-md even exists. When they know, they tend to like it. 2. It will cost less than 200$. Not having a harddisk must reflect into the retail price. 3. Will use cheaper (2-3$) and hopefully easier to find 1GB hi-md disks or 7-8$ 2GB or larger disks 4. Will play natively (and correctly) MP3, (so it can be marketed as mp3 player) and Atrac Lossless, maybe other formats too, FLAC being a must 5. Will allow to play music transfered by drag&drop (at least mp3 and FLAC) 6. Will record natively in lossless compress formats (at least Atrac Lossless) 7. Will be faster for transfering music and data, USB 2.0 worthly (at least 1.5MB/s) 8. Could be used for mobile transfer and storage from digicams and phones (so it has to be a USB hub too, or at lest use USB On-The-Go or a wireless protocol) Another killer product will be a Hi-md digital camera (but not a joke like DH10P; why on the earth buy that when I can do the same quality photos with my cell phone?) with at least 3X optical zoom and decent (al least 640x480 NTSC and 768x514 SECAM) mpeg4 video capability with sound (Atrac quality sound). People need a good excuse to carry a music player larger than a keychain (harddisk being a bad excuse), and a photocamera which sort of doubles as a MD camcorder is a good one. It has to have a large oled flipscreen for taking images in the camcorder style (180 degrees flip better, I don't want scratches on my oled when the unit is in my pocket and I can simply use the remote (a FM radio one better). It can be aggressively marketed as camera AND multimedia jukebox at a decent price.

I wasn't talking about music (maybe mentioning CD instead of CD-ROM was the cause) I was talking about document files and software (which, being text, are compressed with an average ratio of 1:2). The compression as part of the OS is done in real time by the CPU, during the transfer, and the amount of data bits tranfered per second is exactly double. The 500Kb write speed of the MD is so slow (hundred of times slower then harddisks, and drivespace was designed for speeding the harddisks)that any method for speeding without giant efforts is welcomed. Maybe even the superspeedy USB 2.0 keychains could benefit from realtime compression (it's not sure, but for the turtle speed of the minidisc, it's 100% certain. The question was if the Hi-MD supported it well or not) But it's another natural fenomenon happening here again and again (and that's why I was tracking the forums so many years without participating until now): when someone asks "hey guys, is it possible to do this or that with the minidisc?" (in my case, "Someone running win 98 or owning a Hi-MD, please try, if it works you'll be the first to take profit"), the answer is less often yes or no, but for sure "why doing that? I never do this, I allways ........!)" Maybe the format isn't doomed, and any idea meant to bypass its shotcomings deserves some consideration. I don't think the newcomers or minidisc fans want to hear "it's stupid you even thought about that" (especially when it isn't). They will keep out if they are not so confident

I'm not considering to use Hi-MD for data archiving (maybe for music archiving), only for transporting several megs of files between home and work, where there are more computers running Win 98 and Millenium than Win XP. So all of them have Drivespace3 (which now is quite reliable) as a part of the OS and automatically recognize and write compressed disks. At home I run XP, (so no more Drivespace3) but I'll install the last version of Stacker, which is fully compatible with Drivespace3. (I think I've read somewhere that anyway Microsoft used the more reliable technology of Stacker for Drivespace3). Also is not so important for me to have 100% accuracy of the data, if the files are not usable I can get them again the next day. But the speed is kinda important, also to make use of compresssion transparently, without the bother of using compression softwares twice a day But people, aren't you curious if it works? It could translate in MDs twice larger (it's interesting for the old 80 min. minidiscs to hold the content of a CD) and twice faster)... 1Mb/s sounds anyway better than 500kb/s. I'm tracking the format from 1998 but I don't own a minidisc unit yet, so I can't try it myself. Being able use it decently as a data drive too could trigger me to finally make the step of buying one online. The shipping will be expensive, but here in Romania can't find even Net-MD units

You mean you tried and didn't work? What was the problem?

Has anyone tried to use Drivespace on Hi-MD disks? Theoretically it has to work, Hi-MDs are FAT 32 disks. You will get 2GB data space on a single MD but most important, the transfer speed may double. For such a slow device like minidisc, it's important. OK, you won't be able to use a compressed disk for music. But for data it would be great

I was afraid of that. So I won't be able to use a player only unit for Mp3's (if Sony will ever build one) and the NHF800 as a downloader. Thank you very much for the answer

Is it possible to download mp3's on MD disks with a first gen. Hi-MD unit like MZ-NHF800 using Sonic Stage and without transcoding? I just want to listen the mp3's later, when I'll buy a new unit, a second gen. one (or maybe third ).