Anti-trust + Sony? Check This One Out!

[IH8SOHNEE]

I am fairly sure that it is illegal for any company to delete content from your hdd without your consent... I recently bought a HIMD player and got burned by the Direct MP3 playback lie.

try this: (use a new disc for this just in case)

record somthin simple through mic or line.

Copy the HMDHIFI dir to your hard drive. (any where you want)

transfer the recording through sonic stage.

Delete track from hard drive

Now try it again. (this shold erase content from disc (grayish legal)

Ok, not the illegal part;

Copy the content you copied to your hard drive back to where you found it on the MD.

Open sonic stage.

2 things will happen:

1 the disc will become corrupt

2 the folder you created will have its files deleted.

.....

Later I am going to see what happens if I ZIP it up and or place a non related file with it.

It is illegal for companies to remove content from hard drive without your concent. THe EULA states from the MD disc, but not unrelated forlders stored else-where.

Game companies (including Sony) has done this before and got class actions whipped aginst them.

I would like to know if anyone else things this is questinable practice..

I cant sell this POS because it was on sale with out a loss in resale. When I had bought this, I had expected to dump the mp3s to the MD root and the player would play them.. I was wrong.. Has anyone else noticed that when you dont use the ATRAC format theyre hardware pulls back quality? I noticed this with the MP3 CD player I junked because it sucked, and the RH910 follows suit..

I also noticed that the sound quality sucks in comparison to the Net MD NE410 drive my friend has.. Mine clipps easly but his goes louder (yes, mine is USA version)

I welcome replies be it good or bad. I would like to know where you all stand on your sony devices.

thanks

(EDIT, my bad, during the second transfer, it asked if I wanted to delete from disc.)

Edited July 10, 2005 by IH8SOHNEE

[IH8SOHNEE]

hmm, didnt delete files when i changed HMDHIFI to somthin else. None the less theyt still delete stuff from my hdd wihtout my permission

[dex Otaku]

Most of us [around here] understood since early this year [when MP3 playback was announced on gen2 units] that MP3 playback would not be true drag & drop. DRM [and probably encryption] is [are] applied through downloading with SonicStage.

MP3 playback is crippled, yes, but I at least find that the convenience of being able to download without re-ripping or transcoding exceeds the loss [look here]. I only use HiMD for portable listening, and I lack good portable 'phones, so EQ is applied at all times in my case. Compensating for the 9dB loss above 1kHz isn't really an issue given this fact.

As for the files being deleted from your hard disc, people have been trying that method of copying HiMDs since they became available, and failing with it - as should be expected, given the DRM system Sony have implemented.

My hypothesis on Sony's stance [note the word hypothesis]:

Since the HMDHIFI folder and the files therein are encrypted and locked to a key [original to the disc itself], the sole purposes one could have for copying them are to either reverse-engineer Sony's DRM and encryption [doing so is illegal] or to use tools made by reverse-engineering their system to copy data from HiMDs. Sony give you the [rather imperfect] means to both copy and back up your data in other ways, so in their eyes there is likely no reason [or excuse] for doing this. [Obviously, they've never lost any of their own recordings because their own software occasionally eats it for lunch.]

It's also possible that because the data is key-encrypted and contained in manners exclusive to Sony, those files themselves [though not the data, i.e. audio contents] could possibly be construed as Sony's legal property. If anyone knows any copyright lawyers, I'll gladly refute this admittedly thin theory.

The files that you copied may be elsewhere, but they are by no means unrelated.

In any case, it sounds to me as though you've been burned by a bad case of uninformed purchasing.

[ROMBUSTERS]

Besides the deleting stuff from your HDD without your knowledge, the rest of your claims regarding MP3s, as dex has stated, are just from lack of understanding of the product before you made your purchase. The HiMD system is an all-encrypted portable music recorder. Support for MP3, just like Atrac, changes nothing but the available codecs on the recorder.

Edited July 10, 2005 by ROMBUSTERS

[Syrius]

I agree with Dex's post, however, if SS deletes files that have nothing to do with their copy-my-eye-right, that's major doo-doo.

Psst. Hi-MDRenderer. Take two of those and call me in the morning.

[Syrius]

I was unable to get a single file deleted. Of course, the disc appears blank after I transfer the folder back to it from the HDD, but that's due to the DRM restrictions. Which do not affect me in the minimum.

[IH8SOHNEE]

I guess i will simply deal with it, but with this, I will simply do a bit more indept reserch before buying.... I knew I should have downloaded and read the manual first

Thanks all for your input.

...another company needs an optical system like this without so many restrictions.. Ither you are tied to the format or you dont know exactly what your buying(like me.)

Edited July 11, 2005 by IH8SOHNEE

[ROMBUSTERS]

agreed, although Sony owns the rights to MiniDisc and what they say goes, including the codecs, etc

[Syrius]

I guess i will simply deal with it, but with this, I will simply do a bit more indept reserch before buying.... I knew I should have downloaded and read the manual first

←

Hi-MDRenderer is your friend.

[ROMBUSTERS]

Hi-MDRenderer is your friend.

←

indeed, ALWAYS make sure to use this first - just in case

I do, even though SonicStage has NEVER trashed one of my uploadings, just to be on the safe side

[sagivh]

Sony will always say this is a BUG and by mistake.

This thing is one of the reasons i decided to sell all my MD/HiMD equip and buy an Iriver, which gives me peace of mind while recording.

I can:

Reocord my own music and know it wont be DRM

Transfer with 0 hassle to my pc

Delete files i transfered from my PC with no worry

Transfer my own music to as many computers as I want

Drag and Drop mp3's

X10 times faster while moving files from/to PC

DJ Sessions in WAV uncompressed can now be more then 3 hours..

I admit, i missed my MD at first, but now, i dont even remember why its such a wonder to begin with.

[hobgoblin]

now if iriver could come out with a replaceable microdrive or something i would be interested...

thats the major feature for me, replaceable media. oh and cheap ones to...