Is MD dead?

[Michael1980]

Hi,

I was wondering, with the new SS3.4 being released and all (new players released after the 2nd gen HiMD as well), has there been any official mention from Sony that Mindisc is no more?

Or are they just waiting for their cost-saving restructuring to complete (closure of plants, no more random product lines etc)? Because as mentioned before, there is no better solution for recording than HiMD, and now, there is no DRM!

Cheers

[MDGB2]

There are rumours of new units, but don't think anything is confirmed.

It's a case of 'wait and see'.

[Spare Tire]

Is jesus dead? No, he'll resurrect after 3 days battling ipods and apples (you know, the instrument of the devil, the fruit of temptation) in hell. Blessed be those who believe without having see.

Edited February 2, 2006 by Spare Tire

[atrain]

think mark twain

[Sony_Fan]

Personally, I have no idea why Minidisc did not replace cassettes and CDs back in the 90s. The ease of recording in almost CD quality sound should have dominated the market, but Sony made it too expensive. I remember when music stores sold pre-recorded MDs of music artists. But very few were sold because very few people had MD players because they were too expensive. I think Sony should have cut the price in half and taken the losses with the hopes that it would pay off in the future. Also, I have never seen a T.V. ad for MD players. It looks like Sony didn't even try to promote and encourage consumers to swith to MD. They had something big on their hands and they didn't take advantage of it. So many manufacturers have stopped making MD units because of unpopularity for the same reasons stated before. Where are the Hi-MD commercials, billboard ads and internet ads? No where! And that's probably where MD is going.

I found this on the internet. I hope I'm wrong about MD.

"Sony launched the MiniDisc format in 1991, and has continued its evolution, since. In 2000, the MiniDisc adopted "MDLP"(MiniDisc Long Play) to quadruple the recording time. The following year, MiniDisc took the first steps into the networked era with "Net MD" and made the leap to "Hi-MD" in 2004. Today, including Sony, approximately 80 companies support the MD format. Approximately 100 million MD devices and 1.6 billion MD media have been shipped cumulatively since 1992 (according to Sony Corporation)."

[tekdroid]

Hi,

I was wondering, with the new SS3.4 being released and all (new players released after the 2nd gen HiMD as well), has there been any official mention from Sony that Mindisc is no more?

If there was, you'd probably see it here, and people would be either very disappointed or very relieved, and the thread would balloon to stratospheric proportions I doubt you'd miss it. There have been rumours Sony is continuing, and personally, whether the rumours are true or not, I believe it to be true by just looking at what makes sense for Sony and the void that would be left if they decided to can the Hi-MD project so soon. It wouldn't make business sense.

Personally, I'm 100% positive they'll continue making Hi-MD.

They just dropped DAT, and it would make no sense for them to drop MD (unless they were bringing out a whole bunch of new affordable flash recorders we don't know about). Sony would do nothing radical like that (and if they did, these recorders wouldn't be so affordable when having to run off Sony's MemoryStick flash formats, ifyaknowwhattamean. Their ultra-expensive flash recorder is a deliberate attempt at positioning flash media and recorders at a premium, but who knows how long that will last? 'Cause flash is going down in price fast, and the potential to create cheap units should be here and now. Anyhooo, they seem to be leaving MDs for the more affordable market.

There's always a market segment demands quality portable recording for a not-too-expensive price and that will continue to be satisfied by Hi-MD for at least the near-term, IMO. They will milk what they can out of it before dropping it. After all their investment in the format is greater than anyone's.

Or are they just waiting for their cost-saving restructuring to complete (closure of plants, no more random product lines etc)? Because as mentioned before, there is no better solution for recording than HiMD, and now, there is no DRM!

And of course Sony know this, too.

Sidenote:

I wish the no DRM meant we could upload tracks with the write-protect switch on MDs on, so SonicStage could write NOTHING to the discs at all. If you accidentally upload a track that's in your library already, Sony deletes the track on your MD. Not nice to be treated like that. This incosistent and annoying and unexpected behaviour has to go, too - to be truly called no DRM (actually drag and drop with no 'hiding' of data would be...)

Sidenote of sidenote:

A SonicStage GUI overhaul with Quality slider for bitrates and far more intuitive controls to avoid clicking multiple dialogues in SonicStage would be very welcome while we're at it.

I really should stop dreaming aloud, but personally I'm not worried about them canning Hi-MD There's a greater chance to be struck by lightning than that happening (IMO)

Edited February 3, 2006 by tekdroid

[Tom Ellard]

Hi,

I was wondering, with the new SS3.4 being released and all (new players released after the 2nd gen HiMD as well), has there been any official mention from Sony that Mindisc is no more?

The adjustments to Sonic Stage don't really tell you anything about MiniDisc. Sonic Stage is used for the Sony hard drive players, as well as the PlayStation Portable (if you want to use ATRAC that is). Seeing as the audio on Sony's UMD discs is ATRAC and that's also the format of their music downloads, Sonic Stage and ATRAC will go on, MiniDisc or not.

Now that UMD is out, there will never be pre-recorded minidiscs again. Why bother? UMD holds 1.8Gb with pictures and everything.

So that leaves two markets for MD. Little japanese girls that will buy anything cheap and translucent pink, and older blokes that record live concerts. The extreme ends of the scene. (And incidently some of the latter that use avatars of some of the former. ) The girlies can eventually be satisfied with MemoryStick devices and the blokes are happy with a small set of high end devices, that record to ATRAC Lossless. For everybody else there's iPod.

Anyone wanna buy a DAT recorder?

[tekdroid]

The girlies can eventually be satisfied with MemoryStick devices and the blokes are happy with a small set of high end devices, that record to ATRAC Lossless.

Recording to ATRAC lossless. Do u know something we don't?

[dytcs]

Well, I think I'm quite agree with you. Of cause MD is expensive, but what worse is SONY gives so many restrictions to MD, result in you paied for the technology, but you can't use it freely, then who want to pay for it?

In fact, MD did replaced cassettes in Japan in the 90s. In asian contries, you can still find various of NetMD and Hi-MD units easily in the market place now, and there're also some advertisment you can see in sub-way station.

But in US it's totally different. I checked circuit city, radio shark, ultimate electronics without finding the 1G Hi-MD disk. And both circuit city and ultimate electronics is clearancing the last NH-600D for 49.9 USD. Seems like we can only find Hi-MD units on the internet from now on...

BTW, I just got 1 NH600D for 49.9USD in circuit city. The release of Sonicstage 3.4 is a best present for me:)

I'm now considering to buy a unit with analog recording capability because of the un-limited upload capability.

Personally, I have no idea why Minidisc did not replace cassettes and CDs back in the 90s. The ease of recording in almost CD quality sound should have dominated the market, but Sony made it too expensive. I remember when music stores sold pre-recorded MDs of music artists. But very few were sold because very few people had MD players because they were too expensive. I think Sony should have cut the price in half and taken the losses with the hopes that it would pay off in the future. Also, I have never seen a T.V. ad for MD players. It looks like Sony didn't even try to promote and encourage consumers to swith to MD. They had something big on their hands and they didn't take advantage of it. So many manufacturers have stopped making MD units because of unpopularity for the same reasons stated before. Where are the Hi-MD commercials, billboard ads and internet ads? No where! And that's probably where MD is going.

I found this on the internet. I hope I'm wrong about MD.

"Sony launched the MiniDisc format in 1991, and has continued its evolution, since. In 2000, the MiniDisc adopted "MDLP"(MiniDisc Long Play) to quadruple the recording time. The following year, MiniDisc took the first steps into the networked era with "Net MD" and made the leap to "Hi-MD" in 2004. Today, including Sony, approximately 80 companies support the MD format. Approximately 100 million MD devices and 1.6 billion MD media have been shipped cumulatively since 1992 (according to Sony Corporation)."

[metal]

In asian contries, you can still find various of NetMD and Hi-MD units easily in the market place now, and there're also some advertisment you can see in sub-way station.

Don't know about other asian countries but in HK, MD market, which was extremely popular some 3 or 4 years ago, will soon disappear 100% (cuurently is 99%), and basically replaced by MP3 players. Even cassette hardware are more easily found. Real sad.

[dytcs]

Don't know about other asian countries but in HK, MD market, which was extremely popular some 3 or 4 years ago, will soon disappear 100% (cuurently is 99%), and basically replaced by MP3 players. Even cassette hardware are more easily found. Real sad.

That's also the trend I see. Maybe later it will be the same as North America...

[dex Otaku]

Anyone wanna buy a DAT recorder?

Um. You aren't the -actual- Tom Ellard, are you?

[MZ-1]

I don't think MD has to worry until reusuable 1GB flash chips are priced at less than $7 each. MD *might* have trouble when those chips reach $2 each. Otherwise -- let the good times roll!

Paul

[Sony_Fan]

I don't think MD has to worry until reusuable 1GB flash chips are priced at less than $7 each. MD *might* have trouble when those chips reach $2 each. Otherwise -- let the good times roll!

Paul

10 years from now that will be the case and probably an end to MD.

[hobgoblin]

i welcome the day when one can pick up a box of 10-20 small chips that can store 1GB a pop, all for a nice "small" sum...

[Tom Ellard]

Recording to ATRAC lossless. Do u know something we don't?

Yep, I know it takes more than one step

Um. You aren't the -actual- Tom Ellard, are you?

Well I ain't Mavis P Squid.

[dex Otaku]

Well I ain't Mavis P Squid.

No really. Don't play with me. Tom Ellard / Severed Heads [is/are] among the reasons why I do some of what I do today. I'm sitting here with the "BIGOT BOOKLET" giggling right now.

[tekdroid]

I don't think MD has to worry until reusuable 1GB flash chips are priced at less than $7 each. MD *might* have trouble when those chips reach $2 each. Otherwise -- let the good times roll!

Paul

I think it depends on the application.

Portable Recording

I think the portable recording market would respond to total unit cost, mostly. Hardware and media. It's not so critical of this market to buy more media, but:

1) longer uninterrupted recording times than MD can offer

2) completely silent operation

and

3) potentially smaller units (due to the use of smaller-sized flash)

4) shockability & rugged reliability

would be big benefits and would win the day for portable recording, I think.

Often after recording, things are mostly dumped to PC for editing or archival onto (cheaper) disc. Or with USB On-The-Go these days, backing up to portable devices is possible, too. Potentially leaving the main recording unit as small and unobtrusive as possible.

Multi-purpose, multi-device flash

The benefit of flash is that those that already have flash media in a decent capacity won't have to buy twice if they buy a portable recorder that uses the same cards. They can simply use the card when the other device is not being used. So that's potentially a real cost-cutter for flash devices, too. Flash readers (for the PC) are dirt cheap, too - so that offsets the higher-cost-per-MB a fair bit as well.

Building a music library

For building up a (portable) music collection, it's hard to go past Hi-MD, and optical discs in general. Optical media is obviously far cheaper than building up collections on flash. But if not requiring very small discs there are cheaper ways of doing things, obviously. It's also very easy for many to archive their collection on DVDs and use a HD-based portable player for everyday access.

Playback

The market is demanding 2GB+ flash players now and the slimmer form-factor is very appealing and these things are 100% jogging-proof and more reliable than mechanical devices (as far as daily use and knocks and dust are concerned). So it's unlikely people will move to something bulkier and heavier and slower for data (like MD) in future unless it offers something to them that's special (like decent recording and/or greater capacity and/or video, or just lower price).

Personally, I think Hi-MD's future for the next 1-3 years is certain, particularly for recording audio on the go, but after that, who knows. Things are changing fast and perceptions of what's 'small' and 'fast' are changing quickly. MD can't keep up in these areas, so its niche will increasingly be recording and creating portable music collections and any other tasks Sony want to give it. I think Sony will want to (continue to) price the units higher than perhaps they should be to reflect their niche in these fields (sales in Australia notwithstanding) and I think we'll see some more interesting innovations in upcoming Hi-MD hardware to entice the buyer.

Personally I'd love the ability to directly connect a Hi-MD walkman to a digital camera's USB port and save pics to it. Little things like that would extend the life of MD and make it more multi-purpose and just a more useful device outside of the more conservative audio world. And that, to me, is one of the more needed applications for digital camera people with the never-enough limited flash in their cameras. If your walkman can double as data storage on-the-go, why buy another device? Get the Hi-MD walkman instead.

At least that's the plan

[Tom Ellard]

No really. Don't play with me. Tom Ellard / Severed Heads [is/are] among the reasons why I do some of what I do today. I'm sitting here with the "BIGOT BOOKLET" giggling right now.

Yes I am that person. www.sevcom.com

[on topic]

I have three of those MiniDisc things, including the camera one (sorry I don't remember model numbers and all that crazy stuff). Apple gave me a Nano, but the girlfriend got passed that. And two of those PSPs.

[/on topic]