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iPod mania hits Japan

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tekdroid Newbie

tekdroid

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Business Week reports that iPods are taking Japan by storm. From the article: It seems iPod mania is alive and well in Japan -- one of the most competitive consumer-electronics markets on the planet. Despite an array of well-entrenched Japanese rivals, such as Sony and Matsushita, the iPod had cornered 51.3% of the digital-music player market as of the end of 2005, up from about 32% in 2004, according to research firm BCN. Sony was a distant second with 16.2%, while Panasonic grabbed just 8.2% of the market.

I hope Apple gets more market share, so the dinosaurs can rethink things.

For instance, I hope crusty Sony management really wakes up and:

*actually attempts to use the products the company makes, namely Hi-MD, then ask themselves what sucks and what doesn't and make changes. Doesn't take a genius.

*drops SonicStage completely for MD (MD is not for the masses and SonicStage is a liability for much of their target market).

*Allow easy copying/back-up of MD-to-MD.

*Kill all encryption on the disc.

(Then I hope Apple do it)

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batfastad Newbie

batfastad

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It will only be a matter of time that the I"pud"s as you put it will increase in quality

Really?

ipods are going to support Atrac and FLAC??

Wow!!!

What's all this comparing ipods to minidisc anyway?

One's a music playback device, minidiscs are primarily a recording device.

The only comparisons you can make are on playback quality, or battery life.

Atrac wins out on quality with ease. Even compared to a 320kbps CBR mp3.

And 15 hours battery on my rh-10 does me for a week. And if it doesn't, I'll just swap in a spare chewing gum battery.

Plus my MZ RH-10 cost £160 from amazon last summer, brand new.

And records at CD quality.

Edited by batfastad
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krydia Newbie

krydia

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Well, this is my very first post on these boards so please be kind :).

The Apple iPod has been an incredible success both here and abroad for the last several years. However, I don't think that is going to continue forever due to several reasons. But before I go into those, I need to tell why I found these boards and the MD format in general.

Back in 2000, I discovered MD technology on a trip I took to Japan. At the time, I was still using CD's and MP3's were confined to PC's and Napster. After coming back, I did my research and decided to take the plunge and get an MD Recorder (a Sony R900). Being the only kid on campus with a MD actually made me stand out, and I was impressed with the audio clarity of the unit.

Now, I really only used the MD for about 2 years before going MP3. In the summer of 2004, I picked up a 40 GB HDD iPod for a good deal of money (~$500). The funny thing was I didn't buy the iPod to play music, as I needed an external hard drive for my data handling for my Master's. Well, what I didn't know then was I had bought a lemon unit from a lemon product line. The 40 GB iPod unit has over a %30 failure rate, which I didn't find out till recently. Needless to say, I began to have my doubts when the unit first failed only 3 days after submitting my thesis.

Ok, fast forward to the present day. My iPod is on it's 4th return back to Apple to be 'repaired'. I am coming to find out more and more that the average life expectancy of an iPod unit is only a little over a year, after that Apple will insist that you buy a new unit rather than fixing the old one. This is not so much a technical issue so much that obsolence is designed into the unit so that the customer will need to replace it after a year or two. They have also had numerous problems with batteries and very recently the displays of the Video iPod and the surface finish of the Nano.

So, being the disgruntled Apple consumer, I decided to look for alternatives to the iPod. While there are other units that grabbed my attention (Creative Zen Vision:M to be specific), I was also not crazy about plunking down another $400 for another unit yet. So, I came back to my trusty MD recorder from yesteryear. A new battery is on the way (this one is dead, hasn't been charged in 4 years) and the MD unit is being put back into service. Funny thing is, I wasn't totally decided till I listened to it, and quickly realized that my MD unit is still very good compared to the iPod I had.

So, here are my reasons why MD has a chance to still be a viable option to the MP3 player, (iPod specifically).

1. Quality/Warranty: The iPod is quickly being seen as unreliable and Apple's customer service non-existant. With multiple class action lawsuits being filed against Apple regarding everything from battery life to surface finish, many people are now no longer buying iPod's after being burned by these issues (myself, for example).

2. Cost: Yes, cost. This ties back in with the Quality/Warranty aspect. Yes, you have to buy optical disks for the MD, but buying a new iPod every 1.5 years is not cheap either. With the costs of current units heading for $500, I would rather buy a few MO disks then being forced to replace my iPod.

3. Repair: The fact that you can replace the battery is huge. It doesn't seem like it at first glance, but being able to replace the battery would have resolved about %80 of the warranty claims when the iPod first came out. Of course, you wouldn't need Apple or a new iPod if that is the case. Being able to change the battery is now being judged very highly even among competitive MP3 players.

4. Sound Quality: I won't go over the technical details of ATRAC and such, there are better threads then this one I'm sure. But the iPod is not known for it's outstanding sound quality. Also, in order to use the iPod, you have to convert EVERYTHING into their proprietary format, which makes it very difficult to use with anything else.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Now this is solely regarding iPod and not so much the other competitors, but with the iPod being the only big game in town as far as MP3 goes, it is the benchmark against everything else. I still like the advantages of MP3, the large storage space and being able to carry them without lugging additional media around is nice. However, the new MO disks are no slouch either, and can carry pretty much all my collection on 2 disks.

Sony has several decisions to make. One is whether to chase after iPod in the MP3 area, or to do something that will leapfrog ahead of Apple. I believe that Sony will push it's Blu-Ray format as a replacement to both MO and CD/DVD technology. And that battle has a lot more at stake than even the Apple battle right now. I believe that Blu-Ray, which is the next evolution from MD, is where Sony is going to make it's next push into the handheld audio sector.

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pauljones52 Newbie

pauljones52

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Great first post krydia. I was tempted to get an ipod a while back but there were a few points that stopped me:

1) I prefer the metal styling of minidisc players

2) No removable battery

3) If I had 40gb of music with me I would constantly be changing tracks!

4) Im worried the ipod screen would get scratched easilly.

5) I hate white headphones lol

6) Although I dont record very much, I would miss the ability to record in PCM if I didnt have it to hand

Just my view, Im sure for others ipod makes perfect sense

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tekdroid Newbie

tekdroid

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I believe that Blu-Ray, which is the next evolution from MD, is where Sony is going to make it's next push into the handheld audio sector.

good points. I have particular aversions to:

1) integrated, non-replaceable batteries

2) reliability of hard drives

Unfortunately we're seeing quite a bit of both in HD and flash devices from Sony and others. All they seem to care about is the unit living through it's warranty. After that, it's not their concern so they don't seem to want to bother. It's nice to see removable batteries in all MD models.

Dunno what you meant by "Also, in order to use the iPod, you have to convert EVERYTHING into their proprietary format, which makes it very difficult to use with anything else."

I think the iPod isn't any more closed than Sony's ATRAC on MD. Given the way ipods play mp3s (without making them sound worse than their native format, like second-generation Hi-MD units do), I'd say Sony is worse in that department.

Portables using blue lasers! Yes please.

Edited by tekdroid
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jonny mac Newbie

jonny mac

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Blu-Ray is not the next evolution of MD, it's the next step for DVDs. I doubt it will ever be used for portable audio as by the time devices have the necessary power efficiency, small size and reliability there will be something else better.

I agree whole-heartedly with the comments on reliability of HDDs. This was the deciding factor for me: when HiMD came out I had to decide to either go with that or get a HDD player. There were many factors involved but the most important one was that HDDs are just not designed for portable use and you cannot reasonably expect one to last long. The failure rates of HDD players are so high because people treat their DAPs as they expect to be able to treat them. Any portable electronic device must be able to withstand a few bumps to be worth it's salt and HDDs just aren't capable. If consumers knew this then they would shy away from them but who's going to tell them? Apple? iRiver? If Sony had said "use MDs because HDDs aren't reliable as a portable medium" they would have been lambasted for bad-mouthing the competition.

For the time being the best solution to high capacity portable media is MD. Flash memory can come close, given a well designed unit, but HDD is simply not even in the race for my hard-earned.

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rayzray Newbie

rayzray

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...... There were many factors involved but the most important one was that HDDs are just not designed for portable use and you cannot reasonably expect one to last long. The failure rates of HDD players are so high because people treat their DAPs as they expect to be able to treat them. Any portable electronic device must be able to withstand a few bumps to be worth it's salt and HDDs just aren't capable. .....

as a piano teacher (going to thier homes); i get to watch many moody students get off the school bus; and as i walk into the house with them; they fling their "back packs" onto and across the floor;

then, later when we try to play along with one of their songs; they go to the back pack and pull out their i-pod that just was thrown and flung across the floor. lol's; i gave up warning them; i figure the parents will finally smarten up and get them an MD/Hi-MD.

(end rant; in runt; outro; will go)

Edited by rayzray
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batfastad Newbie

batfastad

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I agree whole-heartedly with the comments on reliability of HDDs. This was the deciding factor for me: when HiMD came out I had to decide to either go with that or get a HDD player. There were many factors involved but the most important one was that HDDs are just not designed for portable use and you cannot reasonably expect one to last long. The failure rates of HDD players are so high because people treat their DAPs as they expect to be able to treat them. Any portable electronic device must be able to withstand a few bumps to be worth it's salt and HDDs just aren't capable. If consumers knew this then they would shy away from them but who's going to tell them? Apple? iRiver? If Sony had said "use MDs because HDDs aren't reliable as a portable medium" they would have been lambasted for bad-mouthing the competition.

I agree with this totally. Remember when minidiscs were first released all the adverts featured active people, snowboard, sandboarding, mountainbiking etc.

And I havn't found any DAPs that have been as reliable as my Minidisc players. Many of my mates have had minidisc players in the past, some havn't, and guess which ones are always complaining about their DAPs?!

Come on Sony, don't be gits!

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aethyrmaster Newbie

aethyrmaster

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This may not be the right place for this, but I'll put it here and leave it for someone more schooled in where it should go to decide.

Somebody mentioned the PSP and MD based camcorders earlier in the thread. I personally don't think sony is quite ready to give up on MD, just for the fact of UMD.

UMD's obviously aren't just pocket DVD's, the diameter is smaller than that of a pocket CD/DVD. It is, however, just about the same as an MD. I don't know what the difference between Hi-MD and UMD is, but I do know that UMD's are supposed to be around 1.4/1.5 GB capacity, as compared to the 1 GB of Hi-MD.

What type of laser is used for a Hi-MD? Is it IR wavelength, just like CD, or is it visible light, in the red spectrum, like DVD? If all that Sony did in upping from classic MD to Hi-MD is change the disk compression/data structure, and continue to use CD lasers, then the extra capacity found on a UMD could be easily garnered by switching to a DVD laser.....

I don't know if anyone has any more info about this or not, but it's something that I've been thinking about since I first saw a UMD, and my friend was saying how cool and new the disc format was - until I whipped out my N-707 and hit "eject." :P

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batfastad Newbie

batfastad

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Unfortunately although the sizes of UMD and Hi-MD are similar, the formats are massively different.

UMDs are effectively DVD-based optical media. Which is the reason they were so cheap to produce, and quick to get in to mass production for the PSP.

It didn't need investment in whole new mastering production lines etc.

MD and Hi-MD are magneto-optical - which is quite a bit different from plain old optical technology in DVDs and CDs. The main difference is not the laser (I think), but the material used for the disk.

Magneto-optical media is notoriously slow to write to too - compared to flash memory, magnetic disk platters (hard drives), optical / phase change (CDs and DVDs).

More about magneto-optical technologies here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical

What Sony should have done - fair enough, you produce UMDs for games and movies but you would have thought you would make the dimensions similar so a MD / HiMD disk could be read / written to in the same drive. Possibly required an additional laser in the unit for MD / HiMD.

Sony must have thought about it - but I wonder why it didn't happen.

I guess it could be because Sony really wanted to push memory sticks of various kinds to become the #1 flash card format. Plus 1GB memory sticks are way more expensive than a 1GB Hi-MD disk - which must have been Sony's main reason.

Think of the capacity of normal PS1 and PS2 memory cards when they first arrived too - 1MB and 8MB for the PS2. Charge £20 a go for something that every user will need.

I guess people might be more tempted to buy a Sony digital camera if they had a PSP as well, so they could view the photos on a larger screen without going anywhere near a computer.

Dunno why.

But it's a real shame for Hi-MD. :(

Edited by batfastad
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garcou Newbie

garcou

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MD-view (MD DATA 2) for camcorder used DVD lavelength : 650MB = 4 x 170MB of 80 min MD (CD type error correction)

With combination of 1GB HiMD technology (DWDD + HDD type error corection) it could reach 4 or 5 GB!

Edited by garcou
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