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I HAVE A GREAT IDEA..... give 50 free downloads from connect! and a discounted coupon for 50 more that way people would have some experence from sonys connect store and would have hopefully downloaded 100 songs legally. this would promote hi-md and the connect store all on 1 pop. if people looked at the retail price for downloaded songs they would realize they got 100 songs very very cheap while at the same time. whey would get used to hi-md. tehy would tell their friends and soon lost of people would know!!!!

[WaywardTraveller]

To be quite honest, this entire discussion thread has been recurrent since, oh, what - the 1990s?

I don't know much about the market dynamics of (Hi-)MD...everyone knows that Sony could have done a LOT more to market it - i.e. make some COOL commercials, and hey - what would have happened if we saw people using minidiscs in movies or something? But I think MD is destined to be at least a niche market.

Before everyone starts naysaying and foretelling doom, keep in mind that (ok, well, as far as I know) MD is HUGE in Japan and fairly well-established in Asia in general. There are still LOTS of units out there, thus a market certainly for media and (perhaps downsized?) new generations of units.

I've so far "converted" a couple of people to the format...my bro's gf bought a cheap NH600 and I got my audiophile friend to buy an RH910...both are perfectly happy

Yes, living in Toronto I've found it difficult to find a lot of Hi-MD stuff (they sell the castrato version of the NH600 here - namely the 600D) - but this must be said - the Sony Store staff in Toronto are IDIOTS. First they tell me that I can order ANY Sony product whatsoever and have it delivered to ANY Sony Store in Toronto for pick-up; THEN when I take them up on this offer to try and get a battery charger one guy hands me a card for this "authorized Sony accesories dealer" in Toronto that is perfectly useless! Some of them don't even know what MDs are - they ask me if I'm REALLY looking for mini-DVD discs! They're probably all right if you wanna buy a plasma-screen TV or something, but apart from the mainstream stuff I could get more intelligent advice from FutureShop...

Dear Sony - it wouldn't take much at ALL to market MDs if we focus on the clear advantages over MP3 players. Make the right commercial and there'll be a distinct upswing!! Hell, why not directly attack iPod by making a commercial with a direct comparison between one person with Hi-MD and one person with iPod, ending with the iPod person's unit getting pickpocketed?

peace

WaywardTraveller

Edited March 3, 2006 by WaywardTraveller

[robmill]

I like the iPod comparison to HiMD. I am not only satisfied with my HiMD, but I also have non-NETMD and NETMD units I still use.

As a foot note, my neiphew has a nice little setup in his car, (well he used to) iPOD, connected into his Alpine Head Unit,

Until someone busted into the car took the faceplate to the head unit and got away with his iPOD,,,,,

And not accounting for brains,,,,,all his music that he ever had, he moved to his iPOD and sold off the CDs,,,,,

I had to rub it in,,,now see if you had a MD in the car,,,all you would have to replace was the MD unit.

Robert

[metal]

Before everyone starts naysaying and foretelling doom, keep in mind that (ok, well, as far as I know) MD is HUGE in Japan and fairly well-established in Asia in general.

I don't know other countries in Asia, but in Hong Kong, MD market, which was extremely popular about 4 or 5 years ago, has been rapidly declining for past two years. Some large chain stores have completely removed all MD units in past few months.

[dex Otaku]

Some thoughts:

* HiMD != MD. If you're going to talk about both in the same sentence, please do differentiate between them.

* MD is not, never was, and never will be an audiophile format, regardless of how much you want to convince yourself of such.

* HiMD can not compete with formats like UMD or even CDRW for that matter. MO media are simply TOO SLOW to satisfy Joe Sixpack.

* MD's death [which I take it as having happened around 2002, when development of the format appears to have officially ceased, though one could argue that with Type R encoding [sP mode] and Type S playback [MDLP modes] things basically were frozen] does not imply the death of HiMD.

* You're trying to save a format whose last remaining large market [Japan] is also dead at this point.

* At 14 years since it's introduction here, that's not actually that bad a life-cycle for the format. Accept that it's time to move on, and that if you don't, you will be dealing with an unsupported, orphaned format. You can set it up next to your Amiga 600 if you like.

* The following point is setting aside that MD was, in North America in particular, basically an orphan format right from the get-go. The market went from early adopters to enthusiasts, and never penetrated very far.

Betamax, DAT, blah blah blah. Betamax and DAT didn't die because of Sony. In fact, in the case of Betamax, Sony were part of the home video revolution [and took the brunt of the lawsuit which despite failing was the real cause of its death, JVC just stepped in at the right moment with VHS to take over the market]. Asde from which, here in North America everyone always brings up the Betamax argument.. usually without having a hot clue as to what the real situation was.. and never knowing anything about the other formats that existed in Europe at the same time [Philips SV-1000, anyone?] which also eventually died out [for reasons entirely different from Beta's].

DAT failed because of the same thing; SCMS was added to make up for the RIAA's concerns about digital copying, but by that time [before it's official, "legal" release to consumers in North America and Europe] it was already dead in the water as a consumer product.

MD is a entirely different case - it didn't fail because of copy protection concerns or lawsuits, it failed [in my opinion, and specifically meaning in North America] because of its few tangible advantages to the average user, and more specifically due to its exorbitantly high cost; here in Canada even the lowest models of portables didn't fall below the $700 range until netMD came out, and those less expensive models didn't record. I still remember [between about 1993 and 1997] going to look at the MD recorders at the Sony Store here [when there was one] and gagging on the $750-$1,500 price tags; right next to them was a portable DAT recorder for the same price, that recorded in linear PCM. Neither formats sold except to the few eccentrics who had money to burn and did portable recording.

Most people around here still have no idea what they're looking at when you pull out a MD or HiMD portable to change discs or record settings. They look at them as a curiosity, intrigued that you can record, and quickly lose interest while they sit dual-booting their iPods to look things up on Wikipedia to settle arguments at the pub.

Sony did not market the format well here, and compared to the continuously dropping price of CD players around the time that MD came out, there was absolutely no incentive for the average consumer to show any interest in it at all.

The broadcast radio and TV industries picked up the format and kept it alive in professional and semipro use for most of the 1990s. In some places this is still basically the only market that exists for the format [CBC radio still use their MZ-R37s and 57s every day for location recording].

The basic fact is that most consumers aren't interested in either MD or HiMD even if you tell them about them; both are too little, too late compared to hdd and flash players. Most people also have no need to do portable recording - the one reason why anyone I know around here ever considers either MD or HiMD [and most of those people are now switching to flash-based voice recorders, because they're cheaper and easier to use with computers, i.e. no SonicStage for uploading, and are generally more robust - and there's no fiddling with discs].

The actual death knell of MD was, though .. and again, this is opinion .. the introduction of CD-R and its subsequent rapidly-falling prices for both writers and media. The reasons and comparisons are obvious enough that I feel no need to elucidate. The fact that blank CDs cost around a dime and will ultimately play in nearly all CD players in existence almost completely removes all incentives to look at MD or HiMD for home-recordable use. And, as I already pointed out, most people have no need for portable recording .. and in terms of portable players, there are myriad other options that will serve them far better, far faster, in far higher capacities now.

As far as car and home HiMD decks go, Sony have little to no incentive to work on these as products. The market for them is incredibly small, and few who don't already use the format would have any interest in either. This isn't something where a "switch" campaign would have any effect at all. It's likely that any investment in bringing HiMD to the home or car markets with decks would in fact be nothing more than a money-wasting proposition on their part; either they'll have to swallow the costs to keep the prices low [losing money with each sale], or they'll pass the entire cost on directly to the consumer [high prices but zero profit], which really - that highly resembles the case with MD in North America all through the 90s, I'd say.

I would surmise that Sony look at the decks question as being determined by the existing portables market - i.e. if lots of us buy lots of HiMD equipment, they might make the deck because the market is shown to be large enough for it not to be a complete waste of development, manufacturing, marketing, and shipping costs on their part. I think the likelihood of it happening is pretty slim. That said, I also think a component deck is far more likely in any case than a car unit ever will be.

We are all doing little more than flogging a dead horse, here.

* The following point is setting aside that MD was, in North America in particular, basically an orphan format right from the get-go. The market went from early adopters to enthusiasts, and never penetrated very far.

That should have read, "The preceding point. . ."

[MDGB2]

* MD is not, never was, and never will be an audiophile format, regardless of how much you want to convince yourself of such.

The DACs in some Sony MD decks came directly from their SACD players, and able to hold their own against a sepparates CD player costing nealy twice as much.

Still beats the h*ll out of MP3, which is what the white ear-phone brigade favour these days...

Edited March 4, 2006 by MDGB2

[dex Otaku]

The DACs in some Sony MD decks came directly from their SACD players, and able to hold their own against a separates CD player costing nealy twice as much.

This may be true [as is the fact that many decks asof about 1996 had 20-bit ADCs and could actually exceed CD's dynamic range with a compressed format]. The quality of the components is not necessarily the thing at issue, though.

ATRAC encoding, regardless of how good many of us hold it up to be, is still a lossy compression format. Most of the audiophiles I have ever met would rather listen to vinyl than to any digital format that features roughly 5:1 compression [fom 16-bit sources].

This is perhaps an entirely separate argument in itself: if it's lossy, it's not audiophile-quality.

Still, it's just my opinion.

[garcou]

DAT failed because of the same thing; SCMS was added to make up for the RIAA's concerns about digital copying, but by that time [before it's official, "legal" release to consumers in North America and Europe] it was already dead in the water as a consumer product.

MD is a entirely different case - it didn't fail because of copy protection concerns or lawsuits, it failed [in my opinion, and specifically meaning in North America] because of its few tangible advantages to the average user, and more specifically due to its exorbitantly high cost; here in Canada even the lowest models of portables didn't fall below the $700 range until netMD came out, and those less expensive models didn't record. I still remember [between about 1993 and 1997] going to look at the MD recorders at the Sony Store here [when there was one] and gagging on the $750-$1,500 price tags; right next to them was a portable DAT recorder for the same price, that recorded in linear PCM. Neither formats sold except to the few eccentrics who had money to burn and did portable recording.

Most people around here still have no idea what they're looking at when you pull out a MD or HiMD portable to change discs or record settings. They look at them as a curiosity, intrigued that you can record, and quickly lose interest while they sit dual-booting their iPods to look things up on Wikipedia to settle arguments at the pub.

Sony did not market the format well here, and compared to the continuously dropping price of CD players around the time that MD came out, there was absolutely no incentive for the average consumer to show any interest in it at all.

The broadcast radio and TV industries picked up the format and kept it alive in professional and semipro use for most of the 1990s. In some places this is still basically the only market that exists for the format [CBC radio still use their MZ-R37s and 57s every day for location recording].

The basic fact is that most consumers aren't interested in either MD or HiMD even if you tell them about them; both are too little, too late compared to hdd and flash players. Most people also have no need to do portable recording - the one reason why anyone I know around here ever considers either MD or HiMD [and most of those people are now switching to flash-based voice recorders, because they're cheaper and easier to use with computers, i.e. no SonicStage for uploading, and are generally more robust - and there's no fiddling with discs].

The actual death knell of MD was, though .. and again, this is opinion .. the introduction of CD-R and its subsequent rapidly-falling prices for both writers and media. The reasons and comparisons are obvious enough that I feel no need to elucidate. The fact that blank CDs cost around a dime and will ultimately play in nearly all CD players in existence almost completely removes all incentives to look at MD or HiMD for home-recordable use. And, as I already pointed out, most people have no need for portable recording .. and in terms of portable players, there are myriad other options that will serve them far better, far faster, in far higher capacities now.

As far as car and home HiMD decks go, Sony have little to no incentive to work on these as products. The market for them is incredibly small, and few who don't already use the format would have any interest in either. This isn't something where a "switch" campaign would have any effect at all. It's likely that any investment in bringing HiMD to the home or car markets with decks would in fact be nothing more than a money-wasting proposition on their part; either they'll have to swallow the costs to keep the prices low [losing money with each sale], or they'll pass the entire cost on directly to the consumer [high prices but zero profit], which really - that highly resembles the case with MD in North America all through the 90s, I'd say.

I would surmise that Sony look at the decks question as being determined by the existing portables market - i.e. if lots of us buy lots of HiMD equipment, they might make the deck because the market is shown to be large enough for it not to be a complete waste of development, manufacturing, marketing, and shipping costs on their part. I think the likelihood of it happening is pretty slim. That said, I also think a component deck is far more likely in any case than a car unit ever will be.

We are all doing little more than flogging a dead horse, here.

That should have read, "The preceding point. . ."

Waiting that a lot of himd portables are sold before commercializing decks and car units is an error from Sony, because himd gets his full potential as an audiophile and the most easy to use medium in a car (I know a friend that used md in the pass , now has Ipod but still uses his md car unit: nothing can compete with md in a car!).

Note that this friend never heard of Himd, so don't tell Sony ever advertised it.

Note that Onkyo produces himd deck (japan only...) , so don't tell a giant like Sony cannot do the same.

It wouldn't be expensive for example to take old MDS-ja 20ES and just change optical and encoding/decoding circuitery : this would be a fantastic audiophile deck!

Idem with an old style car unit.

And if, as you mean Sony don't even has the money to waste for it, how can you explain they found money to waste in changing format of boxes with first 1GB DISC, and changing stamp screen format with blue 1GB himd? for these stupid and useless changes they had to modify entire MD production lines!!! REALLY SONY STRATEGY WAS IMCOMPREHENSIBLE BUT: a change has come with SS 3.4 , that let us hope Sony will liberate the full potential of HiMD .

Edited March 5, 2006 by garcou