Sad for the MD Engineers

[unignal]

Seems like those engineers invested their effort on Hi-MD, photo enabled Hi-MD, and the product never really caught on with the masses.

Various interesting progresses were made by their effort, but due to lack of publicity and demands, we see the MD line being pulled out of so many countries.

Cool Models, like the RH10 and DH10P are discontinued.

I pity the engineers.

Salute!

[pata2001]

Let's see the DH10P for example, $500 MSRP. Who's going to buy that if you can get a 60GB iPod for $400? Let's face it. If Sony had had put the DH10P's MSRP at, let's say, $200, I'm sure it will attract more people. When the street price reached ~$250, many people are getting the DH10P (including me). Sell it at $99, and I'm sure it will a bestseller. Advertising would had helped too. Yeah, I pity the engineers. Their excellent designs are overshadowed by stupid top execs who cannot even do marketing properly.

[atrain]

also i've always thought sony's cutting edge designs either get redrafted by a comittee with an agenda or just orphaned.

i'll be intrigued to see if the 7" lacd dvd players are even in outlet malls in 6 months.

[tekdroid]

Seems like those engineers invested their effort on Hi-MD, photo enabled Hi-MD, and the product never really caught on with the masses.

Various interesting progresses were made by their effort, but due to lack of publicity and demands,

I would say lack of compelling feature-set, especially given the prices they were asking.

Cool Models, like the RH10 and DH10P are discontinued.

I pity the engineers.

Salute!

to be fair, the MZ-RH10 is discontinued to make way for another model.

Hi-MD Photo. I doubt there will be another. I guess it will be a collector's item, of sorts.

Of course I would love Sony to surprise me and actually make a MIC-input recording walkman with photo-taking capabilities (and basics like a tripod mount...) but I'm not holding my breath.

Edited June 19, 2006 by tekdroid

[unignal]

I would be even more interested to see an Hi-MD video camera

Anyway the think is look: the engineers managed to jerk up the memory of the discs to 1GB, double the capacity of the older disc, even allow us to have album arts and all, on a medium originally designed for replacing the tape.

Those R&D guys must have underwent so much headache and brainstorming sessions, including overcoming various technical obstacles. Yet, what they put together couldn't sell and the masses went ahead and purchase ipod, which was not a technolgical master piece (even cheap china companies can create harddrive based mp3 players!).

The price for DH10P was outrageous. Why would any non-md fan buy a 1.3MP at a price which could actually allow you to purchase a budget CPU with WindowsXP Original. Lol. Although its a great product, in actual fact DH10P's market was limited only to md fans like us, and most md fans need the recording feature. So DH10P was a no no. I wondered if they sold more than 10 thousand DH10Ps around the world.

I feel its like a hell lot of effort gone to waste because sony couldn't advertise their products or fix it at reasonable price. And for every product they have, it is bound to have a downside, no matter how small or large. I've never seen a perfect sony product.

[mesevic]

Those R&D guys must have underwent so much headache and brainstorming sessions, including overcoming various technical obstacles. Yet, what they put together couldn't sell and the masses went ahead and purchase ipod, which was not a technolgical master piece (even cheap china companies can create harddrive based mp3 players!).

Perhaps, Sony should lower licensing costs of the MD technology and sell them to those China companies. If they can't come up with any cheap players for MDs, then I don't know who can...

[pauljones52]

just goes to show advertising is everything. If you want proof, look at the ipod

[garcou]

I have an dh-10p.

It is cool but it lacks that was easy to add:

- an optical zoom

- a real good flash light

- a video with sound function

[pata2001]

I have an dh-10p.

It is cool but it lacks that was easy to add:

- an optical zoom

- a real good flash light

- a video with sound function

- The optical zoom will make the unit much thicker.

- Battery life is already poor on the DH10P. Adding a more powerful flash light will make it worse.

- Data transfer of HiMD/MD is still too low for a real-time video capture. Just look at how long it takes to save a picture on the disc. Besides, there's the battery life issue.

just goes to show advertising is everything. If you want proof, look at the ipod

Yes, but aside from advertising, Apple did deliver the product as advertised. The iPod is easy to use. itunes is far more user friendly and useful than any other software jukebox out there. iTMS' fairplay DRM is much more lenient than other online legal download services. So, blame it on Sony execs that cannot think smarter than iPod fanboys.

[unignal]

but really, other than the hype they could generate, if you look at the features and stuffs, ipod is nothing but a normal mp3 HDD player with jacked up price.

Even in terms of design, it is just a rectangle with a square and circle on it:)

Edited June 20, 2006 by Unignal

[Tunster]

but really, other than the hype they could generate, if you look at the features and stuffs, ipod is nothing but a normal mp3 HDD player with jacked up price.

Even in terms of design, it is just a rectangle with a square and circle on it:)

This is why I can't stand people making the iPod look like the best thing since sliced bread.

MD could of gone a long way if it was marketed and developed for the average joe. ATRAC is closed-sourced and unfortunately, Sony haven't lent out SDKs/source-code to the open-source world for people to tweak on it. Formats used on todays HD DAPs are available as open-source encoders (except WMA) and easy to encode without DRM limitations.

The design of the MD units (especially 1st/2nd/3rd Gen Hi-MDs) and the colaboration of SS was not attractive enough. As MD enthusiasts here, we all love the designs with is all niché with the format. Average joes like simpleton designs. MD hasn't really gone that way (except for the NetMD units possibly).

Other things SONY could of taken MD into their advantage is that its re-recordable and much more sterdy. SONY could of leased out out this technology cheaper and possibly........got machines in stores that you could download music to (NetMD tech...but quicker!) instead of the CD.

As much as MD has many positive aspects and features that stamp down on any other DAP, it has its fallbacks we all love to put up with .

[unignal]

interesting to note that most people "upgraded" from cd to ipod because u can dl musics to the player.

But we md users had been doing it for years!

Anyway, iPod price is hardly justified. High price and low sound quality. When i see a few of my classmates using iPod or people using those "signature earbuds", i was laughing inside. You know why? In less than one year most of their iPod nano broke.

I also began to wonder whether they were paying for the a good quality DAP or paying for apple's advertising costs.

[minidix]

- The optical zoom will make the unit much thicker.

- Battery life is already poor on the DH10P. Adding a more powerful flash light will make it worse.

- Data transfer of HiMD/MD is still too low for a real-time video capture. Just look at how long it takes to save a picture on the disc. Besides, there's the battery life issue.

- 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

[RobA]

to be fair, the MZ-RH10 is discontinued to make way for another model.

Bleh! No real upgrade to the rh10 is being made.

[lamewing]

interesting to note that most people "upgraded" from cd to ipod because u can dl musics to the player.

But we md users had been doing it for years!

Anyway, iPod price is hardly justified. High price and low sound quality. When i see a few of my classmates using iPod or people using those "signature earbuds", i was laughing inside. You know why? In less than one year most of their iPod nano broke.

I also began to wonder whether they were paying for the a good quality DAP or paying for apple's advertising costs.

See, I have a problem with a blanket statement like that. I owned three iPods: a 1st gen 5GB, a 2nd gen 20GB, and a 4th gen 60GB photo model. NONE of them broke or had ANY issues whatsover. NONE of my MD units ever had a problem either.

What am I saying? I am saying that if you were to (probably) give your minidisc player to your friends they would likely have broken it within a year as well.

One thing folks need to take into consideration is that the number of broken iPods seems larger due to the popularity of the product and the large number of iPods sold worldwide.

Do I have an iPod now, nope. I have two Cowon DAPs and I am waiting on an RH1 for recording my language classes/practice sessions. Oh, I have a MZ-N920 as well.

[unignal]

I understand.

But still, i feel that due to the fact that the battery in iPod is not (officially) replaceable, it will go dead in a maximum of 5 years.

MD will last longer than that? I hope.

My oldest MD unit was only 1.5 years old so I donno how long an MD unit last.

The technician in my school used to own the first MD model, he said the recording feature broke in 5 years and he was only able to playback after that, and i was abit shocked.

Certainly MD units can last much longer?

PS: Those broken ipods were all nanos.