Future of Minidisc

[Quicksilver_mx]

Hello, I wanted to introduce myself to the forum, although I have already been registered some time, I have not had opportunity to post until now.

I wanted to debate the future of Minidisc. We all know that the MZ-RH1 has not had much publicity, and in some stores they it is out of stock and they do not know when they will replenish those stocks. At Minidisco it seems to be that they have in stock again, but it is strange. Do you believe Minidisc is already in a phase of extinction, or that it can that continue in retail form and for professionals.

I await your answers, Minidisc Forever!!!........ no?....

[tekdroid]

At Minidisco it seems to be that they have in stock again, but it is strange. Do you believe Minidisc is already in a phase of extinction, or that it can that continue in retail form and for professionals.

Personally, I feel "new model time" is approaching...

1) I still feel there is a decent enough demand for Sony to continue the format. The days of mainstream retail presence and "high tech gadget" appeal in the public's mind are are definitely over, though. Nothing can shake the mass-market's perceptions of the format as a has-been (let alone the perceptions of SonicStage, etc)

2) I feel no manufacturer is really interested in even semi-serious recorders and Sony is meeting market needs with Hi-MD (and a far less restrictive SonicStage).

3) I think Sony will want to get more out of the R&D they put into Hi-MD than merely than 3 years of market life (5 minimum, IMO).

Flash memory is coming down in price severely, and if they wanted to, Sony would make something to compete with Hi-MD for recording with dimensions far smaller and potential capacities far larger, yet in the same price or less - but they don't. To me, these are all indications that they want to continue with Hi-MD - at least until a competitor starts challenging them on their Hi-MD turf...

[1kyle]

Hello, I wanted to introduce myself to the forum, although I have already been registered some time, I have not had opportunity to post until now.

I wanted to debate the future of Minidisc. We all know that the MZ-RH1 has not had much publicity, and in some stores they it is out of stock and they do not know when they will replenish those stocks. At Minidisco it seems to be that they have in stock again, but it is strange. Do you believe Minidisc is already in a phase of extinction, or that it can that continue in retail form and for professionals.

I await your answers, Minidisc Forever!!!........ no?....

As a Recording Medium its future will continue for a while yet. But for people who just want players there are now quite adequate and passable alternatives.

For example I got a FREE Lexar player when I spent a ludricously large amount of money on the Ultimate set of phones --BOSE QC3 --absolutely stunning (at a price). Came with the headphones.

This Lexar player can RECORD (at PCM) as well and has a REMOVEABLE SD card as well as its internal memory and has quite a nice display. Music is also Drag and Drop -- you don't need SS or whatever. It works even with a 4GB card (although you have to format this in Windows with a 64 kb cluster size as the normal maximum with FAT16 is 2GB. This seems to get round the problem of the 2GB limit).

Sony has some quite nice flash players too --the new NW706 series are quite nice although non-removable storage.

Had I got the Lexar before buying the Sony I wouldn't have bought the SONY --but remember the LEXAR came FREE with my BOSE headphones - so I'm not disappointed with the Sony either.

I DO like the convenient size and portability of MD's. I doubt that I would ever keep drawers full of SD cards --too small and difficult to keep track of. However transferring 1 or 2 MD's to a flash player sems to me an OK option.

A slightly larger capacity disk say up to 4GB giving around 25 CD's at high quality seems to me ideal. Any larger than that data management and retrieval becomes a pain - as you can see quite clearly with a lot of Ipod users spending more time in searching for songs / creating playlists than actually playing the music.

For me it's easy -- I like Classical Music so I can load up the player with a few classical CD's and then jusy play them through sequentially.

I've got a feeling there will be at least one more model after the RH1 -- sales of this unit have rather surprised everyone.

Cheers

-K

Edited January 17, 2007 by 1kyle

[doomlordis]

I have posted this before but a friend of mine who works very closely with the Sony design department in Osaka said that they had a cheaper model ready to release with the RH1 but it was shelved as they thought it may be detrimental to the RH1s sales.

I think we will see some more units but the audience for Minidisc Hi or other is getting smaller, i think Sony had no choice but to aim it at the recording market rather than portable MP3 , i think the RH1 has been very successful.

I would love to see sales figures but it is in demand and my local Sony retailer keep them in stock for long.

I just wish they would release a Deck that supports MP3 playback and proper ID3 browsing!

[62v8]

Do you believe Minidisc is already in a phase of extinction, or that it can that continue in retail form and for professionals.

I await your answers, Minidisc Forever!!!........ no?....

Well the attacks are coming left right and centre these days.

On top of the existing competition ... Fostex have the the FR2 LE on the horizon.

Even more interesting is the just released Korg MR-1 (check it out ... now Sony should have been building something like this if they were serious!).

Granted that these are more expensive and slightly larger than a RH1 but in a pro sense it is no contest.

Sampling & bit rates for starters and even more importantly ease of transfer for archive and other applications.

There will still be a small demand for MD since there are still plenty of pro decks out there.

No HiMD deck (pro or consumer) killed any opportunity in the pro market.

IMHO it only really only leaves the consumer market as the formats battleground.

Other than Japan that battle for Joe publics dollar is already lost, so that just leaves the already converted as the market.

I'd be surprised if I spent any more on MD/HiMD other than buying consumables.

Why do most people buy a new bit of kit?

Main reason being more capacity & more horsepower and not just for a few bells and whistles / functional tweaks

The newer, bigger, better, faster mentality rules.

The formats time is up.

Cheers

GT

[King Ghidora]

I think the market is in for a big shakeup. Sure flash cards are hard to keep up with but picture game cartridges with multiple memory chips inside. People who want to do portable recording are already leaving MD in large numbers. They aren't leaving for Ipods. They'e leaving for Zoom H4's and Edirol R-09's. Once someone gets the idea to remove the mics from such devices they will increase their sales considerably. People don't want to be locked into a single mic and a mic attached to the body of the recorder reduces the capacity to do stealth recording. They just won't fit in your pocket even if you want to record with a different mic plus they don't have remotes which make stealth recording much easier.

We're in a time of flux now. HIMD will be around for a while yet but the writing is on the wall. Flash drive recorders are the future IMO. Right now companies are making the same kind of blunders that Sony does. Recorders with mics that are attached to the body of the recorder and other small issues have hurt the sales of the flash recorders IMO. If someone comes along and makes an Ipod size recorder that does true 24 bit audio (or higher) and allows you to swap out flash cards then HIMD will soon be dead.

Permanent storage will be on CDR like it already is for many people who do mobile recording. That's how I do things when I record the band I work with. I can give all the band members copies of a CDR because they all have players. Storing audio on MD's is still way more expensive than CDR too. I know there are dedicated HIMD fans that do it anyway but all those $.20 blank CDR's are hard to compete with.

I hope in 5 years that I have a very high quality audio, flash based recorder that allows swapping cards or even cards in a cartridge i.e. game cartridges. If I can record 10 hours of music on a cartridge then transfer with ease to a computer for editing then I can't even conceive of a better setup. I think that might be why they are dragging their feet and including things that hurt their products because they will need some room to improve so they can sell you a new one in a few years. If they sell a perfect recorder they will essentially be putting themselves out of business and we are in sight of a perfect recorder IMO. Unless they build in device failures after a certain amount of time there will be no reason to ever buy a new recorder once we get a device like I described. If anyone can suggest an easy to accomplish upgrade to a machine like that good enough to make people buy a whole new recorder the manufacturers will have sold their last recorder to a big part of the user base.

[doomlordis]

I think there are people who want to be able to record a gig then swap the disk and listen to an album, Hi-MD is great for that. The 3 main flash recorders are all have drawbacks as far as music playback goes, size being the main one. Sony really need to release a deck to attract new and keep existing users.

[garcou]

.

No HiMD deck (pro or consumer) killed any opportunity in the pro market.

And no car audio too..

Unbelievable Sony didn't understand this. And no much R & D would be necessary to add HIMd ability to an old standard MD unit...

[Russell Letson]

A viewpoint different from King Ghidora's: There is a considerable market for compact, all-in-one field recorders among journalists, who can use either good built-in mikes *or* (for high-end applications) balanced inputs (not known for their compactness). Stealth recording is a fine hobby, but it's not going to drive a market the way that media pros can. (Ever noticed all those handheld recorders being stuck in people's faces in news footage? Note the absence of mike cords trailing back.) Not that Sony seems to give much thought to that--try to find an MZ-B100 anywhere now. If Minidisc is abandoned by reporters and writers, it will be because Sony decides to ignore a market segment that has found earlier products (DAT, B3 and B-100 MD) very useful and to pursue the Pod-people demographic.

Edited January 19, 2007 by Russell Letson

[tekdroid]

(Ever noticed all those handheld recorders being stuck in people's faces in news footage? Note the absence of mike cords trailing back.)

Isn't the no-cords-on-mic problem solved with a T-mic?

[eriktous]

If Minidisc is abandoned by reporters and writers, it will be because Sony decides to ignore a market segment that has found earlier products (DAT, B3 and B-100 MD) very useful and to pursue the Pod-people demographic.

If Sony decides to ignore a market segment, it probably is because it's not making them a decent profit.

[MikeyV80]

I'm not for sure to say MD is nearing its end. Why not? I'm a musician myself, and I've used a MD-recorder (a MZ-NH600) for recording my own stuff. To me it was good, but recently i bought myself an 8-track MD-recorder. MD again, because I'm still convinced of the advantages MD offers me.

But that's leveling to semi-pro. When I look at the pro's within the music scene, it isn't surprising they use MD a lot, even for recording at their home-studio's!

I've spend a lot of time comparing harddisk-, flash- en MD-based multitrackers. Pro's and con's for each:

• Harddisk-based multi-trackers

  pro's: unlimited tracks, different sample-rates and bit-rates as far as OS of multi-tracker can handle

  con's: portability, sound of spinning disk (annoying!) and price.

• Memory-based multi-trackers

  pro's: speed, silent, portability, different sample-rates as far as OS of multi-tracker can handle

  con's: limited in tracks and bit-rates (amount of memory is the limiting factor), different forms of carriers!

• MD-based multi-trackers

  pro's: portability, silent (only in extreme cases you hear MD working!)

  con's: limited in tracks, sample- and bitrates.

When I'm honoust, there were two things why I chose for MD: at first because I'm familiar with MD, secondly the price. A third pro to me is the availability of new discs; I can get those easily and fairly cheap.

When I take a closer look to players, hmmmm, hard to say. MD has the accessibility as its disadvantage. Flash-memory players work as convenient as cd-rom's or diskettes: drag 'n' drop. That's one of the reasons why Apple's iPod became so popular. Most people aren't techies and want a quick way to load their players.

Conclusively I think MD might get a future within the low-end consumermarket if Sony starts writing a more convenient program. For the pro's I think MD will last for a long time because of its quality. But in both cases Sony has a lot of work to do!

[King Ghidora]

I don't think the current flash recorders are going to kill MD Russell. It's the 2008 and 2009 models that I think will have serious advantages over MD. We're already seeing 4 gig cards too. That means the capacity for multiple tracks for musicians. But the musicians I know are already choosing either hard drive based equipment or multi-track flash drives. I use MD for recording a band but my main business is video production. I put lavalier mics on people and stick a HIMD in their pocket. I recently bought another MD because right now they can't be beat in a bang for the buck contest. But there are limitations that we all are aware of for MD. Just like me any reporter who uses MD knows what can happen if something goes wrong before the TOC is written to the disc. You won't have a recording. Flash players can get around that (I don't know if they do currently of if the manufacturers will have enough sense to implement it but I know MD has a problem in this area and Sony has so far refused to address it). I think this problem alone will be enough to hurt MD in the future.

I thought we were talking about the future of MD. Compring the current crop of recorders to MD isn't really in the spirit of that. I'm looking at what can easily be done with flash recorders in the future. Look at the way cameras have progressed over the past 5 years. If we see that kind of progression in audio recorders MD will be dead. And I think we will see that happen. I just think we'll see great improvements which will outstrip what Sony will be willing to do with MD. In fact I see Sony jumping on the flash drive based recorder bandwagon soon.

Edited January 19, 2007 by King Ghidora

[guymrob]

I don't think the current flash recorders are going to kill MD Russell. It's the 2008 and 2009 models that I think will have serious advantages over MD. We're already seeing 4 gig cards too. That means the capacity for multiple tracks for musicians. But the musicians I know are already choosing either hard drive based equipment or multi-track flash drives. I use MD for recording a band but my main business is video production. I put lavalier mics on people and stick a HIMD in their pocket. I recently bought another MD because right now they can't be beat in a bang for the buck contest. But there are limitations that we all are aware of for MD. Just like me any reporter who uses MD knows what can happen if something goes wrong before the TOC is written to the disc. You won't have a recording. Flash players can get around that (I don't know if they do currently of if the manufacturers will have enough sense to implement it but I know MD has a problem in this area and Sony has so far refused to address it). I think this problem alone will be enough to hurt MD in the future.

I thought we were talking about the future of MD. Compring the current crop of recorders to MD isn't really in the spirit of that. I'm looking at what can easily be done with flash recorders in the future. Look at the way cameras have progressed over the past 5 years. If we see that kind of progression in audio recorders MD will be dead. And I think we will see that happen. I just think we'll see great improvements which will outstrip what Sony will be willing to do with MD. In fact I see Sony jumping on the flash drive based recorder bandwagon soon.

For Flash cards, there's a limited to the storage life and the write cycle. For NAND flash based are less than 10,000 write/cell and less than 10 years storage time (retain data time). MD is more than a million re-write cycle and more than 30 years of storage time!

[guymrob]

There are some disadvantages of using Flash cards and HDD as compared to MD, the followings must be take into accounts:

1. Though flash card are small and getting smaller, the technology behind flash card is still lagging behind in term of data retain time and re-write cycles. The re-write cycle is limited less than 10,000 write and data retain time is less than 10yrs. MD has more than a million write cycle and more than 30yrs data retain time!

2. Though it can store a lot more than any other recording media, HDD based storage are prone to data loss due to vibration and shock. Its limited storage time of about 3 to 4yrs, it is not suit if you want to store songs permanently.

Until Flash cards are perfected to the level of what MD can offers, MD is still the best media for recording, playback and long term storage.

[King Ghidora]

I already addressed long term storage. I don't think anyone is going to be using flash media for that for a long time though it could happen in the future. I believe people will transfer their recordings to optical media just as many already do. The price of storage on optical is vastly less than MD plus the installed base is huge. If you are a person who stores on MD I strongly suggest that you back up your data to optical because you could lose all of your data if your MD players all fail and they can't be replaced. There's a lot less chance of that with optical. Ideally a person would create new backups of optical after a few years because optical can and will fail after a while. But considering the cost of CDR media that still comes out a small fraction of the cost of storing on MD.

I actually don't trust the projected storage time of any media. I've seen things that were supposed to last 50 years last only 2 years. If you have important data you might want to back it up to tape because it is the only media that has a track record of lasting a long time.

[e1ghtyf1ve]

When I take a closer look to players, hmmmm, hard to say. MD has the accessibility as its disadvantage. Flash-memory players work as convenient as cd-rom's or diskettes: drag 'n' drop. That's one of the reasons why Apple's iPod became so popular. Most people aren't techies and want a quick way to load their players.

Conclusively I think MD might get a future within the low-end consumermarket if Sony starts writing a more convenient program. For the pro's I think MD will last for a long time because of its quality. But in both cases Sony has a lot of work to do!

Whoa Nellie! While I agree with you on most of your points, you clearly have never owned an iPod - they are most certainly NOT drag and drop. Neither are any optical media such as CD/DVD-ROM. The US media cartel would never allow that. You will always need specialized software, i.e. iTunes and Nero etc. respectively to enable music (not data) storage and to (theoretically) prevent unauthorized copying. Some cheaper flash recorders do allow drag and drop, but make terrible players.

Right now, only (Hi-)MD strikes an ideal balance between convenient recording and ergonomic playback. I suspect that this will remain so for a long time to come. Ironically, it is probably because Sony is a member of the cartel that it "gets away" with releasing machines such as the RH1.

Have you ever tried to use iTunes with an iPod? It's just as easy with SS 4.2. But iTunes is much more restrictive than SS - you can only use one computer with a particular iPod at a time!!! If you're not careful, you can ERASE the ENTIRE contents of your iPod if you plug it in to another computer. Also, the sound quality of any PortalPlayer-based product (iPod, M-Audio Microtrack, etc.), is not that good to my ears.

The success of the iPod was due to clever marketing and design, that's all.

Cheers

[King Ghidora]

Loading music on an iPod isn't so quick either. The transfer is pretty fast once you get it started but the software for iPods is every bit as clunky as SonicStage. Maybe even more so.

I'm not so sure that there will never be a drag and drop audio player. Eventually the bone heads that run the music industry could lose their grip on things. Right now there is a top 40 song that has never been released on CD and has no connection with any music company. It's strictly a download. If we start to see more of that then the stranglehold the cartel has on things could be broken.

Those jerks have had their way for too long. The payola scandals should be enough to make our government see they have sold out the public airwaves to a bunch of crooks. They call us pirates if we copy a song that we paid for but they break the law and the government helps them do it. If the playlists on radio stations weren't influenced so much by the record companies there would be a huge market for independently produced music.

Let's face it. The recording companies have a lock on what gets played so they have a lock on the free advertisement they get for their products. They don't want to pay for real quality so we get a steady diet of crud on the radio. Back when there was good music on the radio the artists were able to demand a lot of money for what they did. Now the record companies get the big chunk of it because they control distribution and the airwaves. They keep the artists on a short leash because they can kill their careers with the stroke of a pen.

If we could get independently produced music on the airwaves we would see a big increase in quality because actual competition would take place. The upshot of this would be that the government would be forced to stop caving in to what the recording industry wants. That's what I hope will happen and I think we're starting to see it already. The days of big recording corporations controlling everything are almost over. They are losing money now big time because they can't control what happens on the net and they can't keep people interested in the crap they put out. When the money dries up the control over portable players and recorders will dry up too IMO. I hope Sony Music goes bankrupt myself. They have screwed the public for far too long already. Does anyone think $20 for a $1 product is fair? Does anyone think payola controlled radio promoting that $1 product over the public airwaves is fair? I don't. If I could get my music played 3 times an hour on a dozen local radio stations I could probably sell CD's too and I stink as a musician (but that doesn't seem to matter considering what's being marketed on the radio these days).

[The Low Volta]

I'm not so sure that there will never be a drag and drop audio player.

huh?

my mobile phone (Sony-Ericsson W810i) IS a genuine drag-n-drop audio player... just plug in the USB, drop the MP3's or even AAC's in the correct folder on the Memorystick and disconnect...ready to play! (it also supports any standard 3,5mm minijack outfitted headphone and sounds pretty decent)

or perhaps that wasn't what you meant... if you meant a drag-n-drop MD, I guess it (as oh so often when discussing the MD format) is rather a techological limitation and not so much a software decision... all music on the disc needs to be written in the one big file that contains all audio info and the correct data has to be added to the TOC. Even the mac software for the mac-compatible machines, which comes pretty close to drag-n-drop just pretends to as it still needs to write it all into the same structure as well (so it takes some time and Sony can design limitations as well)

[ILoveMinidisc]

Whoa Nellie! While I agree with you on most of your points, you clearly have never owned an iPod - they are most certainly NOT drag and drop. Neither are any optical media such as CD/DVD-ROM. The US media cartel would never allow that. You will always need specialized software, i.e. iTunes and Nero etc. respectively to enable music (not data) storage and to (theoretically) prevent unauthorized copying. Some cheaper flash recorders do allow drag and drop, but make terrible players.

I Use Net-Minidisc but i also have Mp3 player

Mp3 players ARE drag and drop , sure you may be right about iPOD (i havent used ipod myself so i dont know)

what i do know is that there is a bunch of other mp3 players that ALLOW drag and drop.

My Mp3 player is the wonderful Samsung Yp-k5 (the one with the speaker and touchbuttons) and is FAR from a terrible player

Samsung Comes with software but it also show up as a Drive and you can drag and drop the music WITHOUT using the software

this is much better than Minidisc since you dont have to use software.

The only disadvantage i see with mp3 players compared to minidisc is that you have to use a Program to rename the Idtags.

some mp3 players (like mine) you have to rename idtag on some mp3s so that it show up in the correct Artist-track order

since the mp3 player sort artist and track after the idtag in each mp3 song.

This is solved by used a software to rename idtag and sort them in correct order before Drag & drop songs to mp3 player.

You are probaly aware of that ipod is not totaly drag & drop (as i said i dont know have not used ipod)

But When you say "some cheaper flash recorder do allow drag and drop but make terrible player" I must point out you are wrong

First my samsung 4gb yp-k5 player was not cheap, the Surface with touchbuttons are Anti-scratch protected

the mp3 player is also build like a Tank , the speaker is terrific is realy loud for being such a smale speaker.

and the Volume on the samsung mp3 player is LOUDER than my Net-minidisc player (which suffer from European sound limitation laws)

Also Samsung is far from bad, in fact the Sister company "Saehan" was the Inventor of mp3 player (mpman was the first mp3 player ever)

so samsung do have a lot of experience with mp3 players.

But ofcourse there is many BAD mp3 players that come with CHEAP and BAD headphones (Such as the headphone included with ipod)

but this not mean everthing but ipod is Terrible

Edited January 21, 2007 by ILoveMinidisc

[King Ghidora]

The devices designed to record more than play are pretty much all drag and drop. I guess I should have been more clear about that. It's the consumer driven players that pretty much all have their own clunky software. There are exceptions to this of course but they really aren't very popular at this point. That's why the music industry hasn't raised a fuss about them. It's the iPods and the original Nomads and early iRiver's that were not drag and drop. Many of these companies are releasing drag and drop capable devices already. Archos makes one. iRiver's can be converted to drag and drop I believe. And newer Nomad's are also drag and drop.

The device industry has definitely dragged it's feet to keep the recording industry off their backs but I believe we are already seeing the loss of control of things by the recording industry.

[e1ghtyf1ve]

The device industry has definitely dragged it's feet to keep the recording industry off their backs but I believe we are already seeing the loss of control of things by the recording industry.

I hope you're right, because that would give us more choice in the portable field recording market...

[King Ghidora]

The fact that we have devices that can be used to copy music digitally is proof that we have come a long way since the days when the recording industry killed DAT for the masses. They just didn't want us to be able to make digital copies. The strength of the computer industry has led to the existence of devices that do allow for digital copying. That wasn't true of MD at first BTW as you probably know. Sony considered the compression factor enough of a deterrent to making copies at your friends house. It wasn't a true digit for digit copy so they let it go. By the time computers pushed the recording of CDR's as a popular technology we had already seen a big breakthrough in the battle to wrest control of the device industry from the grip of the big record labels.

We've seen a steady progression of the recording companies losing control since then. Even MD's can be used to make digital copies of your friend's CD's if you do it right (do it as a data file then convert it on your computer at home). Hopefully it's a trend that will continue.

[wavetrapper]

I'm not so sure that there will never be a drag and drop audio player.

I have a Cowon IAudio G3 mp3 player. Pure drag and drop. Also comes with its own software but I have never used it. It is as easy as using a flash drive (which you can use it for as well).

[King Ghidora]

Actually I was referring to a highly popular drag and drop audio player (i.e. the iPod). The music industry is throwing a hissy fit about the way things are now. And if you think they aren't on the offensive try reading about the next version of Windows and how it will cripple many of the things we are doing with computers right now.

Vista is MS's version of what Sony tried to do to CD's with the rootkit. It's DRM run amuk. We'll be lucky to drag and drop a text file. Looks like my prediction that the computer industry was winning this battle just took a giant step into the junk pile of bad ideas. Vista is MS's attempt at killing off the computer as any kind of a media tool except the kind that will print a worksheet. We won't be able to buy anything but business type computers if MS gets their way. This really stinks. We likely won't even be able to work with our own equipment and all the new equipment will be crippled to suit the big money crowd. That means we better hold on to what we have if we expect to edit audio on a computer for the forseeable future.

[doomlordis]

Ghidora that article opened my eyes,i had no idea microsoft had introduced such "safeguards", man i wont be upgrading to vista anytime soon. The way microsoft is behaving it wouldnt surprise me if they cripple xp soon...

[King Ghidora]

Yeah that article is a real eye openner. It makes it clear what direction things are headed for sure and it ain't good for us regular folks.

[1kyle]

Actually I was referring to a highly popular drag and drop audio player (i.e. the iPod). The music industry is throwing a hissy fit about the way things are now. And if you think they aren't on the offensive try reading about the next version of Windows and how it will cripple many of the things we are doing with computers right now.

Vista is MS's version of what Sony tried to do to CD's with the rootkit. It's DRM run amuk. We'll be lucky to drag and drop a text file. Looks like my prediction that the computer industry was winning this battle just took a giant step into the junk pile of bad ideas. Vista is MS's attempt at killing off the computer as any kind of a media tool except the kind that will print a worksheet. We won't be able to buy anything but business type computers if MS gets their way. This really stinks. We likely won't even be able to work with our own equipment and all the new equipment will be crippled to suit the big money crowd. That means we better hold on to what we have if we expect to edit audio on a computer for the forseeable future.

Actually there IS another OS out there which is FREE and IMO just as good (if not better) than VISTA --LINUX.

3D Graphics / File manager, VM capable, Free Open Office zillions of FREE Multimedia applications.

We don't all have to surrender to M$.

Cheers

-K

[King Ghidora]

Actually there IS another OS out there which is FREE and IMO just as good (if not better) than VISTA --LINUX.

3D Graphics / File manager, VM capable, Free Open Office zillions of FREE Multimedia applications.

We don't all have to surrender to M$.

Cheers

-K

The problem is that MS is pressuring the hardware industry to play ball with them on this stuff. Without the exact drivers released for MS (or with them for that matter) trying to make hardware work when it is designed to deliberately cripple itself is going to be one huge nightmare even for an IT pro much less the average Joe just looking to edit the stuff he recorded. If motherboards refuse to output sound above a certain level of quality to any digital links then it doesn't really matter what OS you're using. They're talking about building these things right into an EPROM to be included on every piece of hardware made or something similar. MS thinks they have the juice to coerce everyone to play along. I hope they fall flat on their rears and I'm sure pretty much everyone here does too.

Of course I am just reading an article I saw a link to and I reposted the link here. Who knows how much of this is true or how much it will actually affect what we do. Remember that XP was supposed to be impossible to pirate. Before it was ever released the hackers knew how to get around all that BS. We are talking MS here. They aren't exactly known for being able to accomplish stuff like this without problems and then there will be the cries of MS dominating the entire electronics market again. They lost that last round of lawsuits and Europe is still hot to ban their products completely over the crap they pulled with IE.

Let's just all hope MS falls flat on their face (again) and this nightmare will blow over like the Sony rootkit. If not we could see a whole new set of designed for Linux components and that might not be a bad thing at all. But we'll still be looking at a lot of hassles with the equipment we already have. Just think of all the audiophile types who have been talked into making the PC the center of the home entertainment system. All that PC controlled gear could become useless because of a trick like this. I can see the possibility of MS going down the tubes over a trick like this. A lot of people don't like them already.

Edited January 30, 2007 by King Ghidora