netmduser Posted January 19, 2007 Report Share Posted January 19, 2007 (edited) What is stopping some 3rd party manufacturer from china to make a minidisc deck or portable for the original minidisc standard.Maybe they could make it with a less restrictive DRM?Ever since getting into minidisc with netmd I find the digital format very versatile, even if some ppl say the sound quality isn't all there.Is it a patent or licensing issue that would prevent them? Hasn't the original minidisc standard patents run out by now?Any comments? Edited January 20, 2007 by Ishiyoshi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eriktous Posted January 19, 2007 Report Share Posted January 19, 2007 What is stopping some 3rd party manufacturer from china to make a minidisc deck or portable for the original minidisc standard.A big enough market to make it profitable, perhaps?Ever since getting into minidisc with netmd I find the digital format very versatile, even if some ppl say the sound quality isn't all there.If you are using LP2 or, especially, LP4, the sound quality might not be the best, but to my (and many others') ears SP sounds very good.Is it a patent or licensing issue that would prevent them? Hasn't the original minidisc standard patents run out by now?Patents don't exist, as far as the Chinese are concerned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netmduser Posted January 19, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 19, 2007 based on your replies, I'd say some co. in china go for it.There has to be a market for a digital audio recorder for home and portable use. Minidisc has been designed to be mass produced. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekdroid Posted January 20, 2007 Report Share Posted January 20, 2007 What is stopping some 3rd party manufacturer from china to make a minidisc deck or portable for the original minidisc standard.Logic.What do you think original MiniDisc offers that can't be had today with Hi-MD?I assume you mean pre-NetMD when you say "original MiniDisc standard"? Or do you mean NetMD, which wasn't the original MiniDisc standard? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netmduser Posted January 20, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2007 i guess hi-md would require licensing fees.Im talking just the md with mdlp. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raintheory Posted January 20, 2007 Report Share Posted January 20, 2007 http://www.minidisc.org/patents/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netmduser Posted January 20, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2007 http://www.minidisc.org/patents/whats the life of a patent 20 years?hasnt the patent expired by now?whats the life of a patent 20 years?hasnt the patent expired by now?ok i guess not looks like a few more years of waiting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekdroid Posted January 20, 2007 Report Share Posted January 20, 2007 i guess hi-md would require licensing fees.Im talking just the md with mdlp.In my opinion, there's no market for it. Licensing fees will need to be paid, regardless. Magnetic head, pick-ups and associated chips will all need to be sourced from Sony. Manufacturing in-house for these unique components would be far too expensive (not to mention pointless, because it wouldn't save them money). And all for a market that is basically non-existent...The Chinese (and Koreans, like http://www.cowon.com) are big on royalty-free formats like Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and xvid on commodity flash-memory and HD devices.MP3 and WMA/WMV aren't free to license, so the last thing they'd want is to pay more to Sony for the wonders of unpopular ATRAC, in addition to expensive unique hardware for a format that's irrelevant to the mainstream...IMO, the (traditional) MiniDisc market these days is satisfied by the second-hand market. For everything else, Hi-MD is miles ahead (and yet still relatively unpopular, which tells you something about the market potential, IMO). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
netmduser Posted January 20, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2007 In my opinion, there's no market for it. Licensing fees will need to be paid, regardless. Magnetic head, pick-ups and associated chips will all need to be sourced from Sony. Manufacturing in-house for these unique components would be far too expensive (not to mention pointless, because it wouldn't save them money). And all for a market that is basically non-existent...How do they manage to make a vcr for 40 bucks today. the mechanism seems just as complex, is it just the licensing fee is minimal? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekdroid Posted January 20, 2007 Report Share Posted January 20, 2007 How do they manage to make a vcr for 40 bucks today. the mechanism seems just as complex, is it just the licensing fee is minimal?Decades of huge volumes and refinement, probably. Probably a lot like DVD players going for dirt cheap...(and PC dvd drives, CD players, etc).MiniDisc never reached anything like those volumes (and I would argue NetMD did more harm than good to the perception of the format). Now of course the volumes selling are lower (MiniDisc peaked in 2000/2001ish...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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