ALSO Minidisk was one of the greatest things sony made and in fact was very ANTI sony of today. the first few generations of Minidisk were VERY consumer friendly. LOTS of connection very few restrictions. you could do nearly anything you wanted with them.
THE PROBLEM with minidisk and it really was the only problem at the time was REAL TIME RECORDING. ie to put 2 hours onto an MD it took 2 hours. THIS is what killed it as mp3 started to gain ground.
THEN sony made NETMD and that is when things went bad.
First it came several years too late (Flash units already had a foot hold) next problem is they started to get RESTRICTIVE.
you had to make everything ATRAC3 (sony;s proprietary format) and it was ONE WAY
They also would NOT permit you to take your OWN recordings OFF the device to the computer digitally (IE without degradation) this was the beginning of the end. what started as a CONSUMER FRIENDLY device in extreme was becoming a consumer UNFRIENDLY device rapidly especially in the face of competition.
Eventually they made HiMD and eventually they allowed unrestricted transfer of analog content and EVENTUALLY they allowed direct mp3 playback but all this was too little too late (a pitty since MD really is the IDE music format in so many ways)
MD has ZERO disadvantage in format 100% of the disadvantages were artificially created by sony
to make matters worse they ABANDONED there very loyal user base with the HI MD by STRIPPED all the things that make MD MD in the first place (line in Mike in optical out etc..) in the affordable models. these "STANDARD" on 100% of md units to date "features" were relegated to only teh EXPENSIVE $400 md units of the time.
they basically told all there loyal users to go F off. that was the last straw sadly and the MD died (effectively)
If they had developed netmd several years sooner and made himd wide open like they did with the original units we might not be talking about "ipods" as common place. Many of us might not even know what an ipod was but we would certaintly know what a Minidisk was.
Minidisk was perfect. it was SONY's greed and artificial imperfection that killed it.
Think about it. $2 disk that will hold 5 hours of music (much more on hi md) recording in PCM wav and 30 40 and even 50+ hours of playback time on a charge. Never skips never wears out (I still have one of my original MZR55's and I used to own the R1 one of the first recorders) Recording from anything to anything.
My netmd unit gets over 2 days playback time on a single AA battery!! and it smaller than an ipod (ok the new video ipod is thinner now)
but I had all this 6+ years ago !!! I think I got my first MD in 1997 maybe earlier.
they could have OWNED the portable music market but they pooched it and big time.
I am slightly hopeful that the "hack" CD fiasco has humbled them a little and they realize they are killing themselves. the not bad NATIVE filesupport of the Sony Reader is a good sign! Lets see if they stick with it.
Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/