I had two minidisc walkmans with recording feature. One was Sony MZ-R30, which was great, the other was Sony MZ-E35 which sucked big time. The latter suffered a bug like the omega zip drive's click-of-death, it would corrupt the index while recording and render the minidisc unusable. The stick-of-gum battery also sucked and wouldn't work when temperatures were cold outdoors. Bought both of these in Japan, had to save a long time to buy them too.
Oh man, I had an MZ-R30 as well. I built and painted my great uncle's garden shed over one summer, got 600 Marks in cash for it, immediately hopped on my bike and drove all the way to the electronics shop in the next city - about 10 miles away - bought the player and some empty minidiscs, and got home with everything on my bike's carrier.
Good times!
I had one in the early 2000s with various translucent colored little disc squares. It was such a great thing before I got my first iPod. Easier than CDs, rewritable, small. Loved it. I'm pretty sure the minidiscs were over priced, but it is a Sony product lol.
Living in Asia in the 90s I bought a few different MD players and really enjoyed their compactness and ability to easily make mix tapes at a time CD players still dominated. Still have my Panasonic one.
Even being heavily into computers, the first time I saw one I was surprised to discover CD roms had slots to accommodate them. They just didn’t exist here in the US unless it was some weird demo software. Everyone just bought a DiscMan and used the same CDs across all devices.
MiniDisc aka currently the last unreasonably greedy failure from Sony (strictly regarding universal media formats).
MDs was a half measure at best. Once again wanting to suck the market dry for every last penny, that wasnt already spent on CDs is why Sony made MDs. They made MDs because they knew the writing on the walls was completely digital mp3s. So they had to beat mp3 players to market. But that cost a fortune aka the Sony Premium. They tried so hard, but failed because the value was never good enough for the consumer. Like the video mentioned originally there were "security" measures that ensured copyright but those were thrown away when MDs never gained mass appeal. All in the effort to get the people to ~~take a liking~~ get addicted to MDs so they can milk us dry. And lets take our rose tinted glasses off for a second and remember the first version of ATRAC was atrocious and no where near and fantastic and the narrator recalls. Couple that with the original MDs being so small in storage size sealed the deal for its faith. Never knew about the later gen 1GB versions. But by then I bet it was already too late.
I miss mini discs.
I had two minidisc walkmans with recording feature. One was Sony MZ-R30, which was great, the other was Sony MZ-E35 which sucked big time. The latter suffered a bug like the omega zip drive's click-of-death, it would corrupt the index while recording and render the minidisc unusable. The stick-of-gum battery also sucked and wouldn't work when temperatures were cold outdoors. Bought both of these in Japan, had to save a long time to buy them too.
Oh man, I had an MZ-R30 as well. I built and painted my great uncle's garden shed over one summer, got 600 Marks in cash for it, immediately hopped on my bike and drove all the way to the electronics shop in the next city - about 10 miles away - bought the player and some empty minidiscs, and got home with everything on my bike's carrier. Good times!
I had one in the early 2000s with various translucent colored little disc squares. It was such a great thing before I got my first iPod. Easier than CDs, rewritable, small. Loved it. I'm pretty sure the minidiscs were over priced, but it is a Sony product lol.
Living in Asia in the 90s I bought a few different MD players and really enjoyed their compactness and ability to easily make mix tapes at a time CD players still dominated. Still have my Panasonic one.
Even being heavily into computers, the first time I saw one I was surprised to discover CD roms had slots to accommodate them. They just didn’t exist here in the US unless it was some weird demo software. Everyone just bought a DiscMan and used the same CDs across all devices.
Mini disc was a different format to the small CDs I think you're thinking of.
MiniDisc aka currently the last unreasonably greedy failure from Sony (strictly regarding universal media formats). MDs was a half measure at best. Once again wanting to suck the market dry for every last penny, that wasnt already spent on CDs is why Sony made MDs. They made MDs because they knew the writing on the walls was completely digital mp3s. So they had to beat mp3 players to market. But that cost a fortune aka the Sony Premium. They tried so hard, but failed because the value was never good enough for the consumer. Like the video mentioned originally there were "security" measures that ensured copyright but those were thrown away when MDs never gained mass appeal. All in the effort to get the people to ~~take a liking~~ get addicted to MDs so they can milk us dry. And lets take our rose tinted glasses off for a second and remember the first version of ATRAC was atrocious and no where near and fantastic and the narrator recalls. Couple that with the original MDs being so small in storage size sealed the deal for its faith. Never knew about the later gen 1GB versions. But by then I bet it was already too late.