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> (Oh, and there's also Sony's bizarre insistence on proprietary formats, like MiniDISC and MemoryStick -- that didn't help them, either.) The Memory Stick was

> (Oh, and there's also Sony's bizarre insistence on proprietary formats, like MiniDISC and MemoryStick -- that didn't help them, either.) The Memory Stick was bizarre, no doubt about it. Minidisc (and with it, ATRAC), however, was quite groundbreaking and had the potential to be huge. As a lossy psychoacoustic codec, ATRAC predated MP3 for years in commercial availability. Minidisc was both sturdy and flexible (esp. in comparison to DCC), had adequate audio quality (and later ATRAC versions became really good), and itcould have even been a contender for a 3.5" floppy successor in both capacity and speed. Sadly, this was the worst days of Sony hubris, both the physical format and the codec cost a lot to license, the use as a data medium was needlessly crippled, and as such it never really took off globally. I really wonder what would have happened if Sony and Philips could have reconciled and worked together on this like they did with the CD, instead of going all format war (with the DCC being the real head-scratcher here...).

ubermonkey 9y ago
MiniDisc was definitely cool -- so cool that I bought a portable deck, and dubbed some CDs down for travel because it was smaller than carrying a Discman -- but it was also clearly doomed from the start. CD adoption was incredibly rapid because it was so obviously better in every way than cassettes, and offered (or could offer) superior fidelity vs vinyl. Minidisk didn't have either of those going for it -- plus, Sony's complete (?) control of it meant nobody else was making equipment. That nearly everyone brought CD decks to market in the early/mid 80s meant that, over the course of maybe 4 years, CD went from "rich dude toy" to "I got a CD boom box for high school graduation". You probably nail it with "Sony Hubris." To think they could recreate that perfect storm of demand and success was bananas. People duplicated their music libraries on CD, but no WAY were they gonna do that AGAIN after having bought into "perfect sound forever" on CD. (Well, at least "perfect sound for decades;" my oldest CDs are from 1987, and the ones I still want to listen to still sound fine.)

ubermonkey 9y ago

MiniDisc was definitely cool -- so cool that I bought a portable deck, and dubbed some CDs down for travel because it was smaller than carrying a Discman -- but it was also clearly doomed from the start. CD adoption was incredibly rapid because it was so obviously better in every way than cassettes, and offered (or could offer) superior fidelity vs vinyl. Minidisk didn't have either of those going for it -- plus, Sony's complete (?) control of it meant nobody else was making equipment. That nearly everyone brought CD decks to market in the early/mid 80s meant that, over the course of maybe 4 years, CD went from "rich dude toy" to "I got a CD boom box for high school graduation". You probably nail it with "Sony Hubris." To think they could recreate that perfect storm of demand and success was bananas. People duplicated their music libraries on CD, but no WAY were they gonna do that AGAIN after having bought into "perfect sound forever" on CD. (Well, at least "perfect sound for decades;" my oldest CDs are from 1987, and the ones I still want to listen to still sound fine.)