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minidisc didn't exactly flop but it should have been a lot bigger than it was. Great hardware. If Sony hadn't insisted on their ATRAC and drmed it to hell it wo
by jccalhoun 8y ago
minidisc didn't exactly flop but it should have been a lot bigger than it was. Great hardware. If Sony hadn't insisted on their ATRAC and drmed it to hell it would have been much more competitive.
- anyfoo 8y agoReading how MiniDisc flopped is always a bit confusing to Europeans (and, presumably, Japanese), as it was actually relatively popular over there. It‘s true that prerecorded media never gained any traction, but for recording your own media from CDs or radios (or later MP3s) it was reasonably common. People especially liked how compact the portable players were. Then Sony pretty much messed it up with NetMD.
- alexis_fr 8y agoI bought a Sony MD player. They had « A USB device to transfer CDs onto MDs ». The USB device was a simple USB-to-jack, to which you’d plug the MD’s line-in. So disappointing. It transfers CDs to MDs at speed exactly 1x and without song separation, because you just press play on one side, record on the other.
- tass 8y agoIf you used an optical connection track breaks would make it into the copy. At least that’s what mine did, but it was still slow (real time).
- dehrmann 8y agoI miss how reliable magneto optical storage in a cartridge is. The physics behind it mean the data should be readable for a very long time.
- LeoPanthera 8y agoIt was a massive success everywhere except the USA. But because the USA defines history, it was a "failure". Wonderful video about the format: https://youtu.be/kU3BceoMuaA https://youtu.be/kU3BceoMuaA
- macspoofing 8y agoMinidiscs were only popular in Japan. They had limited success everywhere else.
- ksec 8y agoIt was popular in many parts of Asia and Western Europe.
- LeoPanthera 8y agoAs someone who was living in the UK during the "minidisc era", I can confirm that this is extremely not true. Everyone I knew had a minidisc player, and they were ubiquitous while commuting on the tube. I think the "it was only a success in Japan" meme is one of those things that people read on the internet and just assume is true because it sounds plausible. In reality they were very popular across Europe, wide parts of Asia, and Australia/NZ (to perhaps a slightly lesser extent) as well. Anyway the YouTube video above covers all this better than I can.
- armadsen 8y agoI agree with you. I was a huge fan of Minidisc, and even had an MD-related business in the early 2000s. However, as others have said, it was really only (relatively) unsuccessful in the US. It was hugely successful in Japan, and only faded out as the iPod made it obsolete for music listening, and (slightly later) flash recorders took over the market for field recording. In Japan, you can still buy blank minidiscs in any normal electronics store.
- discreteevent 8y agoI had an MD player when the first iPod came out. A friend got one and I noticed how bad it sounded. So we compared the same track at the same bitrate with the same headphones. The quality on the iPod was much worse. But it did look cool and they had iTunes.