4 ms·

Tangent. I had a Minidisc player for a while circa 1997 (bit hazy). It was so awesome. I spent a lot of time putting tracks on the minidiscs. I always wanted t

by vertis 6y ago

Tangent. I had a Minidisc player for a while circa 1997 (bit hazy). It was so awesome. I spent a lot of time putting tracks on the minidiscs. I always wanted to be able to use it with a computer to store files as well, alas that required a special drive. While it existed never really took off (at least in Australia). Memory chips might be the future, but minidiscs still look cooler. Cool enough for Neo to sell one in the Matrix :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU3BceoMuaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU3BceoMuaA

SergeyDruid 6y ago
I always loved that scene! that minidiscs used for data in underground, illegal things sounded so cyberpunk-ish!
vict00ms 6y ago
They released a 1gb "Hi-MD" disc in the same form factor in 2004 that never took off.
hn3333 6y ago
I believe Minidisc was also the medium of choice in "Strange Days", a pretty good and still very relevant movie that gets mentioned rarely for some reason.
- mhd 6y ago
  I always thought that "Strange Days" was one of the prime examples of "underrated movies", so it often gets mentioned that it gets rarely mentioned ;) (Another movie I'd put in this group, Arnold Braunschweiger's "Last Action Hero" incidentally also has some mini disc usage)
dijit 6y ago
I had exactly the same desire. It’s crazy how locked down the minidisc ecosystem was though. I remember playing with the Sony software to put tracks on my minidisc player, encoding then with AAC to get better compression. The thing felt great to use, much better than early MP3 players (the USB thumb drive style ones) but they were superior in nearly every way that mattered. (You could store files on them, more tracks, more battery life). Anyway. That was a nostalgia trip.
t0mas88 6y ago
I had one of those as well, it was a great device! I finally traded it for a harddisk based MP3 player somewhere early 2000s, one of these: https://www.cnet.com/reviews/iriver-h120-20gb-review/ https://www.cnet.com/reviews/iriver-h120-20gb-review/ And then in the years after I found out that there is an open source firmware for them at rockbox.org, contributed to the project for a few years until at some point the iPhone (3? 4? something around there) with Spotify completely replaced my MP3 player needs.
iuguy 6y ago
I bought a Sony MD-N707 not too long back which I'm using as a nice way to chill out without screens, and for recording Shortwave radio overnight off a Sony ICF-SW7600GR world band radio. The MD-N707 has a cool maintenance mode feature accessed via a Konami code that lets you patch an EEPROM to enable features from other models. My only gripe with NetMD is that you can put things onto MD from a computer, but it's an analogue trip back for recordings. This was an architectural decision due to DRM restrictions. One day I'd like to have a go at trying to bypass this, but it looks like a massive pain in the hole and I only have one MD recorder.
- Reason077 6y ago
  Back in the day it was easy to make digital copies from CD to MD using an optical (toslink) cable. This method would preserve the track markers accurately which was hugely convenient! It wasn't lossless, of course, since MD is itself a compressed format, but the results were pretty good compared to say the MP3s of the era.
  - vict00ms 6y ago
    I bought a PS2 at one point because it had an optical audio out (and DVD player), gaming was secondary.
  - iuguy 6y ago
    Yeah my N707 has an optical in but shakes fist no optical out :( That does sound really cool that it preserves the track markers though!
k2enemy 6y ago
Me too! I used to love minidiscs back in the late 90s. I started out with a Sony MZ-R30 and moved on to a half a dozen other models. I was very lucky that I was able to convince a dozen or so friends to adopt minidiscs so we had a nice network for creating and trading discs. I even ran a website devoted to equipment (not nearly as successful as minidisc.org). Now I'm nostalgic. It is really too bad that Sony kept the ecosystem so locked down. It was far superior to fragile audio CDs.
fb03 6y ago
What I most liked about the portable Minidisc players at the time was how much playtime you would get out of a single AA battery. on the ballpark of 20-30 hours, not kidding.
grishka 6y ago
Being from a country where minidisc was never a thing, I sometimes wonder what was it like to use a technology that no one around you ever had at the time. And I mean I'm not sure you could buy any of the minidisc stuff even if you specifically went looking for it. We had cassette walkmans, then CD players, then mp3 players.

by vertis 6y ago

SergeyDruid 6y ago

I always loved that scene! that minidiscs used for data in underground, illegal things sounded so cyberpunk-ish!

vict00ms 6y ago

They released a 1gb "Hi-MD" disc in the same form factor in 2004 that never took off.

hn3333 6y ago

I believe Minidisc was also the medium of choice in "Strange Days", a pretty good and still very relevant movie that gets mentioned rarely for some reason.

mhd 6y ago
I always thought that "Strange Days" was one of the prime examples of "underrated movies", so it often gets mentioned that it gets rarely mentioned ;) (Another movie I'd put in this group, Arnold Braunschweiger's "Last Action Hero" incidentally also has some mini disc usage)

dijit 6y ago

I had exactly the same desire. It’s crazy how locked down the minidisc ecosystem was though. I remember playing with the Sony software to put tracks on my minidisc player, encoding then with AAC to get better compression. The thing felt great to use, much better than early MP3 players (the USB thumb drive style ones) but they were superior in nearly every way that mattered. (You could store files on them, more tracks, more battery life). Anyway. That was a nostalgia trip.

t0mas88 6y ago

I had one of those as well, it was a great device! I finally traded it for a harddisk based MP3 player somewhere early 2000s, one of these: https://www.cnet.com/reviews/iriver-h120-20gb-review/ https://www.cnet.com/reviews/iriver-h120-20gb-review/ And then in the years after I found out that there is an open source firmware for them at rockbox.org, contributed to the project for a few years until at some point the iPhone (3? 4? something around there) with Spotify completely replaced my MP3 player needs.

iuguy 6y ago

I bought a Sony MD-N707 not too long back which I'm using as a nice way to chill out without screens, and for recording Shortwave radio overnight off a Sony ICF-SW7600GR world band radio. The MD-N707 has a cool maintenance mode feature accessed via a Konami code that lets you patch an EEPROM to enable features from other models. My only gripe with NetMD is that you can put things onto MD from a computer, but it's an analogue trip back for recordings. This was an architectural decision due to DRM restrictions. One day I'd like to have a go at trying to bypass this, but it looks like a massive pain in the hole and I only have one MD recorder.

Reason077 6y ago
Back in the day it was easy to make digital copies from CD to MD using an optical (toslink) cable. This method would preserve the track markers accurately which was hugely convenient! It wasn't lossless, of course, since MD is itself a compressed format, but the results were pretty good compared to say the MP3s of the era.
- vict00ms 6y ago
  I bought a PS2 at one point because it had an optical audio out (and DVD player), gaming was secondary.
- iuguy 6y ago
  Yeah my N707 has an optical in but shakes fist no optical out :( That does sound really cool that it preserves the track markers though!

k2enemy 6y ago

Me too! I used to love minidiscs back in the late 90s. I started out with a Sony MZ-R30 and moved on to a half a dozen other models. I was very lucky that I was able to convince a dozen or so friends to adopt minidiscs so we had a nice network for creating and trading discs. I even ran a website devoted to equipment (not nearly as successful as minidisc.org). Now I'm nostalgic. It is really too bad that Sony kept the ecosystem so locked down. It was far superior to fragile audio CDs.

fb03 6y ago

What I most liked about the portable Minidisc players at the time was how much playtime you would get out of a single AA battery. on the ballpark of 20-30 hours, not kidding.

grishka 6y ago

Being from a country where minidisc was never a thing, I sometimes wonder what was it like to use a technology that no one around you ever had at the time. And I mean I'm not sure you could buy any of the minidisc stuff even if you specifically went looking for it. We had cassette walkmans, then CD players, then mp3 players.