Sony's Net MD...anyone?

[kazzer]

Are Sony's Net MD minidisc recorders any good? I heard theres some silly glitch about "checking in and out" mp3's for copyright reasons.

Anyone have a Net MD?

[pixel]

I am a big fan of MD's, I personally have 3 recorders (1 standalone, 2 portable). I also have a PC link fore the standalone (worst investment ever! It never gets used apart from naming the tracks, which I can use the remote for anyway).

I had thought about net MD's, but decided an MP3 HD player was better.

The thing is that you will end up paying about £220 (about $265) for a good net MD or about the same for a HD recorder which can store 20GB worth of MP3 or WMA and you will not have to buy extras for it like you will have to buy for a minidisc recorder.

The real drawback I which caused me to get an HD MP3 player was that unlike an MP3 player, you can't uplaod tracks to the PC, so if accidently lost all my music on my PC, I could just uplaod from my MP3 player, but couldn't with a net MD. I also like the idea better of carrying around a player the size of a CD player than carrying a minidisc and all the other discs I might want to listen to.

I don't know about the MP3 copyright thing, but because it is SONY (I don't think they make the software though) they probably will have checks so they aren't sued by recording companies.

[flaninacupboard]

yeah, it'll be SCMS. check out www.minidisc.org for a plethora of info on MD.

Suffice to say Net MD is a good idea, a decade too late. apart from the quality difference between atrac and MP3 there is no reason to go for MD over a solid state MP3 player with 256megs of ram. especially if you keep all your music on the pc, as you can easily put wjatever tracks you like on your mp3 player before you leave the house.

I have a MD portable and a deck. i use the MD portable if i'm going out cycling or short car journeys, and at work for my lunch break. long car journeys, weekends away, flights, and visiting friends i use my nomad 3 20gig. best of both worlds for me

[pixel]

yeah, it'll be SCMS. check out www.minidisc.org for a plethora of info on MD.

Suffice to say Net MD is a good idea, a decade too late. apart from the quality difference between atrac and MP3 there is no reason to go for MD over a solid state MP3 player with 256megs of ram. especially if you keep all your music on the pc, as you can easily put wjatever tracks you like on your mp3 player before you leave the house.

I have a MD portable and a deck. i use the MD portable if i'm going out cycling or short car journeys, and at work for my lunch break. long car journeys, weekends away, flights, and visiting friends i use my nomad 3 20gig. best of both worlds for me

I use a nomad 1 6GB (it used to be 20 after an upgrade but it crashed). The only thing I hate about the nomad 1 is the poor battery life (4 hrs) and it likes to crash if i load about 5 albums into the playlist.

[kazzer]

Thanks for the replies guys! I think you have convinced me to go for an MP3 player.

[EddyH]

Except you can get a box of five minidiscs (read: about 800mb of storage, for tunes at 292, 146 or 73kbits) for the same price as a 16mb flashcard . Or a 25-CD spindle...

The smart money's on an MP3/WMA/ATRAC CD player really, but for something thats around the same size as the average mp3 player but much better in terms of media cost (no need to constantly piss around with swapping tracks in and out of that still-tiny 256mb) you cant beat the MD yet. If the checking-in and -out is a pain, either a/ use 'dummy' copies of the mp3s you want to use, b/ burn them to CDRW and use a 4x record CD/MD hi-fi... only need to do it once after all.