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Hi Brent,
Your comments are very interesting. I'm forwarding them to the MD
mailing list. In some ways I think you are right, MD has reached mass
market levels in Japan, why isn't that reflected in prices for
equipment here? Who is padding the prices of things, and why?
Rick
>My name is Brent and I have been watch the Minidisc format for a
>couple of years now. I have been waiting for them to become more
>popular and readily available before I bought into them.
>
>About a year ago, I saw Minidisc players pop up in car stereo shops
>around here (San Diego California) and I was pretty excited. I
>thought that after a year or 2, the full line of player/recorders
>would be available, and the prices would drop.
>
>Lately, I have noticed that the Minidisc displays are either battered
>and neglected, or are gone all together from our local stores. I'm
>pretty sure it had to do with the price of the units (compared with
>CD players), and their scarce availability.
>
>I would see a book shelf stereo for sale that had a Minidisc in it,
>and the price was $600.00, right next to it was a comparable unit
>with a dual cassette (instead of Minidsic) and it was $149.00
>
>I went shopping in 4 different car audio stores this past weekend, I
>had a choice of dozens of brand name CD/AM/FM in dash receivers in
>the $100-$200 price range, and they were all in stock. The shops
>didn't carry any minidisc players, they could only order them. The
>cheapest one was $300.00, and they went up to $700.00.
>
>If the current retail situation her in San Diego is indicative of the
>rest of the market in the US, I don't think the Minidisc is going to
>fare to well. Sony (and the other marketers) need to do 2 things to
>make the Minidisc a hot seller:
>
>#1 Get the price down to the same or lower than a CD player (The best
>portable CD players and still cheaper than the bottom of the barrel
>Minidisc players)
>
>#2 Add the Minidisk to EVERY stereo they make and sell (boom box,
>shelf unit, CD Receiver, car stereo, ETC.)
>
>JVC and Panasonic even had a car stereo that would play both Minidisc
>AND CD in the same slot. If that's a dependable design, they should
>all go to that, so when a customer buys an indash CD player, he also
>gets a Minidisc player. If they did that for a few years, the things
>would take off like wild fire.
>
>As it is, a CD burner for your PC is around $200.00, and the disks
>are $1.00 ea. and their everywhere. Minidisc has to beat that before
>it'll stick around.
>
>Thank you.
>
>Brent
>Please e-mail me a response at::
>
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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