Billy Hetherington wrote:
>
> I believe if Sony learns to push the right advertising buttons, they may
> convince music pirates everywhere that MD is a much better method of storing
> MP3 audio for portable playback. Have you ever priced Smart Media or
> CompactFlash memory upgrades? Or the price of Sony's new Memory Stick
> upgrades? The reason MP3 caught on is because people are cheap. When they
> realise that MiniDisc will save them money in the long run, then MD will
> catch on. Plus people need to realise the limitations of MP3 only players,
> mostly that you NEED a computer to do any music editing or recording
> functions with most of these units. I think soon we'll see MD players that
> can access email, organize notes, etc. I think a neat idea would be for Sony
> to make portable MD Data drives the size of the current players, that can
> play back conventional audio discs as well as MP3. The machine could connect
> to a USB port and you could have 140 mb of MP3 on a disc that costs a few
> bucks. Just imagine the hype that would surround the MiniDisc then !!
Yeah, MD media is MUCH cheaper than CF or SmartMedia.
I think even if the MP3's were converted to regular ATRAC and the MD's
could only hold 74 or 80 minutes of audio, as long as putting MP3's on
MD were FASTER and EASIER, it would make it a hot seller. A simple MD
recorder with USB interface would be good enough. Not that cheesy USB
to TOSLINK thing, but a real USB interface that could transfer audio
data at MUCH faster than realtime. The USB interface should also allow
transferring track names, and operating the MD recorder from the PC. In
fact, to make the MD recorder cheaper, MP3 to ATRAC conversion could
occur on the PC side with no conversion hardware/software required in
the recorder itself. Of course, the ability to hold 140MB of MP3's
would be great, but there also needs to be an ATRAC conversion mode to
allow the discs to be usable on legacy equipment.
About the MD recorder that can access email and organize notes... I was
fantasizing about something like that when I did that April Fools Palm
Pilot/MD recorder combo thing. Now I've come to discover that some
company has a Palm Pilot clone (called Visor I think) that has an
expansion slot. Supposedly there's an MP3 player card that makes this
PDA into a fullblown portable MP3 player, and I think it can also access
internet and email. Now if only it had an MD drive in it!
Shawn
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