Jason Stamper's Blog

MiniDisc Community up in mini arms
November 26, 2008

The worldwide MiniDisc fanbase was somewhat shocked by a blog I wrote recently, in which a survey put the MiniDisc at number 14 in a list of Britain’s 20 most useless gadgets.

Now I’m not saying I’m losing serious amounts of sleep over the outcry (he says as he grabs yet another coffee) but I just wanted to make a couple of things clear to all you faithful MiniDisc users, now that the comments about my blog on www.minidisc.org have just surpassed the 50 mark.

Firstly, I come in peace. I mean you no harm. ‘Twas not I who so wronged your beloved gadget, but a group of people – oh, how misguided they must surely be – who happened to fill in a survey on reviews site www.reevoo.com. I am but a messenger of bad tidings. When it comes to MiniDiscs, anyway.

Secondly, while I am accused of spelling MiniDisc wrongly in my earlier blog, it was only in the list of gadgets itself, as supplied to me by www.reevoo.com, where it was spelled wrongly. That’s because it seemed to me that there was a slim possibility that some respondents had meant another brand of ‘mini disk player’, as opposed to a Sony-specific MiniDisc per se.

Now if you want to split hairs -- and some in the MiniDisc community no doubt will -- you could argue that even though Sony licensed the MiniDisc format to most of the big electronics makers, they were still bound to use the proper term, MiniDisc, in their product marketing collateral. So strictly speaking there should be no ‘mini disk players’ in circulation (apart from MiniDisc players, if you see what I mean).

But that doesn’t mean that a quick Google search won’t turn up thousands of mis-spelled ‘mini disk players’, ‘minidisc players’ and ‘mini disc recorders’ that have been bought, sold or reviewed on the web. Or indeed, written about on minidisc.org, where despite their protestation about my spelling, many continue to spell it Minidisc – in violation of the proper and correct MiniDisc trademark as laid down by Sony itself – to this day.

Now I suppose you could argue that iPods and other MP3 players are, in a very real sense, ‘mini disk players’. The larger capacity versions certainly contain a very small hard disk drive, or, if you like, ‘mini disk’.

But thankfully, confusion between MiniDisc and iPods or ‘mini disk’ players has been rare, at least until now, because everyone calls them MP3 players or iPods or Sony WalkMan’s/Men. Phew!

So it’s unlikely that those respondents who put ‘mini disk players’ at number 14 on the list of Britain’s most useless gadgets meant iPods or their ilk.

Sorry, MiniDisc faithful, but it still seems to be the case that your faithful MiniDisc players were at number 14, making them more useless gadgets than egg slicers, yoghurt makers and towel warmers. At least, according to the survey.

Now, what do they say about not shooting the messenger?

PS. to the MiniDisc fan who said I "obviously" have "a sad obsession with electric nail files and foot spas", can I have my Christmas list back now please?

[Trivia fact: fans on MiniDisc.org call iPod users 'iSheep'.]

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Posted by Jason Stamper on November 26, 2008 03:42 PM

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Comments

Hi there
I have been using MiniDisc equipment almost since they have been available on the market. At the time of all the excitement that the MiniDisc was a reasonable replacement to the Cassette, it made incredible sense. The Cassette could only be recorded and editing meant the requirement of additional equipment and a lot of time.

Oh, there were some similarities. Both the Cassette and MD could record locally and remotely, both could use a microphone. Both were small in size and battery or ac operated. But the similarities were coming to a fast end.

There were some small pluses like a display for disk time left/used and song time, battery use, volume, record level, remote control on the earphones, some with a visual display.

The MiniDisc allowed Labeling the songs/recordings, cut and past of songs, moving them(and the labelings) about the MiniDisc as well as changing the entire order of songs, or whatever type of recording it was to the users becken. It was a wonderful change in electronics and the disk was smaller than a cassette to top it off. Later interfaces for computer link would come into play as well.

As we know, other forces came onto the market and as I recall, SONY did not do a lot of advertising for the MiniDisc units. Was this a reflection of the Beta days, I don't know.

Sony continued producing the MD units in all shapes and sizes with different amenities. But Sony decided to add some amenities and remove others, never giving you a MD machine that had them all. This did not go over well with the loyal followings of MD.

Now we are 19 years later and Sony came out with the latest and greatest, the RH-1 and M200. These are professional quality units and were developed with all of Sonys' past additions plus some new ones.

There seems to be two types of people out there. Those that don't like ( or never have come into contact of ) the MD and Those that will STRONGLY protect it.

After the cassette days ( I don't know anyone that has not owned at least one type of cassette unit ) the MD was a breath of fresh air and the ability to do all the things that the MD can has been a real treat. Even now the HiMD units can be used as a computer data storage device, plug the USB in the computer and it is recognised as a 1Gig hard drive.

The MD offers a near DC quality recording because of the encryption used for data storage. The last artical I read stated that the MP3 encrytion was not as good, to a point that one could hear the difference between the two recordings.

I understand that Sony has two HiMD models on the table being developed, again, there is little advertising out there yet, Sony persists in producing this mode of portable recorder.

I can understand the MD landing on the list of worst products, since only the MD enthusiasts really know what the MD can do compared to other sound recording equipment. Others dont have an interest and dont try to learn about them.

I only wonder what was listed as 1 thru 13. If this were an educated sample of people that took that survey, I don't beleive the MD would have landed on the list at all. It is a work of technology by itself.

I am glad you learned how to spell Mini Disc properly. Now if you could only understand the actual product.

slc

Posted by: SeanL on May 19, 2009 04:27 PM

Jason Stamper's Blog

MiniDisc Community up in mini armsNovember 26, 2008

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MiniDisc Community up in mini arms
November 26, 2008