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Subject: Rediscovering MiniDisc
Back when CD and Cassette were king, two competing formats came out that tried to compete for our dollars: Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) and MiniDisc (MD). DCC had players that would play your old tapes as well as the new digital media, but I predicted MD would win 'cause it had instant access, and no tapes to rewind or jam. And I was right, sort of: MiniDisc's win over DCC was not a real win over anything else, because Sony are fucking retards, and they saddled the system with a ludicrous anti-copying mechanism that meant your MDs were basically one-way media. Whatever you recorded onto an MD digitally could not be perfectly copied, so every copy would be slightly suckier than the last.
![[Image: /grafx/throwaway/MD.jpg]](/grafx/throwaway/MD.jpg "/grafx/throwaway/MD.jpg")
It was still awesome though, as a playback unit before MP3 players made everything obsolete. Small, protected, re-recordable discs with CD-length capacity (74 or 80 minute discs were the norm). You could bung a stack of 'em into the car and not worry about scratches. They'd get 8+ hours on a single AA battery, and had huge 'shock buffers' (remember those?) to allow uninterrupted playback while you jogged or rally-drove your way to work.
In any case, I was an MD fan. I bought a player in Japan that was really great, and I loved the shit out of it for years and years. Then I replaced it when it started to die, with another MD player, this time with a removable extra battery pack, and a large docking station for more convenient edits, digital in/out ports, etc.
But then I bought my 20GB Rio Karma MP3 player, and the idea of putting every single song I owned (plus a bunch I didn't) onto one instant-access player with drag/drop copying, smaller size and weight, and lower cost... Well, that was the end of my MD love affair.
The other day I pulled the MD player out of storage, along with a dozen old MDs, and enjoyed a trip down memory lane with mix discs I had created many years earlier. It was good fun, and I re-discovered some songs I'd forgotten about. I even threw the player in the car and enjoyed the beautiful sound of old Bz and Toten Hosen... Right up until I had to change a disc while driving. That brought home, in a crashing hurry, the reason we make advancements and leave the old things behind.
They were great, but they're not great anymore.
RIP MiniDisk.
It was still awesome though, as a playback unit before MP3 players made everything obsolete. Small, protected, re-recordable discs with CD-length capacity (74 or 80 minute discs were the norm). You could bung a stack of 'em into the car and not worry about scratches. They'd get 8+ hours on a single AA battery, and had huge 'shock buffers' (remember those?) to allow uninterrupted playback while you jogged or rally-drove your way to work.
In any case, I was an MD fan. I bought a player in Japan that was really great, and I loved the shit out of it for years and years. Then I replaced it when it started to die, with another MD player, this time with a removable extra battery pack, and a large docking station for more convenient edits, digital in/out ports, etc.
But then I bought my 20GB Rio Karma MP3 player, and the idea of putting every single song I owned (plus a bunch I didn't) onto one instant-access player with drag/drop copying, smaller size and weight, and lower cost... Well, that was the end of my MD love affair.
The other day I pulled the MD player out of storage, along with a dozen old MDs, and enjoyed a trip down memory lane with mix discs I had created many years earlier. It was good fun, and I re-discovered some songs I'd forgotten about. I even threw the player in the car and enjoyed the beautiful sound of old Bz and Toten Hosen... Right up until I had to change a disc while driving. That brought home, in a crashing hurry, the reason we make advancements and leave the old things behind.
They were great, but they're not great anymore.
RIP MiniDisk.
BLEARGH
When I started going to Penn State Harrisburg that fall both its radio station and multi-media lab were fully vested in the format as well.