You know, I have a friend that just straight out gave me an amazing car audio system. For no other reason that he just didn’t want it anymore. It’s a Blaupunkt New Orleans. And it plays MiniDisc. The thing about gifts like that, is that you have to have the money to install them, which I don’t. But the point is, it plays MiniDiscs, and as a result, I’m aware they exit. That apparently makes me one of the few in North America.
The rest of the world, especially Japan, has truly embraced this format, and probably as a result of this, Sony is still pumping money in the development of MiniDisc devices. Take the MZ-RH10. It’s just gorgeous. Mainly because of the large OLED display that disappears when not in use. Can you say cool?
Also, it supports MP3 natively (as well as ATRAC, WMA and WAV) and has a 32 hour battery life. That’s a hell of a lot longer than my iPod’s.
So, maybe we should pay some attention. I mean, the rest of the world does sometimes come up with things worthy of our attention.
Are you praising the Blaupunkt or the Sony MZ-RH10? If you use the MZ-RH10 for recording say a live band or lions roaring in the Serengeti. When you transfer to a PC, if you then realise you wanted to save as a wav and try again it deletes the file(s) from the MiniDisc as well as the already transferred file. It doesn’t warn you, it doesn’t “You can’t do that!” No it just deletes it. I think this is typical of Sony. So the only safe way of doing it is via the analogue o/p. I bet I wouldn’t have this trouble with the iPod!