This is the comfiest gadget ever created, but it was too comfortable

>>59391674

oh man minidisk. I had a GF back in the days and her dad was all over that shit. Bought 2 players for $700 each and had all these shitty disks. He knew it was superior to CDs and couldnt understand why anyone wouldnt switch to that shit.

Good old times.

I had a cheap one, but i loved listening to cowboy bebop on it and getting lost in the music.

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still got mine... amazing tech for its time. will never use it again though, because loading music on the disks was fuck awful

Why didn't these catch on?

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>>59391674
Look at you plebs.

>>59391840
They were fucking expensive, slow to load music on, offered little over casette tapes, and CDs were cheap and plentiful, along with their players being a fraction of the cost.

>>59391859

at the time everyone had a CD player and switching to mini disk required a new player and they were really expensive.

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I owned one of those, and a few retail albums on actual MiniDisc (Pearl Jam, Rush, a few others), only downside was the battery life. Even on a full charge you'd barely get 2 albums done before needing to recharge, and the expanded battery pack would only add another hour from 4 AA's so, if you couldn't plug in it wasn't of much real portable use.

Contrast that 1st MiniDisc player/recorder the OP is talking about (which I owned) this this magnificent bitch, the epitome of MiniDisc technology known as the MZ-N1. Just using the gumstick battery alone with a full charge I'd get over 50 hours of playback - if I added the AA battery holder with a brand new alkaline AA battery I'd extend that to about 110 hours max.

110 fucking hours of continuous audio playback from a device that has:

- a laser
- a motor assembly that moves the laser
- a motor assembly that spins the spindle
- all the associated electronics to handle the processing and decoding of the digital data on the spinning disc and also the ability to record on the same disc
- the electroluminescent displays in the main unit and the remote

All that, in 2001, and 110+ hours of battery life which is still unmatched today - the Snapdragon 835 can theoretically play back music for 95 hours continuously on a single charge which is great but again that's well below the 110+ capable with an electro-mechanical-laser powered device from 16 fucking years ago.

Sony had it, man, they fucking had it, the right technology at the right time but they fucked it up with the god damned terrible SonicStage software which made people fucking hate MiniDiscs.

Sony, you stupid dumbass sad sorry motherfuckers, you blew it. Again.

And again, and again, and again, and you're still fucking blowing it, every god damned time you make something awesome then you shoot yourselves in the foot by doing something stupid.

Fuck you, Sony.

i had one and loved it. could go straight data and make big playlists and swap out a disc when sick of the music or if you couldnt get access to a computer you could record from a analog source. so cache...

I owned the MZN10
super slick device, what I *really* loved about it was the remote with the display on it.


What was truly aweful was SonicStage or whatever it was called, it was genuinely very restrictive and sucked balls all around

>i heard a story that the reason it was so restrictive was congress was worried about piracy so they made it like that to appease them

>>59391674

I fucking adored minidisc. I have the MZ-RH1. The last model Sony ever produced.

Even had a few of the Bitcollector minidiscs. Sold it all a year ago.

i thought this thing was the coolest thing ever in about 2002, was super jealous of my friend who had one

are they still useful today? what is the software situation like?

>>59392084
Man, don't blame all at sony. There were many factors, people already having entere collections of music on CDs since the 80's, the cost of devices at first was pretty expensive, and also the low amount of albums available in minidisc...

>>59392084
I have seen that the last version of the codec can fit 1GB of data in a minidisc.
How does it work? you need a minidisk recorder for pc and software to write your mp3 to a minidisk like itunes?

>>59392273
>and also the low amount of albums available

I bought a small minidisc portable player and a big home stereo type minidisc player. All I ever used was blank disc which I put things on myself. My big stereo minidisc player and my CD player had this digital coax cable so the minidisc got an exact copy of the CD, which was fine.

I never found a store which sold anything but CDs and blank minidiscs. I've never seen a pre-recorded minidisc album ever, not in stores or elsewhere. I'm not even sure I've seen a picture of one before the picture used in OPs post.

>comfiest gadget
I disagree there, that thing was one big lump to drag around just to listen to some music.