Forum - View topicNEWS: Sony to End MD Players Sales in March
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PrecisionCrab
Posts: 215 |
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Lol. I still use MD's.
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Giant_Robo_28
 Posts: 52 Location: Chicago |
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WTF!?!?! I didn't even know that Sony still manufactured MD's in Japan.
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GeorgeC
Posts: 795 |
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There are a LOT of things produced in Japan that never make it over here or get test-marketed and dropped quickly because the product just doesn't appeal to Americans... ( => Like a lot of anime series including some of the most popular in the history of the medium. Americans just don't like Gundam that much in particular... Lupin III has made even less of an impact over here.)
Doesn't surprise me that they kept up the MD format. It was supported for a very few years in the US at towards the beginning of the 1990s. I hear the MD recordable players were actually popular amongst field biologists and ecologists. As for pre-recorded MD's, they never really replaced or supplemented the Audio CD well at all. MD is just another in a line of at least a half-dozen or so audio formats that never took off and replaced Audio CD as badly as that format NEEDED to be replaced with higher fidelity audio! (And no, vinyl doesn't count. It gets scratched to hell all too easily and 12-inch platters aren't exactly portable or light. They get heavy and bulky quickly! Ask any owner of a decent size LD collection about that one, too...) Another thing they have in Japan that the US doesn't have... Blu ray recorders! We have DVR, yes, but it's a pain-and-a-half to port over recordings as opposed to what was able to be done with DVD Recorders (with hard drives). Media companies in the US just don't want it to be easy to master your own hi-def discs; they have enough problems with piracy in Asia already! Add to that scrambled signals on digital channels, the point is that the software/media providers do NOT want to endorse another format that allows you to record once and NEVER have to pay for a pre-recorded disc or download from the Internet. It's all about how the media companies package software and what new ways they can find to get people to buy the same programs/movies over and over again... Of course, now with the convergence of media providers and hardware manufacturers under the same roof/corporation, they've gotten their heads together and decided what hardware will and WON'T be released. IF, for instance, the US Congress had any idea of the impact of digital cameras and cell phones with said-cameras on traditional wet film sales, they'd have NEVER allowed phones with cameras to be sold and probably would have restricted/taxed digital cameras to death! The advent of digital cameras has killed old companies like Kodak and devastated foreign competitors like Fuji, too. You have to go to specialty stores to get more than the "cheap" available 35mm rolls of film now! |
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FlamingLight
Posts: 95 |
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Funny how people complained when Nintendo did MD's for the GC.
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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The Gamecube used mini DVDs.
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PingSoni
 Posts: 195 Location: Lansing MI |
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MD was also used fairly extensively in the US in broadcast and live performance (theater) for its ability to easily edit, rearrange, title and cue tracks.
For a period of time, portable MD recorders were the easiest way to make relatively high-quality audio recordings in the field, too. |
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WeirDiE_InC
 Posts: 418 Location: The GVRD |
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Now I'm beginning to miss my Minidisc player. Haven't seen one being sold in years. And to think that back then, Best Buy made a big deal out of the introduction of Hi-MDs in their flyers.
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lumclaw
 Posts: 47 |
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Well an unlicensed clone, not branded or marketed as "DVD" by name. But it's the closest thing we'll ever see. 
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