It looks like Sony are finally releasing a MiniDisc-based data drive; only a decade too late, too. The Hi-MD drive (with the catchy name "PIT-IN") will apparently be a USB Mass Storage device, and will go head-to-head with smaller and more robust USB keyrings. Chances are it'll still not be able to rip data off audio MiniDiscs for copyright-enforcement reasons, so all your bootleg gig minidiscs are still locked up in the translucent plastic prison of Sony DRM.

Meanwhile, the next Palm handheld will be the Tungsten X; it's basically going to be like a T5 with a built-in iPod Mini-sized hard drive, and MP3 player software to take advantage of that. If they put some audio inputs on that (other than the voice-grade microphone they come with), it'd make a pretty nifty portable audio workstation.

And someone has created OSX developer trading cards. Which make you wonder whether they buy their shirts in bulk from the same retailer.

Posted by: Bowie | http:// | Fri Apr 22 00:44:48 2005

From what I've read (but have yet to have confirmed by anyone but insane rantings in newsgroups) you are able to record onto the Hi-MD via microphone in uncompressed CD quality format and copy that "WAV" file (via USB, wrapped up in ATRAC but convertable with an update to Sony's software with no audio loss) from the Sony-MD with minimal trouble. It includes a flag in the file it records to indicate you recorded via the microphone and so are able to copy it.

I can't get this confirmed though because no-one with any sense of Sony's hardware history is brave enough to spend $400+ to discover that you can't actually do anything useful with it due to some stupid DRM.

The Hi-MD will definitely not allow you to copy (via USB) old Minidisc, only Hi-MDs. The old MDs don't have a reliable copyright flag so they just don't allow any of them. Massively frustrating.

Who the hell would copy pre-recorded copyrighted lossy compressed minidisc version of a song when they could rip the CDr ;p

Posted by: MDLVR | | Sat Mar 22 08:15:15 2008

Funny, I've copied Premastered MD's to my computer with sonicstage 4.3 and the Sony MZ-RH1. No DRM to speak of.

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