My friend had one and I thought it was awesome because it fit in a pocket so easily. I couldn't afford one though. I bought a nice Sony tape deck for my car instead, and made mixtapes from my computer... Back in the hayday of Napster.
When I was ~13 MP3 players just didn't exist yet and sony had a Minidisc player which let me have ANY music I wanted instead of just a single cd or tape etc. I begged my mom for one for Christmas and she got me one and I was so excited. Turns out you couldn't just drop songs onto the minidisc you had to record them onto it like a Tape! I spent hours recording and filling up a disc so I could get on my Razor Scooter and scoot down to my frieds house 5 min away. I should of just used my cd player :P
I always liked the colorful discs. At one point I found a pack of clear colorful 3.5" floppy discs and some people thought they were minidiscs. That was back in technical high school in computer tech class.
A casualty of the Japanese economic bubble bursting in the early 1990s. Japan was all-in on magneto-optical (MO) technology, but Americans refused to pay those high prices. Americans waited until CD-R burners became affordable and the media was really cheap.
@@seanwieland9763 I've seen MO disks (the larger ones) used as a backup storage solution at a mid-sized company in Europe. They had a washing-machine sized device with a robotic arm that could access hundreds of these. Very neat, although by the time I got to see it (early 2010s) it was only kept around for legal reasons and not used anymore. They had actually reverted to tape storage for newer backups, since MO couldn't handle the amount of data created anymore.
@@seanwieland9763 He literally ambushed the Sony guys on a golf course (look, I don't like to stereotype the Japanese...but...), holding a Vaio running MacOS. He wanted to put MacOS on Vaio, and Sony said "Nah."
@@hoilst265that's not a stereotype of a Japanese businessman, it's just what successful people do in their free time world over, and Sony was definitely living it up back then. Golf as a hobby has mostly dried up in Japan after the bubble era since it's just too expensive, living frugally is a virtue now.
100%. They always wanted to set a standard that would have others pay them royalties. After RCA and the radio royalties everyone wanted a piece of that action.
Ironically Sony is who invented the 3.5” 1.44MB floppy by not keeping it proprietary, but the managers at Sony saw this as a failure rather than a win condition.
Love the minidisc format. Especially with current modern software allowing me to write music on it like putting files on a USB stick. Simply brilliant.
Never have I clicked so fast on a video when I saw mini disc! 5:40 That is a nifty little thing that I wish manufacturers put on there notebook machines more, options for specific things like keypads, drives or IO ports, all with a single connection type that can be interchangeable.
Framework goes somewhat in that direction but there USB-C Based Expansion Slots are far smaller. The Framework 16 has a big slot with PCIe x8 on the back, good for GPUs, Networkcards and Storage but not Disk Drives or similar thinks. Panasonic has (or had?) also some very Modular and expansive devices, with a Disk Drive Bay...
Месяц назад
Dell did that at one point, on their Latitude line of laptops, sadly even they have abandoned that
Prior to the advent of low cost GB+ SD cards and ssd's, Mini Disc was the top random read write removable storage tech out there. As a big MD fan since the early 90s with a Sharp portable player in 93, stereo component md recorders 94+, and an mzr30 recorder since 98, was always amazed and frustrated that the MD wasn't used far more commonly for data storage, as a floppy and cdrw replacement, post 2000, especiallywith the higher capacity HiMD. Sony kept it back for themselves way too long
@@seanwieland9763 To be fair, there were many competing solid state storage standards in late 90s, early 00s- compact flash, sd, memory stick, xd, SmartMedia, mmc and others. Still doesn't excuse Sony for complicating things further
I can tell you why it wasn't more commonly used: It was expensive, to the point that it was primarily a toy for rich early adopters in the beginning. Even as time moved on and disc prices dropped to a tenth of where they were in the early '90s, they were still at least 20x more expensive than CDs - just when Flash storage began to take off and writeable DVDs became commonly available. On top of that you had to deal with the fact that barely anyone had a drive and that those drives were never cheap either. By that point, it was more of an ideological conviction or sunk cost fallacy that kept people attached to the format and barely any new customers were willing to invest into it.
@no1DdC Agreed in general, but I meant to imply that if Sony had aggressively licensed the format and pushed to get adoption rates higher with external usb zip drive competitor himd, then prices may have fallen fast enough. Even with history as it is, md was tough to beat for recording live audio until at least 2010 or later, when sd card recorders could do 3+ hr recording of lossless wav.
@@alexxbaudwhyn7572 By 2010, the format had been practically dead and obsolete for at least half a decade. Just because you stuck with it doesn't mean anyone else saw it as "tough to beat". I owned cheap, fast and reliable Flash storage with more capacity than any MD and none of the silly DRM by 2004 at the latest. Meanwhile, harddisk-based MP3 players like the iPod had long since conquered the high end enthusiast market that Sony was trying to cater to.
Many people still using MD here in japan ,the latest machine modular recorder is able to record high quality audio using toslink capture from amazon ,it sounds fantastic it really looks MD was made decades ahead of its time ! !
одно только жалко - сам формат MD с его ATRAC - это не lossless хранилище для музыкальных данных. вот что интересно, какой объем компьютерных данных этот носитель способен хранить.
Just ordered an MZ-RH910 and the last Hi-MD disc from Sony available on amazon (at least the last new one from Sony for international buyers). So looking to get back into minidisc after 20 years!!!
Congrats on your purchase, enjoy! I got an MZ-RH10 last year but (as expected) the OLED display was gone. Work great with the remote control tho so no regrets.
my dad jumped on the minidisc wave pretty quickly, for the standalone deck and portable player. I do remember going to one of the sony stores and seeing a PC tower with a minidisc drive. I had the portable player with me, so the rep wanted to show me how i could play my minidisc on the computer
I just wish MD Data was a bigger format with a variety of drive options, so you could use it as storage medium for retro PC's, like they did in action films from the 90's like Goldeneye or The Matrix.
Absolutely one of the most desirable laptops made but they werent cheap. Sony made some gorgeous coloured laptops too, orange, green, crimson - beautiful vibrant colours too. Be nice to see you revirw those too.
Still the best way to store your valuable data. Because it feels more physical than a solid state drive. Something you can touch and reach anytime you like.
I love my MD so much. I was lucky to buy the last box of 100 disks sealed new-in-box blanks from a Sony store that closed. I already bought so much before that I have yet to open that box. :)
@@beardedlion It would be nice but in the end, having 1 or 2 albums per disk adds to the experience of still using these today. There's no way I'll ever pay 70-90 per disks to these bandits.
@@UCs6ktlulE5BEeb3vBBOu6DQ yeah, that's fair. I did make many compilation disks in the past years and that's also what attracted me to the format. For some casual listening I even made some LP2 discs. But I'd love to have some HiMD discs to record some lossless PCM to. You would still have the constraint of 2-3 albums worth of capacity, just at lossless quality.
You're absolutely right. Companies are not willing to take the risk in designing something different. Modern smartphones are a great example. Early smartphones manufacturers regularly tried unique form factors and features, but today, nearly all smartphones look the same.
I was big into MD in the day.... Still have my home-based players/recorders. I had in dash in car, a portable one and even a ES home unit and now I even have a Pro-recorder/player (MDS-85)..... I even had a few models of in dash car systems, I used to have a 3 disk in dash changer from Eclipse, I imported it from Japan and shocked that it worked perfectly with US devices. It was a pretty cool setup....
My memory of XP came back to life when i saw this video..the font, green progress bars, blue color..omg what a time to live..win 95/98/me/2000/xp etc…❤
Such a shame. If only Sony opened up their MiniDisc format at that era, to work as openly as the mp3 format, MD format probably can still thrive today.
Those were in the windows of the local Sony store... Looked mint! Total beast of advertising around it so you couldn't walk past without not seeing it.
My recollection of Sonic Stage was that it never read music from a minidisc. The function of the "transfer back" button was tied to the DRM system. SonicStage would only let you transfer a music file to a minidisc a set number of times, and when you reached that limit it refused to write it. The official way to be able to put that track on a new minidisc was to find one of the old ones and transfer it back off that disc, which meant it deleted it from that disc and restored "one credit" allowing you to write it again to a new disc. The quicker workaround was to delete the track from your sonicstage library and drag the MP3 back on, so it thought it was a different file and you got the full number of transfers again.
SonicStage had a "check in" option to restore the transfer limit to songs in your library, yes, but the limit went away with version 4.3 or 4.4 so you could "check out" the same song as much as you wanted. But it's true there was never a real digital transfer off of MD, at least not originally; some modern home-brew software has enabled that feature, which is a huge benefit for people who made original recordings on the format.
@@fsfs555 - I was close in my recollection, it's been a while since I did a SonicStage MD write. I have an old Dell XP laptop with it on. Most of my more recent MD recordings have been digital via optical in.
I remember that painful hell before later versions. Fortunately, the final generation of Hi-MD gear (eg, the RH1) permitted transfer *from* MDs, including those recorded in the Non-Hi-MD SP ATRAC3 format, to PC.
Man that Inspiron 8000 photo in the section about the ati 7500 was a blast of nostalgia. My dad had one for work and I tried to get him to order yellow wrist rests for the whole time he did lol
back in those years, about the year 2000 we, at the local radio station, somethings dreamed about it how it would be like.....MD in a PC. Thanks Colin for showing us how it would be like.
Someone had one of these in the MiniDisc Con at VCF SW this year. Such a sweet machine! They had a bunch of other modules too including the subwoofer and keypad.
I used to subscribe to Sony’s PULSE magazine/catalogue and just loved looking at all the cool products they came out with including the VAIO computers. I always wanted one of those cool sub-notebook size Memory Stick VAIOs. Years later I did get myself an 11” Apple MacBook Air so kind of half-lived out my dream 😂
I still have mine (and i have all the optional accessories for the bay and the recovery discs.) I had a minidisc changer in my car and this laptop was fantastic for making complilations and albums. I loved that period.
SONY had a lot of proprietary stuff. Like their memory sticks called... Memory Stick. A removable flash memory card format. I think a lot of their stuff failed because of it. They wanted to go their own way with some stuff, but failed.
One of Sony's standard game plan is to just steal what's around, blindly shrink it a bit, and market it as cool superior substitutes. Some worked some failed, like 3.5" floppy worked but mp3 Walkmans didn't, but constantly making weird incompatible format is their world domination super formula, not their repeated mistakes.
The biggest insult was the PSVita proprietary storage. Instead of giving up and use MicroSD, they made a new storage format smaller than a MicroSD but stupidly expensive. And it was only used for the Vita
@@claudiobizama5603 They had an xkcd # 221 situation right as they were finalizing Vita specs and that was clearly a kneejerk to it. That card was just too suspiciously close to microSD for zero apparent reason
@@claudiobizama5603 They made it smaller than MicroSD, because with the PSP, people were using cheap MemoryStick to MicroSD adapters. With a smaller format, this wasn't easily possible anymore. Typical corporate nonsense.
It has always frustrated me and confused me why Sony was so stuck to keeping MiniDisc solely an audio format. It is digital data (ATRAC), with a digital structure... prime to store data. And here, they finally did it... they put it *in a computer*. And yet they still locked it down to only working with audio/music - not even MD Data, an obscure and short-lived variant that allowed data storage (but only on specially formatted "MD Data" discs, in special MD Data drives). Had they actually bothered to develop an MD extension to, say, allocate an "audio track" space as data storage on standard MDs? (Skipped by audio players, readable by MD drives in PCs?) Zip would have been dead before it even got started. Imagine the parallel universe where Sony actually allowed MD to shine for data...
what a cool throwback! love how innovative Sony was. however, i can't help but think that the miniDisc format really never took off like they hoped. i mean, wasn't it just a bit too late? with the rise of mp3 players, it feels like the miniDisc was destined to be a niche product. what do you all think?
Sony computers are super cool, a built in MD drive makes it even more awesome! The software really holds it back though, both with the restore images and the MD software. If more applications were able to make use of this hardware, MiniDisc would have been used way more. iTunes with this drive would be amazing, just like how it works with iPods. If they made it so NetMD could also support data as well as audio, it would have been a solid option for everything.
Sonicstage was criticised at the time but back then I had a Sony 1GB MP3 player and the battery lasted for 50 hours between charges. So. converting music files with Sonic stage may have been a pain but worth it for such a long battery life. Stunning!
Those Sony scroll wheels were pretty neat when used with the menu software. Click the wheel to pop it up then scroll to select various functions or launch programs you set it to open.
I just got back into MiniDisc, and not a moment to soon. Last week when the cyclone hit the Seattle area I had not electricity and the couple of recorded Minidisc’s were my only source of entertainment.
It is so frustrating how asymptotically close Sony got to using minidiscs as generic writable data discs like CD-Rs back when it was relevant to do so. Minidisc should have been the portable data standard of the 90s. Instead we got floppy discs sticking around far too long, Zip disks being a niche stopgap, CD-Rs finally becoming cheap enough (but super bulky compared to everything else), and then finally flash media got cheap enough to kill off all that came before it. Sony was so close. They almost had it. We could’ve had laptops and PDAs with low-power 140MB minidisc drives that would read and write to any minidisc, but no. Hi-MD finally added the capability 10 years too late.
Nice find! I've never been able to get my hands on this model. I still have all my MD gear, including the MZ-RH1, and my JB980 Minidisc deck (which still sees occasional use).
I remember getting to see one of these laptops in person with the MD drive in it. It was quite cool and also quite thick. This video actually can't show off how thick it really is, you have to see one for yourself to know.
Hard to believe it's over 20 years old, when Windows XP hardware still feels new to me. Compared to 486 tech 10 years prior to this laptop, it goes to show how fast your computer was already out of date the day you bought it, and well before the PC building enthusiast market like today.
i have the same laptop, i don’t have the MD module, but i have the floppy, numeric keypad, and subwoofer module. that subwoofer module surprisingly sounds very good and adds a nice bit of room and volume to the laptop!
This was part of the CD copy protection system from Sony BMG; NetMD didn't have *that* problem, but had several others, including a limit on how many times you can 'check out' a song to MD, and the inability to transfer MD-recorded audio (including from mic/line input) back to the PC - although these restrictions were removed for their last generation of gear.
My mom used that as her work laptop for many years. It came included with the keypad, subwoofer and drive modules. I think she left the subwoofer installed most of the time.
A shame, that Sony is meanwhile not a big player in the PC business anymore. They built such great devices. I always wanted to have a Vaio standalone PC (Notebook were out of my reach at that time money-wise), but they never were a big thing here in here. Combined with my beloved Minidisc this would have been a perfect fit 🙂.
Used to use my Hi-MD player (MZNH-600) as a portable drive back in the early 2000's; used standard USB when you couldn't be guaranteed that the internet cafe would have a CD burner, and since it was 1GB a Hi-MD was a more cost effective option than flash storage at the time (slow as molasses but capacity was king back then).
i had a minidisc player in the 90s and thought it was cool at the time but don’t miss it. i even gave away my player and discs a few years ago to a minidisc aficionado.
I wish i had this in 2001 as a daily MD user both listen, record + using it for jingles to this day on community radio were it still tends to be a second choice to do spots with.
Sony had it's own "modern audience," the "Prosumers," who would have bought Apple laptops, otherwise. MiniDiscs were kept locked away at Sears, which was the only store I knew of that stocked those "private school/rich kid" toys. It's interesting to see how the M/O MiniDisc succeeded for some, as I copied music CDs to compact cassette, instead.
Meanwhile the bargain bin MP3 player I had when this laptop came out (the thumb drive type powered by a single AA battery that billions of which must have been produced by now) was just removable USB storage that you could write any data you wanted to in a few seconds. Sure, it held less, but it also cost next to nothing and was the very opposite of a hassle to use.
Wow, I cant believe Sony kept MD on the market until 2006. I remember wanting an MD player in the late 90s after my friend got one, but never got one. I went from tape walkman to Disc based mp3/cd player in the early 2000s, to ipod mini in 2004, and onto a Samsung solid state mp3 player in 2007. Sony and their proprietary media storage types have always been an interesting choice. Besides the MD, their memory sticks were a big pain in the ass for how much they cost, and then making the UMD format for the PSP.
Mann, I just turned 13 in 2003, was gifted the Sony MZ-NE410 from my parents. It was glorious. Took a vacation that Christmas. My little brother, who was maybe 9 or so, was chasing me around a parking lot at night. Had it in my hand. Didn’t see the speed bump. I hit it, I trip hard, Sony goes flying 20 feet, smashes in pieces. I was devastated. Absolutely crushed.
Back on the day Sony tried to install its priority formats in every thin they’ve done. At the early 2000’s the very first DVD player we own at home was from Sony, it was ridiculously expensive and had many ports, actually ones that I’ve never seen before intended for new high definition format like HDMI and optic audio, couple media ports to reproduce files straight from a Sony Clié, and a USB port to connect it to a PC (before PCs included dvd readers). But one of the most interesting thing was the Mini Disc and Memory Stick readers to play your media files on your living room’s tv, and according to the Bible (manual) included, you could save all the photos (taken on a cyber shot of course) from the memory stick in to a mini disc, directly from the DVD player without using a computer, we never tried it cause blank minidiscs were hard to find here in Mexico but always tough it was an interesting feature.
I have a different model of this same line that I bought in 2001 in Japan. Still runs and the battery even works although it gets less than 30 min. Mine has a DVD drive, volume key is with the F-keys and it was a lot thinner being "only" 1' thick. Had the same 1400 X 1050 screen. no mini disc. I really loved the machine back in the day and it was solid running windows NT (correction: Windows 2000). That was the best version of windows for me. Hardly any hangs ups just light and fast.
Imagine the universe where MD was just a storage medium, capable of holding any data, without restrictions, without copyright management, freedom to quickly transfer from one disc to another...
Mindisc was underutilized in computers, Sony should’ve not only made it for Vaio line of computers, they should’ve made Minidisc drives for other manufactures like IBM, Dell, Acer, Compaq computers! The format was very limited to Sony products.
It was typical Sony hubris. They wanted royalties and a monopoly on the market and since other manufacturers wouldn't go for it they just took all their toys and went home
I just recently onto this obscure format a few month prior, and as fascinating and cool this technology is, I have been waiting for someone to make a cover of this sony laptop, since the information on this particula models are very little, even on MinidiscWiki. Through this example, if Apple didn't launch the Ipod, then maybe Sony could have think of making a portable MD external drive with USB port for computer and laptop , which is more logical and financially beneficial than MD Data and Net MD expensive home deck system for computer, especially for hardcore Minidisc player . P/s: Sorry for long writing, it a surprise that you found this one of a kind gem, and even in fine condition, hope you make more content on the Mindisc and other obscure media format. :))
Minidisc remains the coolest format ever. I had a player, it felt like jacking into the future every time I put a disc in.
Just like fiddling with yourself in a Delorean
@@3rdalbum Jack to the future 😂
My friend had one and I thought it was awesome because it fit in a pocket so easily.
I couldn't afford one though. I bought a nice Sony tape deck for my car instead, and made mixtapes from my computer... Back in the hayday of Napster.
When I was ~13 MP3 players just didn't exist yet and sony had a Minidisc player which let me have ANY music I wanted instead of just a single cd or tape etc. I begged my mom for one for Christmas and she got me one and I was so excited. Turns out you couldn't just drop songs onto the minidisc you had to record them onto it like a Tape! I spent hours recording and filling up a disc so I could get on my Razor Scooter and scoot down to my frieds house 5 min away. I should of just used my cd player :P
DVD-RAM inside a cartridge is a good way to still relive that feeling with more modern capacity. There are still Fujitsu MO drives around too.
There is a reason they used mini disk for data storage in the matrix, it just looks cool.
Two grand....."If you get caught using that"
I always liked the colorful discs.
At one point I found a pack of clear colorful 3.5" floppy discs and some people thought they were minidiscs. That was back in technical high school in computer tech class.
Weren't they also in the movie Eraser?
A casualty of the Japanese economic bubble bursting in the early 1990s. Japan was all-in on magneto-optical (MO) technology, but Americans refused to pay those high prices. Americans waited until CD-R burners became affordable and the media was really cheap.
@@seanwieland9763 I've seen MO disks (the larger ones) used as a backup storage solution at a mid-sized company in Europe. They had a washing-machine sized device with a robotic arm that could access hundreds of these. Very neat, although by the time I got to see it (early 2010s) it was only kept around for legal reasons and not used anymore. They had actually reverted to tape storage for newer backups, since MO couldn't handle the amount of data created anymore.
MiniDisc was so stylish at the time and they still look so good!
How MiniDick can be stylish?
early 2000s sony is peak cool technology
Steve Jobs visited Sony and explicitly wanted to emulate their emphasis on design and quality. Apple became more Sony than Sony.
@@seanwieland9763 tbh i think the complexity and sheer variety of sony products of the time is still unreached by apple
@@seanwieland9763true, i remember steve jobs said he was heavily inspired by sony, and saw sony as the only rival of apple
@@seanwieland9763 He literally ambushed the Sony guys on a golf course (look, I don't like to stereotype the Japanese...but...), holding a Vaio running MacOS. He wanted to put MacOS on Vaio, and Sony said "Nah."
@@hoilst265that's not a stereotype of a Japanese businessman, it's just what successful people do in their free time world over, and Sony was definitely living it up back then. Golf as a hobby has mostly dried up in Japan after the bubble era since it's just too expensive, living frugally is a virtue now.
Oh how I wish minidisc PC drives existed more, I'd love to mess with them for that sweet tactile feel.
Techmoan is salivating.
>Techmoan mentioned
Sony locking down their formats with proprietary BS is what killed many of their cool ideas.
100%. They always wanted to set a standard that would have others pay them royalties. After RCA and the radio royalties everyone wanted a piece of that action.
Ironically Sony is who invented the 3.5” 1.44MB floppy by not keeping it proprietary, but the managers at Sony saw this as a failure rather than a win condition.
Yea same with UMD
Yeah....that stick of gum memory thing didn't age well.
Rip PS Vita
Love the minidisc format. Especially with current modern software allowing me to write music on it like putting files on a USB stick. Simply brilliant.
SP isn’t just for compatibility with older minidisc players, it’s also the highest audio quality option.
Never have I clicked so fast on a video when I saw mini disc!
5:40 That is a nifty little thing that I wish manufacturers put on there notebook machines more, options for specific things like keypads, drives or IO ports, all with a single connection type that can be interchangeable.
100 percent agreed, finished watching Dawid abusing a Chromebook which was running win. 11 lol and saw this
Framework goes somewhat in that direction but there USB-C Based Expansion Slots are far smaller.
The Framework 16 has a big slot with PCIe x8 on the back, good for GPUs, Networkcards and Storage but not Disk Drives or similar thinks.
Panasonic has (or had?) also some very Modular and expansive devices, with a Disk Drive Bay...
Dell did that at one point, on their Latitude line of laptops, sadly even they have abandoned that
Prior to the advent of low cost GB+ SD cards and ssd's, Mini Disc was the top random read write removable storage tech out there.
As a big MD fan since the early 90s with a Sharp portable player in 93, stereo component md recorders 94+, and an mzr30 recorder since 98, was always amazed and frustrated that the MD wasn't used far more commonly for data storage, as a floppy and cdrw replacement, post 2000, especiallywith the higher capacity HiMD. Sony kept it back for themselves way too long
In that Sony ad, they were still trying to force people to buy their proprietary MemoryStick format instead of the open SD card format.
@@seanwieland9763 To be fair, there were many competing solid state storage standards in late 90s, early 00s- compact flash, sd, memory stick, xd, SmartMedia, mmc and others. Still doesn't excuse Sony for complicating things further
I can tell you why it wasn't more commonly used: It was expensive, to the point that it was primarily a toy for rich early adopters in the beginning. Even as time moved on and disc prices dropped to a tenth of where they were in the early '90s, they were still at least 20x more expensive than CDs - just when Flash storage began to take off and writeable DVDs became commonly available. On top of that you had to deal with the fact that barely anyone had a drive and that those drives were never cheap either. By that point, it was more of an ideological conviction or sunk cost fallacy that kept people attached to the format and barely any new customers were willing to invest into it.
@no1DdC Agreed in general, but I meant to imply that if Sony had aggressively licensed the format and pushed to get adoption rates higher with external usb zip drive competitor himd, then prices may have fallen fast enough.
Even with history as it is, md was tough to beat for recording live audio until at least 2010 or later, when sd card recorders could do 3+ hr recording of lossless wav.
@@alexxbaudwhyn7572 By 2010, the format had been practically dead and obsolete for at least half a decade. Just because you stuck with it doesn't mean anyone else saw it as "tough to beat". I owned cheap, fast and reliable Flash storage with more capacity than any MD and none of the silly DRM by 2004 at the latest. Meanwhile, harddisk-based MP3 players like the iPod had long since conquered the high end enthusiast market that Sony was trying to cater to.
Many people still using MD here in japan ,the latest machine modular recorder is able to record high quality audio using toslink capture from amazon ,it sounds fantastic it really looks MD was made decades ahead of its time ! !
одно только жалко - сам формат MD с его ATRAC - это не lossless хранилище для музыкальных данных.
вот что интересно, какой объем компьютерных данных этот носитель способен хранить.
What is this "machine modular recorder"? I can't find it by that name
私は日本人だけど、今の時代にMDを使っている人を見たことがないよ。
Just ordered an MZ-RH910 and the last Hi-MD disc from Sony available on amazon (at least the last new one from Sony for international buyers). So looking to get back into minidisc after 20 years!!!
Congrats on your purchase, enjoy! I got an MZ-RH10 last year but (as expected) the OLED display was gone. Work great with the remote control tho so no regrets.
my dad jumped on the minidisc wave pretty quickly, for the standalone deck and portable player. I do remember going to one of the sony stores and seeing a PC tower with a minidisc drive. I had the portable player with me, so the rep wanted to show me how i could play my minidisc on the computer
I just wish MD Data was a bigger format with a variety of drive options, so you could use it as storage medium for retro PC's, like they did in action films from the 90's like Goldeneye or The Matrix.
They could have even had Computer Software on MiniDisc but it just didn't happen.
Sony used to be awesome with innovative design and products. Clié comes to mind...
But they just HAD to lock the music down... FOOLISH.
@@christophero1969 how else is Sony Music going to make moolah "their reasoning"
Absolutely one of the most desirable laptops made but they werent cheap.
Sony made some gorgeous coloured laptops too, orange, green, crimson - beautiful vibrant colours too. Be nice to see you revirw those too.
Still the best way to store your valuable data. Because it feels more physical than a solid state drive. Something you can touch and reach anytime you like.
And somehow you can't touch an SSD?
I LOVED the "wild west" era mini-laptops. It was a cool race of who could make the most compelling but most expansive or most connectable device.
Sonys biggest mistake was never to focus on making MD the next data storage format. Pure multi purpose, multi use file storage, like CD-R and CDRW.
I love my MD so much. I was lucky to buy the last box of 100 disks sealed new-in-box blanks from a Sony store that closed. I already bought so much before that I have yet to open that box. :)
If only HiMD media were as popular. Those things are selling at crazy prices these days
@@beardedlion It would be nice but in the end, having 1 or 2 albums per disk adds to the experience of still using these today. There's no way I'll ever pay 70-90 per disks to these bandits.
@@UCs6ktlulE5BEeb3vBBOu6DQ yeah, that's fair. I did make many compilation disks in the past years and that's also what attracted me to the format. For some casual listening I even made some LP2 discs. But I'd love to have some HiMD discs to record some lossless PCM to. You would still have the constraint of 2-3 albums worth of capacity, just at lossless quality.
@@beardedlion ATRAC 3 Plus 352 is good enough for "lossless"
Another computer MD drive that's limited to audio? 🙄 MD should have supported data from the start.
It was on purpose, a firewall between data and audio that ruined minidisc on the computer. This is because Sony was a big record label as well.
Transfer rate was quite slow, not an issue for music though
With a few tweaks it could have killed off CD.
Dang this laptop is decked out
Man! This computer is so cool!!!!!
You're absolutely right. Companies are not willing to take the risk in designing something different. Modern smartphones are a great example. Early smartphones manufacturers regularly tried unique form factors and features, but today, nearly all smartphones look the same.
So glad to have been able to watch this while on my lunch break. Thanks Colin!
Technology definitely peaked in the 2000's. I would kill for a modern laptop this modular and unique
thanks for all the effort you put into your videos!!!!
I was big into MD in the day.... Still have my home-based players/recorders. I had in dash in car, a portable one and even a ES home unit and now I even have a Pro-recorder/player (MDS-85)..... I even had a few models of in dash car systems, I used to have a 3 disk in dash changer from Eclipse, I imported it from Japan and shocked that it worked perfectly with US devices. It was a pretty cool setup....
0:53 inFAMOUS (edit turn on captions)
Great game!
Glad I’m not the only one who had issues with the Sonic Stage app
My memory of XP came back to life when i saw this video..the font, green progress bars, blue color..omg what a time to live..win 95/98/me/2000/xp etc…❤
Such a shame. If only Sony opened up their MiniDisc format at that era, to work as openly as the mp3 format, MD format probably can still thrive today.
Those were in the windows of the local Sony store... Looked mint! Total beast of advertising around it so you couldn't walk past without not seeing it.
My recollection of Sonic Stage was that it never read music from a minidisc. The function of the "transfer back" button was tied to the DRM system. SonicStage would only let you transfer a music file to a minidisc a set number of times, and when you reached that limit it refused to write it. The official way to be able to put that track on a new minidisc was to find one of the old ones and transfer it back off that disc, which meant it deleted it from that disc and restored "one credit" allowing you to write it again to a new disc. The quicker workaround was to delete the track from your sonicstage library and drag the MP3 back on, so it thought it was a different file and you got the full number of transfers again.
SonicStage had a "check in" option to restore the transfer limit to songs in your library, yes, but the limit went away with version 4.3 or 4.4 so you could "check out" the same song as much as you wanted. But it's true there was never a real digital transfer off of MD, at least not originally; some modern home-brew software has enabled that feature, which is a huge benefit for people who made original recordings on the format.
@@fsfs555 - I was close in my recollection, it's been a while since I did a SonicStage MD write. I have an old Dell XP laptop with it on. Most of my more recent MD recordings have been digital via optical in.
I remember that painful hell before later versions. Fortunately, the final generation of Hi-MD gear (eg, the RH1) permitted transfer *from* MDs, including those recorded in the Non-Hi-MD SP ATRAC3 format, to PC.
I have the same blue minidisc player. Very underrated format and still use it when I want to go offline.
I've never rewound someone's intro, yours is so good I had to jam to it a few times😂
Man that Inspiron 8000 photo in the section about the ati 7500 was a blast of nostalgia. My dad had one for work and I tried to get him to order yellow wrist rests for the whole time he did lol
MD was awesome. I wouldn't miss that era! Also a pity VAIO got discontinued. Writing this on my still properly in use Z-Series.
Sony : goat of design
and worst with product names? go figure.
back in those years, about the year 2000 we, at the local radio station, somethings dreamed about it how it would be like.....MD in a PC.
Thanks Colin for showing us how it would be like.
Thanks Colin! Still looking forward to seeing you improve/mod your personal custom retro PC
You gotta respect how “all-in” Sony went with MiniDisc. That’s so ride-or-die type of loyalty for their products.
Someone had one of these in the MiniDisc Con at VCF SW this year. Such a sweet machine! They had a bunch of other modules too including the subwoofer and keypad.
I used to subscribe to Sony’s PULSE magazine/catalogue and just loved looking at all the cool products they came out with including the VAIO computers.
I always wanted one of those cool sub-notebook size Memory Stick VAIOs. Years later I did get myself an 11” Apple MacBook Air so kind of half-lived out my dream 😂
I still have mine (and i have all the optional accessories for the bay and the recovery discs.) I had a minidisc changer in my car and this laptop was fantastic for making complilations and albums. I loved that period.
Been looking for one of these for ages!
Gosh. This video gave me flashbacks of how not user friendly windows was,… the internet connect icon and its troubleshoot page 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
One week a color classic. Now an MD VAIO. Great content!
This feels so uniquely Japanese cyberpunk and I love it
SONY had a lot of proprietary stuff. Like their memory sticks called... Memory Stick. A removable flash memory card format.
I think a lot of their stuff failed because of it. They wanted to go their own way with some stuff, but failed.
it's clearly shown in the video and everyone knows the memory stick from the PSP days!
One of Sony's standard game plan is to just steal what's around, blindly shrink it a bit, and market it as cool superior substitutes. Some worked some failed, like 3.5" floppy worked but mp3 Walkmans didn't, but constantly making weird incompatible format is their world domination super formula, not their repeated mistakes.
The biggest insult was the PSVita proprietary storage.
Instead of giving up and use MicroSD, they made a new storage format smaller than a MicroSD but stupidly expensive. And it was only used for the Vita
@@claudiobizama5603 They had an xkcd # 221 situation right as they were finalizing Vita specs and that was clearly a kneejerk to it. That card was just too suspiciously close to microSD for zero apparent reason
@@claudiobizama5603 They made it smaller than MicroSD, because with the PSP, people were using cheap MemoryStick to MicroSD adapters. With a smaller format, this wasn't easily possible anymore. Typical corporate nonsense.
Sony is Sony, Apple, Samsung, and others can never occupy the place Sony always has
It has always frustrated me and confused me why Sony was so stuck to keeping MiniDisc solely an audio format. It is digital data (ATRAC), with a digital structure... prime to store data. And here, they finally did it... they put it *in a computer*. And yet they still locked it down to only working with audio/music - not even MD Data, an obscure and short-lived variant that allowed data storage (but only on specially formatted "MD Data" discs, in special MD Data drives). Had they actually bothered to develop an MD extension to, say, allocate an "audio track" space as data storage on standard MDs? (Skipped by audio players, readable by MD drives in PCs?) Zip would have been dead before it even got started. Imagine the parallel universe where Sony actually allowed MD to shine for data...
El mejor formato que he tenido en mis manos. Gracias. No sabia que existia laptop mini disc. 👍
man that closing thought "something that is left to be desired these days" 100% dude
I miss so much the VAIO computer series. Definitely they don't do it like they used to.
what a cool throwback! love how innovative Sony was. however, i can't help but think that the miniDisc format really never took off like they hoped. i mean, wasn't it just a bit too late? with the rise of mp3 players, it feels like the miniDisc was destined to be a niche product. what do you all think?
Sony computers are super cool, a built in MD drive makes it even more awesome! The software really holds it back though, both with the restore images and the MD software. If more applications were able to make use of this hardware, MiniDisc would have been used way more. iTunes with this drive would be amazing, just like how it works with iPods. If they made it so NetMD could also support data as well as audio, it would have been a solid option for everything.
What a coincidence, I just watched your Minidisc buyer's guide last night.
Sonicstage was criticised at the time but back then I had a Sony 1GB MP3 player and the battery lasted for 50 hours between charges. So. converting music files with Sonic stage may have been a pain but worth it for such a long battery life. Stunning!
Those Sony scroll wheels were pretty neat when used with the menu software. Click the wheel to pop it up then scroll to select various functions or launch programs you set it to open.
MiniDisc looked really futuristic back then, and I still find it cool today.
I just got back into MiniDisc, and not a moment to soon. Last week when the cyclone hit the Seattle area I had not electricity and the couple of recorded Minidisc’s were my only source of entertainment.
How did you play them without electricity? Solar battery chargers?
Eh, plenty of player-only portables can reach 24+h of playback on the internal gumstick battery + single AA in the sidecar.
Recently I got a Sony Vaio PCV-W121 an all in one with a minidisc drive. It's the funkiest computer I've ever seen and it's a blast using it.
It is so frustrating how asymptotically close Sony got to using minidiscs as generic writable data discs like CD-Rs back when it was relevant to do so. Minidisc should have been the portable data standard of the 90s. Instead we got floppy discs sticking around far too long, Zip disks being a niche stopgap, CD-Rs finally becoming cheap enough (but super bulky compared to everything else), and then finally flash media got cheap enough to kill off all that came before it.
Sony was so close. They almost had it. We could’ve had laptops and PDAs with low-power 140MB minidisc drives that would read and write to any minidisc, but no.
Hi-MD finally added the capability 10 years too late.
Minidisc has to be one if the most well documented formats on youtube by now. There are probably more videos about Minidisc than CD, DVD or Blu-Ray.
Nice find! I've never been able to get my hands on this model. I still have all my MD gear, including the MZ-RH1, and my JB980 Minidisc deck (which still sees occasional use).
Honestly, I think a built in MD drive in a laptop is super cool. I can see why it didn't catch on, but it's still really neat.
I remember getting to see one of these laptops in person with the MD drive in it. It was quite cool and also quite thick. This video actually can't show off how thick it really is, you have to see one for yourself to know.
7:02 is that the sweet ear nectar that i have spotted? jamiroquai?
These modular devices are always fun to see. Would be nice to have modern devices like these.
Hard to believe it's over 20 years old, when Windows XP hardware still feels new to me. Compared to 486 tech 10 years prior to this laptop, it goes to show how fast your computer was already out of date the day you bought it, and well before the PC building enthusiast market like today.
Maybe it's just a glitch on my end, but this video truncates at about 11:21, well short of its 17 minute length.
i have the same laptop, i don’t have the MD module, but i have the floppy, numeric keypad, and subwoofer module. that subwoofer module surprisingly sounds very good and adds a nice bit of room and volume to the laptop!
6:25 “Strongly imposed DRM” - wasn’t it also literally a rootkit?!
This was part of the CD copy protection system from Sony BMG; NetMD didn't have *that* problem, but had several others, including a limit on how many times you can 'check out' a song to MD, and the inability to transfer MD-recorded audio (including from mic/line input) back to the PC - although these restrictions were removed for their last generation of gear.
Those restrictions are also nonexistent nowadays if you use WebMD Pro with the supported NetMD devices :)
From tech giant to GAASsy gameslop manufacturer. You had come a long way snoy babay!
My mom used that as her work laptop for many years. It came included with the keypad, subwoofer and drive modules. I think she left the subwoofer installed most of the time.
I've got this too, Got in Japan last year . I also have a MX-1 a P3 750 Desktop also with a Mini Disc Built-in
A shame, that Sony is meanwhile not a big player in the PC business anymore. They built such great devices. I always wanted to have a Vaio standalone PC (Notebook were out of my reach at that time money-wise), but they never were a big thing here in here. Combined with my beloved Minidisc this would have been a perfect fit 🙂.
Used to use my Hi-MD player (MZNH-600) as a portable drive back in the early 2000's; used standard USB when you couldn't be guaranteed that the internet cafe would have a CD burner, and since it was 1GB a Hi-MD was a more cost effective option than flash storage at the time (slow as molasses but capacity was king back then).
i had a minidisc player in the 90s and thought it was cool at the time but don’t miss it. i even gave away my player and discs a few years ago to a minidisc aficionado.
I have an i7 Vaio from 2012. Still works good. Got it used. But it to this day it’s the best laptop I’ve had.
Man this could have been a amazing competition for graphic designers and photographers useing zip drives 😮
Tdnc reviews are black caviar in tech review segment. True delicacy served in impeccably exquisite way. ❤
I wish i had this in 2001 as a daily MD user both listen, record + using it for jingles to this day on community radio were it still tends to be a second choice to do spots with.
Interesting video. The Pentium 4M though didn't come out until mid 2002, with availability to months after that.
Great, another tech item I didn’t know of, that I want to have now.
Sony had it's own "modern audience," the "Prosumers," who would have bought Apple laptops, otherwise. MiniDiscs were kept locked away at Sears, which was the only store I knew of that stocked those "private school/rich kid" toys. It's interesting to see how the M/O MiniDisc succeeded for some, as I copied music CDs to compact cassette, instead.
Ugh, sonic stage was such a pain in the ass. I had a NetMD MiniDisc player/recorder and used the USB port to put music on it. So slow and irritating.
Meanwhile the bargain bin MP3 player I had when this laptop came out (the thumb drive type powered by a single AA battery that billions of which must have been produced by now) was just removable USB storage that you could write any data you wanted to in a few seconds. Sure, it held less, but it also cost next to nothing and was the very opposite of a hassle to use.
I used to use a Playstation 2 with Toslink to record to MD instead of Sonicstage because I hated it that much lol.
Wow, I cant believe Sony kept MD on the market until 2006. I remember wanting an MD player in the late 90s after my friend got one, but never got one. I went from tape walkman to Disc based mp3/cd player in the early 2000s, to ipod mini in 2004, and onto a Samsung solid state mp3 player in 2007.
Sony and their proprietary media storage types have always been an interesting choice. Besides the MD, their memory sticks were a big pain in the ass for how much they cost, and then making the UMD format for the PSP.
Mann, I just turned 13 in 2003, was gifted the Sony MZ-NE410 from my parents. It was glorious. Took a vacation that Christmas. My little brother, who was maybe 9 or so, was chasing me around a parking lot at night. Had it in my hand. Didn’t see the speed bump. I hit it, I trip hard, Sony goes flying 20 feet, smashes in pieces. I was devastated. Absolutely crushed.
rip
Back on the day Sony tried to install its priority formats in every thin they’ve done. At the early 2000’s the very first DVD player we own at home was from Sony, it was ridiculously expensive and had many ports, actually ones that I’ve never seen before intended for new high definition format like HDMI and optic audio, couple media ports to reproduce files straight from a Sony Clié, and a USB port to connect it to a PC (before PCs included dvd readers). But one of the most interesting thing was the Mini Disc and Memory Stick readers to play your media files on your living room’s tv, and according to the Bible (manual) included, you could save all the photos (taken on a cyber shot of course) from the memory stick in to a mini disc, directly from the DVD player without using a computer, we never tried it cause blank minidiscs were hard to find here in Mexico but always tough it was an interesting feature.
Blank minidiscs were hard to find anywhere outside Japan and they were 3x the price of CD RWs.
I have a different model of this same line that I bought in 2001 in Japan. Still runs and the battery even works although it gets less than 30 min. Mine has a DVD drive, volume key is with the F-keys and it was a lot thinner being "only" 1' thick. Had the same 1400 X 1050 screen. no mini disc. I really loved the machine back in the day and it was solid running windows NT (correction: Windows 2000). That was the best version of windows for me. Hardly any hangs ups just light and fast.
Minidisc is an amazing format. I hope it will come back someday, like Polaroid did.
Imagine the universe where MD was just a storage medium, capable of holding any data, without restrictions, without copyright management, freedom to quickly transfer from one disc to another...
Mindisc was underutilized in computers, Sony should’ve not only made it for Vaio line of computers, they should’ve made Minidisc drives for other manufactures like IBM, Dell, Acer, Compaq computers! The format was very limited to Sony products.
It was typical Sony hubris. They wanted royalties and a monopoly on the market and since other manufacturers wouldn't go for it they just took all their toys and went home
@ that mentality is the reason Sony lost format wars, because they refused to license their technology without big royalties from competitors!
I absolutely love MiniDisc and that laptop is now on my 'impossible to get' wishlist 😍
Nice! I still have my MiniDisc player/recorder. Don't use it anymore but I loved it when I used it. It sits next to my Sport Walkman. o7
I just recently onto this obscure format a few month prior, and as fascinating and cool this technology is, I have been waiting for someone to make a cover of this sony laptop, since the information on this particula models are very little, even on MinidiscWiki. Through this example, if Apple didn't launch the Ipod, then maybe Sony could have think of making a portable MD external drive with USB port for computer and laptop , which is more logical and financially beneficial than MD Data and Net MD expensive home deck system for computer, especially for hardcore Minidisc player .
P/s: Sorry for long writing, it a surprise that you found this one of a kind gem, and even in fine condition, hope you make more content on the Mindisc and other obscure media format. :))
Could be wrong but I think Techmoan did a video on external MD drive with md-Data support
@zuzkazuzka8284 But it does not support for normal MD for music
@@SunnyNobody I believe it did. Even this video mentions a model that has usb for netMDs but otherwise is your bog standard MD player.
Maximum PC, now there is a name I haven't seen in many many years