Car Mini Disc with MDLP capability....?
Discussion
Car Mini Disc with MDLP capability....
A pal has asked me about this...I do not really know what the term MDLP means, but apparently he has this system at home and would like to play the Mini discs in his car... which incidentally is an old Capri 3L.
If anyone has any knowledge about this, or indeed has one of these units for a car, any help would be welcome !
A pal has asked me about this...I do not really know what the term MDLP means, but apparently he has this system at home and would like to play the Mini discs in his car... which incidentally is an old Capri 3L.
If anyone has any knowledge about this, or indeed has one of these units for a car, any help would be welcome !
You know how history is written by the victors? It appears that MD history is written by Americans. It was expensive there and not widely adopted: they continued to buy cassette and CD Walkmans. As a result it is common to hear that MiniDisc 'failed' and this appears to have become the accepted wisdom, but it is completely inaccurate.
MiniDisc devices were in full production for twenty years. You can still buy a new Teac MD/CD recording deck in Japan and Sony still manufactures MiniDisc media.
Rights holders were too greedy and MD was too dear and by the time that prices dropped (and 1GB HiMD was launched), other formats had gained far too great a market share. This doesnt mean that it didnt succeed, but it certainly didnt succeed to the degree that it could have. This is very different to having failed though and plenty of cars came with MD players. Porsche, BMW, Mini, Volvo and Mazda that I am personally familiar with.
MD SP, particularly ATRAC Type-R and Type-S, is noticeably better than MP3. What could have been, eh?
MiniDisc devices were in full production for twenty years. You can still buy a new Teac MD/CD recording deck in Japan and Sony still manufactures MiniDisc media.
Rights holders were too greedy and MD was too dear and by the time that prices dropped (and 1GB HiMD was launched), other formats had gained far too great a market share. This doesnt mean that it didnt succeed, but it certainly didnt succeed to the degree that it could have. This is very different to having failed though and plenty of cars came with MD players. Porsche, BMW, Mini, Volvo and Mazda that I am personally familiar with.
MD SP, particularly ATRAC Type-R and Type-S, is noticeably better than MP3. What could have been, eh?
Mildly on topic- to me MiniDisc was the absolute peak of portable music.
Great sound quality, and just enough storage space to make you think about what you were putting on each disc and really curate the playlists but still have a load of tracks. Great for swapping between friends too.
I had the MZ-N10 player (pride and joy), till I left it on a bench, pissed...
Whilst I have so much more content nowadays thanks to Spotify, I think the variety makes it harder to truely discover and get into a band, it's easier to just be overwhelmed and listen to the same old stuff or have the new content "curated" for you.
Great sound quality, and just enough storage space to make you think about what you were putting on each disc and really curate the playlists but still have a load of tracks. Great for swapping between friends too.
I had the MZ-N10 player (pride and joy), till I left it on a bench, pissed...
Whilst I have so much more content nowadays thanks to Spotify, I think the variety makes it harder to truely discover and get into a band, it's easier to just be overwhelmed and listen to the same old stuff or have the new content "curated" for you.
Blast from the past - I used to spend a bit of time keeping the car stuff on minidisc.org up to date.
It's still there if you want to find some likely model numbers to stick in ebay: http://minidisc.org/car_table.html
It's still there if you want to find some likely model numbers to stick in ebay: http://minidisc.org/car_table.html
I just ripped out threw away the minidisc player internals from a 2008 RX8 
AFAIK you could spec them in Mazda's till 2013.
Your friend is probably best off converting them to MP3 https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/downloa...
The minidisc format may have had decent sound quality when it was launched compared to low bitrate MP3's but I doubt anyone in the real world would be able to tell the difference between a 320kbps MP3 vs 352kbps ATRAC3 and if they can then they will be using FLAC anyways.
AFAIK you could spec them in Mazda's till 2013.Your friend is probably best off converting them to MP3 https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/downloa...
944 Man said:
You know how history is written by the victors? It appears that MD history is written by Americans. It was expensive there and not widely adopted: they continued to buy cassette and CD Walkmans. As a result it is common to hear that MiniDisc 'failed' and this appears to have become the accepted wisdom, but it is completely inaccurate.
MiniDisc devices were in full production for twenty years. You can still buy a new Teac MD/CD recording deck in Japan and Sony still manufactures MiniDisc media.
Rights holders were too greedy and MD was too dear and by the time that prices dropped (and 1GB HiMD was launched), other formats had gained far too great a market share. This doesnt mean that it didnt succeed, but it certainly didnt succeed to the degree that it could have. This is very different to having failed though and plenty of cars came with MD players. Porsche, BMW, Mini, Volvo and Mazda that I am personally familiar with.
MD SP, particularly ATRAC Type-R and Type-S, is noticeably better than MP3. What could have been, eh?
The minidisc player was a flop, it sold a fraction of what portable CD or cassette players sold (probably fitted to less than 1% of cars world wide from 92-02) ontop of that the ipod came out less than a decade after launch and stopped it in it's tracks.MiniDisc devices were in full production for twenty years. You can still buy a new Teac MD/CD recording deck in Japan and Sony still manufactures MiniDisc media.
Rights holders were too greedy and MD was too dear and by the time that prices dropped (and 1GB HiMD was launched), other formats had gained far too great a market share. This doesnt mean that it didnt succeed, but it certainly didnt succeed to the degree that it could have. This is very different to having failed though and plenty of cars came with MD players. Porsche, BMW, Mini, Volvo and Mazda that I am personally familiar with.
MD SP, particularly ATRAC Type-R and Type-S, is noticeably better than MP3. What could have been, eh?
The minidisc format may have had decent sound quality when it was launched compared to low bitrate MP3's but I doubt anyone in the real world would be able to tell the difference between a 320kbps MP3 vs 352kbps ATRAC3 and if they can then they will be using FLAC anyways.
It was always a niche thing really. I liked that it was recordable like tapes, but better quality and with track index - plus more portable , robust and skip-proof than CD.
There was a bit of a perfect storm of recordable CD tech, the explosion of MP3 sharing and smaller MP3 players that put it in terminal decline by the mid 00s. I even got one of the later NetMD recorders that would (painfully slowly) transfer music from your computer to MD (via a intermediate fake CD step, because of Sony's nonsense copyright rules) but really it was over by then. Once the iPod worked with Windows (2003?) I stopped bothering.
There was a bit of a perfect storm of recordable CD tech, the explosion of MP3 sharing and smaller MP3 players that put it in terminal decline by the mid 00s. I even got one of the later NetMD recorders that would (painfully slowly) transfer music from your computer to MD (via a intermediate fake CD step, because of Sony's nonsense copyright rules) but really it was over by then. Once the iPod worked with Windows (2003?) I stopped bothering.
sjg said:
It was always a niche thing really. I liked that it was recordable like tapes, but better quality and with track index - plus more portable , robust and skip-proof than CD.
There was a bit of a perfect storm of recordable CD tech, the explosion of MP3 sharing and smaller MP3 players that put it in terminal decline by the mid 00s. I even got one of the later NetMD recorders that would (painfully slowly) transfer music from your computer to MD (via a intermediate fake CD step, because of Sony's nonsense copyright rules) but really it was over by then. Once the iPod worked with Windows (2003?) I stopped bothering.
FFS: NetMD. I think I bought a new PC to see if that would make it work any better, it didn't. There was a bit of a perfect storm of recordable CD tech, the explosion of MP3 sharing and smaller MP3 players that put it in terminal decline by the mid 00s. I even got one of the later NetMD recorders that would (painfully slowly) transfer music from your computer to MD (via a intermediate fake CD step, because of Sony's nonsense copyright rules) but really it was over by then. Once the iPod worked with Windows (2003?) I stopped bothering.
I'm surprised that the control stick concept never made it to Mp3 players or phones. They were a revelation.
NetMD was an alright idea with terrible implementation. Awful drivers and limited to WinXP. To make it (far) worse, SP was LP2 with fillers due to an unresolved licensing issue, meaning that everything recorded on a PC was of a lower quality.
More recently a couple of people have developed up to date replacements, which work with Win10 (you can make NetMD work on Win7 & Win10 but it is a PITA) and record SP at full bitrate. I haven't used it myself as I've got a Tascam MD350 for recordings with a PS/2 keyboard for titling, but it seems to work well.
More recently a couple of people have developed up to date replacements, which work with Win10 (you can make NetMD work on Win7 & Win10 but it is a PITA) and record SP at full bitrate. I haven't used it myself as I've got a Tascam MD350 for recordings with a PS/2 keyboard for titling, but it seems to work well.
I continued the self flagellation of NetMd by moving to Sony's new MP3 player the NW-HD1 when that came out.
Amazing quality kit, beautiful fit and finish, with the worst piece of software ever, SonicStage - though I didn't learn as the HD1 was complemented by a NW-A1000.
I finally cracked and bought an iPod touch.
Amazing quality kit, beautiful fit and finish, with the worst piece of software ever, SonicStage - though I didn't learn as the HD1 was complemented by a NW-A1000.
I finally cracked and bought an iPod touch.
Gassing Station | In-Car Electronics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff