Why Didn't the Minidisc Make It?
- Thread starter Richard D
- Start date
People were already vested in CD. Homes, cars & PC's. Not convienient enough to make people run out and buy all new hardware when people could already rip, burn and share with what they had. Then when MP3 players started popping up, then a real convenience was recognized.
Especially when Apple took charge and added a nice GUI.
Even before MP3 players came out, DVD was also out for 5 years, which also doubled as a CD player for all.
I suppose, another thought would be why the cassette format didn't get dumped right off when MD was introduced. Big in Asia I guess. Still had a lot of cars with tape decks & People still had a fair amount of tapes too. Maybe what's needed is enough pre-recorded media to give a recording format more of a back-bone for marketability as well.
Especially when Apple took charge and added a nice GUI.
Even before MP3 players came out, DVD was also out for 5 years, which also doubled as a CD player for all.
I suppose, another thought would be why the cassette format didn't get dumped right off when MD was introduced. Big in Asia I guess. Still had a lot of cars with tape decks & People still had a fair amount of tapes too. Maybe what's needed is enough pre-recorded media to give a recording format more of a back-bone for marketability as well.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2010
- Messages
- 9,787
There is plenty of background on the eventual demise of MD, just Google "Sony ends Minidisc manufacture." I find it a great format and only discovered using it about two years ago. I have been stocking up on Minidisc blanks, some sealed and some which have been previously recorded on. Both Doug and Ben, here on the forum, have been kind enough to provide me with discs through their sources. I have two portables and two home decks, presently, all working fine.
Nando.
Nando.
Sony had there hand in it of course. I think the price kept it from catching on mainstream. The pre-recorded, blanks and equipment were much more expensive the cassette decks at the time and then CD-Recorders came on the scene and their prices dropped very, very quickly. People changed format from cassette to CD and they just were not ready to change format again a few years later.
You nailed it.
I reckon if MD had been released a couple of years earlier at a more affordable price it could have been a winner.
I certainly remember the advertising being very slick but some of the hi-fi press were a bit sniffy.
Never used MiniDisc myself but the user experience of this format does appear to be positive judging by the various posts I have read on the internet.
I reckon if MD had been released a couple of years earlier at a more affordable price it could have been a winner.
I certainly remember the advertising being very slick but some of the hi-fi press were a bit sniffy.
Never used MiniDisc myself but the user experience of this format does appear to be positive judging by the various posts I have read on the internet.
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2010
- Messages
- 17,704
- Tagline
- Broken beyond repair but highly affable
DVDs were not introduced until around 1996, with a gradual rollout across the world, meaning they didn't really take off here until about 1998. Proprietary digital audio players came just before that (1997), SaeHan introduced what is usually considered the first MP3 player at about the same and the Diamond Multimedia Rio was released after that in 1998 (which was the first widely popular MP3 player and finally trigger the RIAA lawsuit (which RIAA ultimately lost). Cellphones were being released with them by 2000 and the iPod itself was fairly late, coming out in 2001.
The real news is that the prototype for all of them was invented in 1979, called IXI but never produced commercially. In effect, the compact disc was being replaced before it was even introduced. IXI was the basis for Apple's iPod development however and the inventor of IXI was on the iPod development team.
There was a good reason why DVD players were generally CD players also (compatability, of course and at a time when the format wasn't fully established yet and the disc size was the same), but it's not as easy as it might sound to you. DVD and CD use altogether different wavelengths of light to be read (the reason is because DVD information 'pits' are much tinier and therefore a narrower beam requires a higher wavelength of light), so there are TWO laser diodes/read heads in a DVD player to accomodate these differences. So DVDs are NOT just fancier video CDs (VCD uses an earlier compression format) but an entirely new approach to optical media.
The reason that MD thrived in Asia and Europe for so long in my opinion is that the culture for new technologies was more ingrained there than here and introducing new technologies meant confusion to US consumers. First of all, it looked like a computer diskette, but it couldn't be used in that. Secondly it was promoted like it was a smaller, recordable version of a Compact Disc (and you still couldn't use it in a CD player and 3 inch CDs had been introduced about then in music titles as singles and as compact recordables which made it all the more confusing). Lastly, and a huge factor was that the US and world economies might have still been somewhat robust at the time but they were already headed into a tailspin and by 2000 the controversial energy trading scandals and terrorism emerging in the US made consumer buying power permanently changed and battered. All of these things came into play before MP3s were a global phenomenon. Americans couldn't support a bunch of platforms they didn't understand well or were even certain if they'd last long and as they tend to do they either find one and go with it or ignore all of them in droves.
The real news is that the prototype for all of them was invented in 1979, called IXI but never produced commercially. In effect, the compact disc was being replaced before it was even introduced. IXI was the basis for Apple's iPod development however and the inventor of IXI was on the iPod development team.
There was a good reason why DVD players were generally CD players also (compatability, of course and at a time when the format wasn't fully established yet and the disc size was the same), but it's not as easy as it might sound to you. DVD and CD use altogether different wavelengths of light to be read (the reason is because DVD information 'pits' are much tinier and therefore a narrower beam requires a higher wavelength of light), so there are TWO laser diodes/read heads in a DVD player to accomodate these differences. So DVDs are NOT just fancier video CDs (VCD uses an earlier compression format) but an entirely new approach to optical media.
The reason that MD thrived in Asia and Europe for so long in my opinion is that the culture for new technologies was more ingrained there than here and introducing new technologies meant confusion to US consumers. First of all, it looked like a computer diskette, but it couldn't be used in that. Secondly it was promoted like it was a smaller, recordable version of a Compact Disc (and you still couldn't use it in a CD player and 3 inch CDs had been introduced about then in music titles as singles and as compact recordables which made it all the more confusing). Lastly, and a huge factor was that the US and world economies might have still been somewhat robust at the time but they were already headed into a tailspin and by 2000 the controversial energy trading scandals and terrorism emerging in the US made consumer buying power permanently changed and battered. All of these things came into play before MP3s were a global phenomenon. Americans couldn't support a bunch of platforms they didn't understand well or were even certain if they'd last long and as they tend to do they either find one and go with it or ignore all of them in droves.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2014
- Messages
- 3,245
- Location
- Gaston, SC
- Tagline
- Victim of the record bug since age five
One other downfall of the MiniDisc is the ATRAC (Adaptive TRansform Acoustic Coding) which really limited the fidelity of the playback. You probably wouldn't hear it at first, but it can lead to "ear fatigue" while listening. ATRAC encoding was about 292 kb/sec, about 5:1 reduction from the 1.44 Mb/sec of audio CD.
If I recall correctly, the higher end MiniDisc recorders allowed PCM recording, allowing higher fidelity but greater bit density, but reducing the recording capacity of the disc.
If I recall correctly, the higher end MiniDisc recorders allowed PCM recording, allowing higher fidelity but greater bit density, but reducing the recording capacity of the disc.