I see that there's a lot of confusion about just what MiniDiscs are and what they are capable of. Now I'm not an expert, but here's what I know about them.
First, an MD system consists of two parts, the media, and the codec. Now the media is very simply a magneto-optical disk with a capacity of about 150mb. If you have the proper hardware, you can use it to store just about any data that you want.
The second part is the codec. Similar to Mp3, Sony created a codec called Atrac3 that compresses music to about 4mb per minute of playtime. That was enough for the original MD to hold about the same amount as a CD. They have since released an improved version called MDLP that can put 2x or 4x that amount onto one disk.
Finally, there's the hardware involved. A standard MD player like the one in the OP is only a music player, and it can only handle Atrac3. Any other formats present on the disc would be ignored. So the only way to use it is to pipe music into it's input and let the recorder convert it into Atrac3 encoding.
Second, there's netMD. Now I'm not very familiar with this part, but from what I understand, all it is is hardware that lets you use an MD like a storage device. Instead of converting a soundfile to Atrac3 in the player, you convert it on your computer and then upload it to the disc. You could also upload other files as well. But for playback Sony still only allowed you to use Atrac3. MP3 files and such were still unplayable as is. They had to be converted just like any other sound file.
Recently there have been two developments that make MD look more promising. First is the introduction of
Hi-MD. These are new discs with an increased capacity of 1GB. The new hardware also lets you reformat a regular disc to double it's capacity. Second, Sony has just announced that they will start
supporting the mp3 format with it's hardware. It doesn't look like it includes their MD players right now, but it wouldn't surprise me if they do eventually. (Now if only they would support .ogg...).
Now zlinuxz has said a lot about how good MD is, but, no disrespect to him, most of the benefits he talks about are due to the hardware he has, not the MD format itself. Most of what he raves about is also available on some portable hard disc MP3 players. Now while I really like MD's myself, to tell the truth, I think these will be the future of portable music. You can use them for both music and data storage, and some of them even have movie and photo playing ability. Future versions will have even more features.
For example, zlinuxz talked about coming across a CD without a way to copy it. Well, that depends. If all you have is a
player then you can't do anything, whether it's an MD player or an mp3 player. But if you have a
recorder, then you can copy it, whether it's an MD player or an mp3 player.
Here's one for example, that will record directly from an audio source. And if you have a computer and an mp3 player with enough free space, it is even possible for you to copy the whole CD to the HD, take it home, and burn an exact copy from it. Can't do that with an MD (unless it's the new Hi-MD). Of course, Windows makes it hard to access music CD's directly, but there are ways to do it. On Linux it would be a snap.
Well, that's my rundown. Like I said before, I like MD, and I've been using them for a while now, but the idea of being able to put my entire music collection on one portable player and still have space for storing data is just too tempting. As soon as I can afford one, I'm getting a 40GB hard disc player and retiring my MD collection. Oh, and I live in Japan. While MD is poplular here, mp3 players are growing in popularity just like in the west.
MD's ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
