Minidisks - anyone interested?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Minidisks - anyone interested?

ajbw

115 posts

Master Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#304442 4-May-2023 10:37

I have some items of minidisk gear that I'm thinking of selling, since they've not been used in years.

But is anyone interested in this format these days?

For reference, the items include
Sony MDS-JB930 recorder/player
Panasonic SJ-MJ70 portable player (tiny!)
some unused disks, still in packaging, and some home-recorded ones.

Anyone interested?

elpenguino

3421 posts

Uber Geek

#3072182 4-May-2023 11:08

I'm sure you'd find a die hard to take them off your hands, depending on price. I see someone has had a full size unit listed on TM for some weeks, with no sale, possibly due to an optimistic price.

The 930 is a nice unit (I have a 920) so I'm sure that'd receive attention.

How much are you asking and where are you?

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

ARIKIP

233 posts

Master Geek

#3072329 4-May-2023 14:29

Great Format,that Sony 920 is a goody. I picked up a 940 on Trademe with an easily 10 minute fix belt issue for about $120.

Sony 77" A80J OLED, Integra 60.7, Panasonic UB820, Toshiba HD-XE1, Apple TV 4K, JBL L100T,JBL 18Ti, JBL L20T, Velodyne HGS15

Wheelbarrow01

1723 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Chorus

#3072492 4-May-2023 23:00

I could be interested in the blank disks. I have a Sony MD component deck which has been back in its box in the garage for a number of years but it's 5 minutes to hook it up to my garage stereo.

My 80's Hilux that I am currently restoring still has a working MD headunit that I regularly enjoy - with music I copied in the early 2000's. I don't think I'll ever change the headunit because I love the format and although it's not period correct for my Hilux, it's a lot closer than anything I could replace it with.

Let me know how many disks you have and how much you want for them.

The views expressed by me are not necessarily those of my employer Chorus NZ Ltd

richms

28172 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#3072499 4-May-2023 23:31

Wheelbarrow01:

My 80's Hilux that I am currently restoring still has a working MD headunit that I regularly enjoy - with music I copied in the early 2000's. I don't think I'll ever change the headunit because I love the format and although it's not period correct for my Hilux, it's a lot closer than anything I could replace it with.

There are some quite cheap retro bluetooth and FM radio headdecks on aliexpress that look more period correct than most if you do want to put something cheap, useful, and better looking than a gharish blinking light VFD thing into there instead.

Richard rich.ms

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#3091477 18-Jun-2023 15:05

Ahhh Minidisc, That brings back memories. I agree they were nice units.

I spent quite a bit of time looking at them and reading up on them around mid-1995, and nearly purchased one a couple of times. I was back doing some university papers at the time, and wanted something that I could record my lectures on. (It's an old habit - for some lectures that were mostly talking with little written I used to improve my retention by re-doing my notes nicely after a lecture, with the help of what I had written and a recoding of the lecture).

They were pricey, but within my budget so that's not why I didn't get one. What turned me off was Sony's obnoxious MagicGate DRM which meant that I couldn't extract my lecture recordings - say to a CD or hard drive - without re-recording via analog ports. So slower and with degradation. Even though it was digitally recorded and should have been a straight file transfer.

So in the end I stuck to good old C90 (and C100) audio cassettes in the recorder I had used for the same purpose a few years earlier.

There were apparently "pro" units which weren't DRM-crippled, and which I would have been prepared to consider paying a reasonable premium to get, but Sony Style (Wellington) could never give me any information on availability and pricing on the couple of times I asked.

elpenguino

3421 posts

Uber Geek

#3091766 18-Jun-2023 21:53

In the late 90s, MS was the best (only?) candidate for digital home and/or portable recording, with the understanding that you're not getting full quality like PCM due to the lossy ATRAC codec. MD was way cheaper and more available than DAT and CD-R hadn't fallen in price yet.

I still use MD for home recording and then do an analog transfer to a PC. I think both ends of my system support SPDIF but the source material is just for fun so I'm not bothering reaching for studio standards.

It looked like NZ had poor choice of available units as there was more/better units to be had abroad. This channel looks at extinct audio formats and has some good videos on MD units including weird and wonderful units available in Japan.

Car is for sure the cheapest way to enjoy your MDs - you can pick up a Japanese import unit for a few dollars on TM.

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21