What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[Gucci]

I have a Panasonic stereo in storage that has a 5 disc CD changer and an actual slot for MD. Thing was awesome but that’s gonna be a trip to the storage unit to snap a pic.

For us, it was just straight burning from CD to the MD via optical cable.

The more I think about it, the more the MD reminds me of the old Zip drives. It’s one of those things that is in between older tech and tech that became wildly successful, like flash memory.

My brother had a Zip drive too. I still have the diskettes somewhere.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I've seen mini-discs for sale at the resale mall before, but I've never really taken a look :O
(They only have a small handful, iirc)

I've heard that the reason the PSP uses UMDs was at least in part because Sony wanted to get some more use out of their mini-disc tech :O

[marurun]

I've heard that the reason the PSP uses UMDs was at least in part because Sony wanted to get some more use out of their mini-disc tech :O

Maybe? I mean, UMDs are purely optical, whereas MDs are magneto-optical. Those technologies are rather different. Apparently Sony had considered MDs for the PSP and decided against it, developing UMDs instead.

[REPO Man]

Sony always did have a boner for proprietary storage formats.

[marurun]

Sony always did have a boner for proprietary storage formats.

Yup, like CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray…

[REPO Man]

Technically it only owns Blu-ray as a format. That's why the PS3 used Blu-ray but the Xbox 360 used DVD and opted for HD-DVD support via a separate add-on, iirc. Also, I think that's also why we don't have those bargain bin Blu-ray box sets like we did with DVD. Granted they films on those were typically such a piss-poor quality, more akin to the VHS-quality transfers the DVD ones had. Of course pretty much all of those titles can be streamed for free on The Internet Archive.

[Gucci]

PSP Go Owner: “So how bout them UMDs, man?”

[REPO Man]

PSP Go Owner: “So how bout them UMDs, man?”

By the time PSP Go came out I pretty much shifted to digital-only, so my only complaint there is the proprietary memory card. Considering I eventually softmodded my PSP-1000 (which I still have but needs a new battery), the UMD-only titles became a non-issue.

[Gucci]

marurun: I hit the motherload!

My father has in his study a large assortment of random junk and crap all over the place. The box caught my eye. And I was absolutely shocked at the condition. My father bought it probably 15 to 20 years ago. I have 15 black MDs too. Shit!

What made me smile today? Finding 20 year old tech in mint condition!

[Gunstar Green]

Technically it only owns Blu-ray as a format. That's why the PS3 used Blu-ray but the Xbox 360 used DVD and opted for HD-DVD support via a separate add-on, iirc. Also, I think that's also why we don't have those bargain bin Blu-ray box sets like we did with DVD. Granted they films on those were typically such a piss-poor quality, more akin to the VHS-quality transfers the DVD ones had. Of course pretty much all of those titles can be streamed for free on The Internet Archive.

Blu-ray is jointly controlled by the Blu-ray Disc Association which most major media companies have a hand in just like DVDs are by the DVD Forum. I think the lack of bargain bin Blu-ray discs is due to a lack of market for them since most of that stuff is littered across free streaming services today. Also outside of being able to put more stuff on one disc there isn't any advantage to putting SD footage on Blu-rays instead of DVDs.

Though it still made more sense for Microsoft to use HD-DVDs in 2005 since they hadn't even licensed Blu-ray technology for use with Windows yet.