Sony MZNH600D Hi-MD MiniDisc Walkman
by Sony
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List Price: Our Price: $145.00 You Save: $104.99 (42%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Sony MZNH600D Hi-MD MiniDisc Walkman
Customer Review: I own other Sony NetMDs and have advice to avoid software
Summary: 4 Stars
I don't own the HiMD Mindisc yet, although I look forward
to buying one eventually, but I keep reading of people
having problems with Sony's awful included OpenMG software
(I find it's horrible, and lately RealOne Player is crashing
on me when I try to transfer Mp3s to the NetMDs I own,
which are an mzn505 and a 410 (the no frills black one).
So I had to find a better solution for mp3 files or other
pc music files, the SimpleBurner Sony gives you is fine for
CDs....then I found out you can just compile a CD "Image"
if you have a burner like NERO, which I've got...what you do is,
just burn a CD image from Nero or another burning suite,
save to HD, mount the image as a regular "CD," THEN open
Sony's SimpleBurner and burn the Image, it will recognize it,
then you just burn to the NetMD and let it rip..I think
you can even specify space between tracks before you burn
the Image. This seems to work TONS better than Sony's crappy
software, which everyone seems to despise, and who wants
to record in real time unless you have to? Plus it burns
10x faster this way on a newer PC with USB 2.0, so it's the
method of choice. You can tell me IPOD but that is super
expensive, it's not for archiving music or burning as the
NetMD is, and now the HiMD will even do data files, so it
should probably save the Sony NetMD line for the near
future..I sure hope so cause I love the NetMD format,
it's just Sony's support and junky software that is a
major glitch in the product's marketing. Why doesn't Sony
fix this? It can't be that hard to come up with a better
suite of software, and SimpleBurner itself is fine!
Customer Review: Sony MZNH600D
Summary: 4 Stars
I'd read a lot about the Hi-MD format so I wanted to check it out in person. I don't know how in the world I missed this when shopping, but this model DOES NOT HAVE A MICROPHONE, NOR ANY WAY TO USE ONE WITH IT! Well, shop twice buy once I reckon. To me that eliminates at least half of the usefulness of such a device, but it's my fault for not finding that out before buying.
So why the 4 stars? Because, as a player it's awesome. The Hi-MD format is everything I'd read, I can't for the life of me fathom why Sony isn't doing more to spread the use of MiniDisc. Yah SonicStage is a pain (though better than I expected from reviews, I guess Sony did improve it) but the Japanese lessons & music I put on the disc sounded absolutely fantastic. The interface on the machine is kinda clunky but for stuff like Japanese lessons that won't really matter too much since you won't be fishing around too much.
So as just a player, I really like this little booger. I've read that some people get 34+ hours of battery usage & I wouldn't doubt it. And the Hi-MD format is just terrific.
I'd love to have a more versatile machine using Hi-MD, that I could easily record things with, move files around under Linux, and use OGGs etc. with. But this machine ain't it. It's just too limited, and only because of the iron paw of Sony. Shame. With a mic jack, and some software tweaks, this would be a heck of a machine I could be happy with for years. Now that my little experiment's over it's probably heading to Goodwill.
Oh, and the folks I ordered it from (ship2you) did an absolutely superb job, thanks, it got to me in 2 days! I got a refurbished model for I think around $90(?) and everything was great.
Customer Review: A great choice for realistic people
Summary: 4 Stars
I read a lot of reviews before I purchased my Hi-MD player. And they started to make me wonder because they were all complaining about the proprietary ATRAC and how it doesn't work with MP3's. Well I bought one for $87 including shipping and I love it. I've been mostly copying my CD's but have used a few MP3's and it works fine. Only computer geeks who think they need the very latest and best wouldn't like it. But I don't think anything on the market is going to satisfy them.
I don't have a real problem with the ATRAC. I don't think the transfer speed is too slow. I expected much slower after the reviews I read. But in order to fit 45 hours of music on a disk, you need to compress the music! MP3 doesn't compress it enough. I'm thankful for the compression and I think the quality is still very good. Yes, I can tell a little on the 48kb/s transfer speed, but not enough to give up the amount of storage space it offers.
My biggest complaint is that the software will crash occasionally and a backlight would be nice for the display. And I wish it was a little more sturdy with metal and not plastic. But then it would be heavier.
But I've never had it skip and it's small and compact. Much cheaper than an MP3 player and the storage is removable so you don't have to keep adding and deleting music every time you want to listen to something else. Just buy a new disk. Price is right when you look around. I'm using it mainly for music right now so I can't speak on it being a portable storage unit, but nice feature. And you can't beat the battery life. If you could plug in a car adapter or AC adapter, that would just make it all the sweeter.
Customer Review: Good Alternative to an Ipod/MP3
Summary: 4 Stars
After looking for some digital way to carry my music I decided on this player. It fit the price (under 200) and offered some expandable memory via the disks. I wanted an Ipod or other large capacity player, but the price was to high and the issue of durability of the hard drive and internal battery was a downside. Flash based players only have a limited memory (upto 1gig) and offer no expansion. So, there's the MiniDisc. So far I have about 25 CDs recorded in the AtracPlus 48kbs format and about half of the 1gig disc is full. I tried the higher settings, but didn't notice enough difference in quality to give up the disc space. I also run this with a FM modulator (Belkin), so higher quality would get lost anyway.
Read the reviews and you would think the software (SonicStage) stinks. I have had no problems. It's not the best, but works. I have a newer PC and the file conversion from the CD to Atrac takes about 5-10 min per 1 hour CD.
As for the player itself, I like the ability to see the file data (the included support for GraceNote is very nice and accurate). I can get the song or CD I want quickly. The shuffle feature works really well! This was a major issue for me as I wanted it to randomly play songs from all of my CDs (like my own radio station). The time between songs is almost non-existant, the next song seems to already be cued up. I would highly recommend this player!
Also, I did try a portable CD player with MP3 compatabilty, but the speed was VERY slow. So, don't try that option.
Customer Review: Hey, I like it....
Summary: 4 Stars
I've had it for about a week, and it works like a charm. Maybe it's the newer version of SonicStage, but it's really easy and intuitive to convert and load my CD's onto the device. (I'm not worried that I have to convert to a proprietary format; I'm not planning on sending my files to other folks. And the files stay in a directory on my hard drive as back up.)
For copying CDs, you essentially have three "tabs" to choose from
-- the first automatically loads up whatever CD you insert and finds the title information online for you,
-- then you click on arrow to transfer it to your harddrive library (the second tab, which keeps track of your albums)
-- then you can click on the third tab to show the directory on your Hi-MD Walkman, and you hit another arrow that transfers everything over.
It looks like I'll get about 30 albums on my first disk, then for $7 I can get another one at various places. (CompUSA and Amazon have 'em listed, so it's not the problem getting them that folks reported earlier.)
Downsides? I do wish the volume was a little louder on some of the files that I'd downloaded (the files coming from a CD are fine), as I like to listen to music when I mow the lawn so I need something loud. And, it's not a flash drive, so it'll be a little bulkier than you might like, but it's very light.