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Electronics : Sony MZ-NH600 Silver Hi-MiniDisc Walkman
1 2 3 4
Rating: 
- Worthwhile, although could be improved
Great battery life (I've had over 30 hours from a single rechargeable AA battery), good sound quality, lots of storage on replaceable disks, reasonable size, and a low price compared to HDD players. That's what makes it worth owning - I use mine every day.
The lack of a backlight on the display is a pain - if they'd included a backlit remote that would have resolved the problem, but they haven't so either you have to buy a remote or put up with this. There's no ability to set up proper playlists - they're played either randomly or in the order they're on the disk. That said, given the capacity of the disks, and the fact you can just swap them over, you can put together a playlist on a disk, and swap with another disk if you want to play something else, so it's not too major an issue.
Navigation is functional if not high-powered.
The big, big, big annoyance with the Hi-MD players as a whole is that they don't play MP3s. You either record from the Line In, or use the crappy SonicStage software to transfer music onto the player. You can't even transfer the tracks off again, and although it can act as a mass storage device for transfering data and other files, this doesn't help in putting music on, as that has to be done using SonicStage (it's put in a single, special file).
I think if they'd made it support MP3s or at least playing music back from the file system, rather than forcing you to use an under-developed proprietary transfer program, then it would have got 5 stars. That's what loses the 5th star for me. Once you've gone through the hassle of putting your music on there, though, it sounds good, and the positive aspects of the player shine through. I wonder how many iPod owners can even imagine a) playing music non-stop for 27+ hours, and b) just swapping for another rechargeable AA battery when it does run out of juice.
Rating: - So good I bought two!
Got this at such a good price I bought two. One as a replacement for the time the first finally dies. Worth buying a few 1GB discs too as not sure how much longer the format will be supported and it suits me perfectly. In fact I got rid of my ipod and much prefer this. The only lack of support is for custom playlists. It doesn't offer them which is a bit of a pain. Great sound, good battery life and a brilliant storage medium (1GB Hi-MD). Buy one now, or two even!
Rating:
- Better than a Flash based MP3 player !!!!
I bought this player after spending loads of time choosing between the Creative N200 and Iriver flash 7XX series. I have many CDs and only a few MP3s (30) the "obvious thing" I thought was to buy a MP3 player and rip all of my CDs to MP3. Then I came across HI-MD and thought again.
If you have loads of MP3s that have been downloaded recently and they have DRM protection then this player is NOT for you BUT if you like me have lots of CDs and a few older non protected MP3s and you want portable music "Non Skip" music on the move then read on.
Ok let's deal with the biggest negative's first, this model has no MP3 encoder or radio but I wanted something that plays MY favourite songs not a radio DJ's. The software supplied SonicStage v2 isn't the best either (download v3.0 its better)and the Sony control system is a bit fiddly but just like an Iriver player, once you get used to it, it's fine.
One thing to note is that this is a MiniDisk player and so it only plays Sony Atrac files. Mainly the sound quality is better than expected and it's brilliant if you convert CDs directly to Sony's Atrac3plus 64K rate. This gives you an amazing 45hrs of "CD quality" music. Ignore most of what you've read about converting MP3s to Atrac. All music has to be converted to this format prior to playing so your old MP3s and WAVs are turned into Atracs. If you had a decent MP3 file (192Kbps or higher) then for the most part the sound quality is fine.
Compared to the aforementioned MP3 players above, I got my player for £50 plus £5 for a 1Gb HI-MD. This is a lot cheaper than the equivalent MP3 model of 128K. On the Iriver and Creative players I transferred 22 MP3 songs at most and they were both full. This times 8 equals 1GB so we can say that we can get roughly 176 songs onto a 1GB model of the same players. Now onto HI-MD, you can get around 500 songs of around the same quality onto 1 HI-MD disc. Don't worry too much about HI-MD discs you can get them easily on Amazon or Ebay and you'll only ever need a few. Most MP3 players have
In short, the sound quality is great, HI-MD holds about 500 songs plus you have folders and playlist support. Furthermore if you don't mind using SonicStage, manual podcasting MAY also be possible.
Its not a perfect solution to portable music (there isn't one) but in my view when comparing it to a flash based MP3 player its well worth the money.
Rating:
- My Hi-MD review
I bought a Hi-MD unit because it's compatible with my existing MD collection, has long battery life which is also replacable and there appears to be doubts about the reliability of the hard drive devices around at the moment.
The unit has good sound with decent volume and the battery life lives up to expectations. You can also get over nine hours of good quality music at 64kbs on a conventional MD and 34 hours on a new 1GB disc. However, even my modest music collection will not fit onto 1GB, so disc swapping is inevitable. Depending on how much music you want to carry around with you, it may turn out cheaper and more convenient to go for a HDD player.
The controls are small and fiddley but after a bit of practice they are suprisingly easy to use. The display is barely adequate and a full width text display would have been beter plus there's no backlight.
As far as I can see, you have to use the supplied Sonicstage software which although does the job, it is very slow on my 550Mhz PC. The USB 1.1 inteface does not help either. There is also no convenient way of editing tracks (e.g. sound normalisation, fade-in and out etc). All tracks have to be converted to the ATRAC format so any MP3s you have are going to suffer an additional loss in quality. The software is cumbersome to use as a PC based music player. Windows Media Player will play single tracks on the PC but there appears to be no way of creating playlists.
The software imposes strict digital rights management which I still don't fully understand the scope of. It should not be too much of a problem with leagaly obtained music.
All said, it is a good unit has has some advantages over the latest crop of HDD and solid state units. However, I don't think it is the format for the 21st century unless the discs can be made with much bigger capacities and have a signicant price advantage over its rivals. It could also do with better software
Rating: - Fantastic storage at a great price
I love my md player, its one of the best audio products I've bought for years.
The 1gb disc is fantastic but its not essential as you can use standard MD's as well, although they work out about 300mb I think.
Sound quality on the highest setting is what you'd expect from an ordinary MD player however this does cut down greatly on the the amount you can store (just like mp3 really). The lower quality mode, really is alot lower in quality but you can just about squeeze 45 albums on the 1gb disk or 8albums on an original MD disk.
The player feels well made, and the buttons are easy to use (except the five way switch if you have big digits I guess.
My only gripe is the headphones, they are really uncomfortable.
Overall a quality product, that runs off 1 AA. Beats Ipod hands down in my opinion.
- Worthwhile, although could be improvedGreat battery life (I've had over 30 hours from a single rechargeable AA battery), good sound quality, lots of storage on replaceable disks, reasonable size, and a low price compared to HDD players. That's what makes it worth owning - I use mine every day.
The lack of a backlight on the display is a pain - if they'd included a backlit remote that would have resolved the problem, but they haven't so either you have to buy a remote or put up with this. There's no ability to set up proper playlists - they're played either randomly or in the order they're on the disk. That said, given the capacity of the disks, and the fact you can just swap them over, you can put together a playlist on a disk, and swap with another disk if you want to play something else, so it's not too major an issue.
Navigation is functional if not high-powered.
The big, big, big annoyance with the Hi-MD players as a whole is that they don't play MP3s. You either record from the Line In, or use the crappy SonicStage software to transfer music onto the player. You can't even transfer the tracks off again, and although it can act as a mass storage device for transfering data and other files, this doesn't help in putting music on, as that has to be done using SonicStage (it's put in a single, special file).
I think if they'd made it support MP3s or at least playing music back from the file system, rather than forcing you to use an under-developed proprietary transfer program, then it would have got 5 stars. That's what loses the 5th star for me. Once you've gone through the hassle of putting your music on there, though, it sounds good, and the positive aspects of the player shine through. I wonder how many iPod owners can even imagine a) playing music non-stop for 27+ hours, and b) just swapping for another rechargeable AA battery when it does run out of juice.
Rating:
- So good I bought two!Got this at such a good price I bought two. One as a replacement for the time the first finally dies. Worth buying a few 1GB discs too as not sure how much longer the format will be supported and it suits me perfectly. In fact I got rid of my ipod and much prefer this. The only lack of support is for custom playlists. It doesn't offer them which is a bit of a pain. Great sound, good battery life and a brilliant storage medium (1GB Hi-MD). Buy one now, or two even!
Rating:
- Better than a Flash based MP3 player !!!!I bought this player after spending loads of time choosing between the Creative N200 and Iriver flash 7XX series. I have many CDs and only a few MP3s (30) the "obvious thing" I thought was to buy a MP3 player and rip all of my CDs to MP3. Then I came across HI-MD and thought again.
If you have loads of MP3s that have been downloaded recently and they have DRM protection then this player is NOT for you BUT if you like me have lots of CDs and a few older non protected MP3s and you want portable music "Non Skip" music on the move then read on.
Ok let's deal with the biggest negative's first, this model has no MP3 encoder or radio but I wanted something that plays MY favourite songs not a radio DJ's. The software supplied SonicStage v2 isn't the best either (download v3.0 its better)and the Sony control system is a bit fiddly but just like an Iriver player, once you get used to it, it's fine.
One thing to note is that this is a MiniDisk player and so it only plays Sony Atrac files. Mainly the sound quality is better than expected and it's brilliant if you convert CDs directly to Sony's Atrac3plus 64K rate. This gives you an amazing 45hrs of "CD quality" music. Ignore most of what you've read about converting MP3s to Atrac. All music has to be converted to this format prior to playing so your old MP3s and WAVs are turned into Atracs. If you had a decent MP3 file (192Kbps or higher) then for the most part the sound quality is fine.
Compared to the aforementioned MP3 players above, I got my player for £50 plus £5 for a 1Gb HI-MD. This is a lot cheaper than the equivalent MP3 model of 128K. On the Iriver and Creative players I transferred 22 MP3 songs at most and they were both full. This times 8 equals 1GB so we can say that we can get roughly 176 songs onto a 1GB model of the same players. Now onto HI-MD, you can get around 500 songs of around the same quality onto 1 HI-MD disc. Don't worry too much about HI-MD discs you can get them easily on Amazon or Ebay and you'll only ever need a few. Most MP3 players have
In short, the sound quality is great, HI-MD holds about 500 songs plus you have folders and playlist support. Furthermore if you don't mind using SonicStage, manual podcasting MAY also be possible.
Its not a perfect solution to portable music (there isn't one) but in my view when comparing it to a flash based MP3 player its well worth the money.
Rating:
- My Hi-MD reviewI bought a Hi-MD unit because it's compatible with my existing MD collection, has long battery life which is also replacable and there appears to be doubts about the reliability of the hard drive devices around at the moment.
The unit has good sound with decent volume and the battery life lives up to expectations. You can also get over nine hours of good quality music at 64kbs on a conventional MD and 34 hours on a new 1GB disc. However, even my modest music collection will not fit onto 1GB, so disc swapping is inevitable. Depending on how much music you want to carry around with you, it may turn out cheaper and more convenient to go for a HDD player.
The controls are small and fiddley but after a bit of practice they are suprisingly easy to use. The display is barely adequate and a full width text display would have been beter plus there's no backlight.
As far as I can see, you have to use the supplied Sonicstage software which although does the job, it is very slow on my 550Mhz PC. The USB 1.1 inteface does not help either. There is also no convenient way of editing tracks (e.g. sound normalisation, fade-in and out etc). All tracks have to be converted to the ATRAC format so any MP3s you have are going to suffer an additional loss in quality. The software is cumbersome to use as a PC based music player. Windows Media Player will play single tracks on the PC but there appears to be no way of creating playlists.
The software imposes strict digital rights management which I still don't fully understand the scope of. It should not be too much of a problem with leagaly obtained music.
All said, it is a good unit has has some advantages over the latest crop of HDD and solid state units. However, I don't think it is the format for the 21st century unless the discs can be made with much bigger capacities and have a signicant price advantage over its rivals. It could also do with better software
Rating:
- Fantastic storage at a great priceI love my md player, its one of the best audio products I've bought for years.
The 1gb disc is fantastic but its not essential as you can use standard MD's as well, although they work out about 300mb I think.
Sound quality on the highest setting is what you'd expect from an ordinary MD player however this does cut down greatly on the the amount you can store (just like mp3 really). The lower quality mode, really is alot lower in quality but you can just about squeeze 45 albums on the 1gb disk or 8albums on an original MD disk.
The player feels well made, and the buttons are easy to use (except the five way switch if you have big digits I guess.
My only gripe is the headphones, they are really uncomfortable.
Overall a quality product, that runs off 1 AA. Beats Ipod hands down in my opinion.