Sony Releases Hi-MD
Those of you that know me know I'm a big fan of MiniDiscs. I've been using them for about six years now, and they've kept me from considering solid-state- and hard-disk-based portable digital music players. I've been wondering for the longest time when Sony would increase the density of MD media. Yesterday they announced Hi-MD, storage and player technology based on a 1GB version of MD media. To put this in perspective, original MD media, which has been around for over 10 years, holds about 140MB.
I have yet to digest all the reports about this, but it looks like the initial slate of portable recorders they're releasing have features many MD users have been requesting, like digital uploads from MD to PC. It also looks like they'll support linear PCM, which would be the first lossless format supported on MDs. ATRAC's SP (standard) mode has sounded great to my ears ever since I first started using MDs, but it will be nice to have a small MD player that is capable of playing back CD-quality audio.
Sources: HydrogenAudio, MiniDisc.org.