Could the Mini-Disc Have Succeeded?

Like the Japanese Operating System thread (which, um, failed) this is for a specific bit of technology that I can use in my timeline but may be interesting outside of it.

Sony Introduction

Academic Case Study [PDF link]

The Morning News has a look with the MiniDisco article. You can see all the problems the OTL version had.

Wiki

The Wikipedia said:

A MiniDisc (MD) is a magneto-optical disc-based data storage device initially intended for storage of up to 80 minutes of digitalized audio. Today, in the form of Hi-MD, it has developed into a general-purpose storage medium in addition to greatly expanding its audio roots.

The company avoided the mistake that it had made in the 1970s with the Betamax video recording system, and this time licensed the MD technology to other manufacturers, with JVC, Sharp, Pioneer, Panasonic and others all producing their own MD systems.

MiniDisc technology was faced with new competition from the recordable compact disc consortium, while the popularity of traditional cassette tape refuses to wane in certain quarters.

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It appears a couple things need to happen. First off no DAT, which occupied the same market space. Luckily Sony made both DAT and MiniDisc, so it shouldn't be hard to kill DAT.

Second off MiniDisc should start out as a general purpose "blank" disc, rather than a specific audio format. This allows it to engage and replace cassettes on the audio side and floppy disks on the computer side, while heading off at the pass both Zip Drives and CD-Rs with a new high-density MD later on. MD is rewritable and non-linear—major advantages over CD-Rs. Basically a low storage version of Hi-MD in the early 90s.

The key points for the MD, as I see them:

• Data & audio co-existing
• No DAT competitor
• Faster-than-realtime recording
• Lossless recording (to cover the DAT section of the market)
• No DRM type restrictions
• Widely/cheaply licensed to everybody

So a Mini-Disc released under those conditions should become quite a bit more popular than OTL already. If Sony were to make deals and push MD as the floppy replacement with computer manufactures along with say MD camcorders (has to beat tape) it could become pretty widespread.

Zip Disks won't launch or (like Digital Compact Cassette) dies quickly. Before CD-Rs come out Sony releases a new higher capacity MiniDisc that matches the CDs 650 MB. That kills the market for CD-Rs in most cases.


Any thoughts? Reasonable?

Even though Sony licensed it to more people, it still ultimately controlled the license. Still too proprietary. MP3 is open. LAME, for example, was usable by many semi-novice users. If not, then most programs had the license to encode MP3.

CDRs would have to be absolutely crap for MD to get ahead. Plus, MD technology cannot be just for audio. Data drives must cheap and widespread as well.

I fully agree that MD was superior to CDR/RW, due to its better physical protection, physical size, and other details. However, Sony shot themselves in the foot with forcing users to use ATRAC (a no-no).

pieman3141 said:

Even though Sony licensed it to more people, it still ultimately controlled the license. Still too proprietary. MP3 is open. LAME, for example, was usable by many semi-novice users. If not, then most programs had the license to encode MP3.

CDRs would have to be absolutely crap for MD to get ahead. Plus, MD technology cannot be just for audio. Data drives must cheap and widespread as well.

I fully agree that MD was superior to CDR/RW, due to its better physical protection, physical size, and other details. However, Sony shot themselves in the foot with forcing users to use ATRAC (a no-no).

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Nail on the head here. The POD needs to be something in the company culture of Sony, preferably earlier than Betamax. With the success of Beta, Sony would already have a proven track record with developing its own formats.

I don't know why they didn't I have a mini-disc player and a few of them.
They are better than CD's ever could be. What makes them better the plastic disklike case that keeps them from getting scratched. It would be a good idea to at least revise the idea and use a version of that plastic casing for CD'd and DVD's. Such a good idea that went to pot.

I have two problems with the MiniDisc -

For starters, it is extremely difficult to duplicate the information saved on a MiniDisc (apparently there are ways, but the best I've managed to do is to re-record it by simultaneously playing the MiniDisc and recording it on another device, which results in a significant amount of generation loss).

Secondly, magneto-optical disc-based storage devices are inferior to solid-state storage devices, especially where audio is concerned, because the disc itself can be a source of background noise. For entertainment purposes, this background noise is negligible, but for anything else (such as my line of work) you want to minimize background noise as much as possible.

Unfortunately (for me at least) the POD in my timeline is in 1979—Beta has already lost.

Perhaps *Sony takes a different path. If they skip DAT and work towards making a consortium for MiniDisc based on the Betamax lessons (more partners, economy-of-scale) perhaps we can sidestep all the MiniDisc mistakes of OTL.

The thing is they'd have to make a conscious decision to make the MiniDisc both data & audio which leads to no DRM (i.e. ATRAC is licenced out like MP3, and doesn't have a DRM wrapper). To do that, I imagine *Sony would have to avoid buying CBS Records and get involved with the content business that has systematically ruined (and deliberately sabotaged) their audio/video consumer electronics business.

Without DAT the MiniDisc is made so it records lossless (i.e. full quality) so that guarantees them a fairly wide niche in broadcasting/music business. (Another thing is that Sony and Philips developed rewritable CDs together, perhaps if Philips is brought on board the MiniDisc plan CD-Rs are never even developed.)

With a wide array of partners the DCC never gets off the ground, so there is no confusion in the US about which audio format.

With a wide array of partners (Apple? HP? Japanese computer makers?) offering MiniDisc Decks in their computers it becomes widespread and easy to take songs from a CD and stick it on a MiniDisc.

A major problem is America (see this case study) which never quite got MiniDisc. If ATRAC replaces MP3 and CD-Rs don't exist, much of this problem goes away. Further Americans believed MiniDisc was trying to replace CDs, not cassettes.

Leo Caesius said:

For starters, it is extremely difficult to duplicate the information saved on a MiniDisc (apparently there are ways, but the best I've managed to do is to re-record it by simultaneously playing the MiniDisc and recording it on another device, which results in a significant amount of generation loss).

Secondly, magneto-optical disc-based storage devices are inferior to solid-state storage devices, especially where audio is concerned, because the disc itself can be a source of background noise. For entertainment purposes, this background noise is negligible, but for anything else (such as my line of work) you want to minimize background noise as much as possible.

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Yeah, that's the DRM Sony used. Obviously we'll need to get rid of the DRM.

Hmm. What did you use before flash came out? DAT? Second, what could be done for a "professional" MiniDisc version to eliminate that background noise?



Obviously MiniDisc is time limited as a music playing device, as modern flash and HD players are better (though the last MiniDisc recorder, the MZ-RH1 is pretty cool) but as a floppy disk/zip disk/CD-RW replacement on the computer side they might well remain common.

Likewise MDs could replace VCD and perhaps even be used in place of CDs in an ATL Playstation.

Anyway, it's possible that MiniDiscs could be a pretty big success—though perhaps on the implausible side.