"Sony has announced it is to deliver its last MiniDisc stereo next month. It marks an end to the firm's support for the system which it launched in 1992. The format only ever had limited success outside of Japan and was ultimately doomed by the rise of recordable CDs and MP3 players." My format of choice for personal audio up until a few years ago, when the rest of the world had already long moved on to MP3. Nothing beats the satisfying sound of closing a portable MiniDisc player/recorder with a disc in it.
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Member since:2006-03-03
It's Sony and Fujitsu who invented the magneto-optical system. First ever used was the 21 MB floptical in the Next, then the 128 MB, 230 MB, 540 MB, 640 MB, 1.3 GB and 2.3 GB in 3"1/2 format, and some similar sized 5"1/4 disc with 5.2 and 9.1 GB, before UDO.
I still use nowadays the 1.3 GB 3"1/5 and the 9.1 GB, pretty efficient yet very slow at writing. The later fitted in a HP SureStore 20 XT magneto-optical SCSI juke box 
Kochise
Member since:2006-07-12
The recordable optical disk was invented by David Gregg whos patents was later owned by MCA. And i remember using LD (LaserDisk) disks in the 70's at home, long before NEXT even existed. And if you mean the CD, then also no. It was developed by Phillips (and later Sony in conjunction). The GD-Rom was developed by Yamaha. And the Phase change ones used in many home systems was developed by Panasonic. The ones used in NEXT systems was magnetodisks and more of an optical floppy relying on the Magneto-optic Kerr effect.
Edit: First sentence made no sense so i removed it.
Edited 2013-02-05 13:46 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2009-03-17
Member since:2005-07-06
The evidence does not support your assertion...
1. As broken_symlink points out, there were plenty enough of 3rd party MD gear manufacturers. Sony was simply most visible to you, and generally throughout the world, since they were actively promoting MD gear even in areas where it didn't took off.
2. (and perhaps more importantly) The only place where MD was semi-popular, Japan, was also at the forefront of adopting flash-based music listening devices...
...and obsoleting MD in the process. MD simply had a very short window of opportunity (made worse by how people weren't too keen to adopt yet another format right after CD)
As usual with Sony, people bash them also when it's not justified.
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Member since:
2008-07-15
Actually, I'd say that being replaced by these devices was more a consequence of what killed the Minidisc than what actually killed it. As usual with Sony, what killed the format was their unwillingness to either license it reasonably or open it up for third party players. They wanted to be the only ones who produced it, and they were… but not in the way they had hoped. It's an all too common problem with Sony.
Having said that, I think the convenience of digital media would have ended up replacing MD in the end anyway. Still, Sony's stubbornness made this happen all that much more quickly.