They're not Fighting anymore, let's go home (FORUM: MiniDisc VS MP3)

Member Name: JackW24

Product:	FORUM: MiniDisc VS MP3
Date:	10/08/01 (256 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: More music to take with you

Disadvantages: More money to spend

We all think we know who's going to win don't we? Well we're all very very stupid.

Someone else cleverly pointed out in their op that I have just finished reading (thankyou for that wossername) that these two thingiwotsits, (MiniDisc and Mp3) are not really fighting each other very much.
Why aren't they? Because they're two different things, one being a storage medium, the other being a file format. Akin, as was pointed out by someone better than me, to asking which is better, LCD monitors, or JPEG images? Which is better, Creative's New soundcard, or a big pair of speakers?
Which do you prefer? A fridge, or a bottle of milk, y'see, the fridge will keep milk cool, but if you don't have the milk, then there's not much point.

Apparently, the milk, ahem, music, contained within MiniDisc's is in ATRAC-3 format, which is like, Sony's version of Mp3, stored on a MiniDisc. With common Mp3 players, the music is in Mp3 format, and usually on a flash RAM card or something.

They're not slagging it out in a battlefield, they're merely shuffling there feet and mumbling a bit in the bus queue, neither is disturbed nor threatened by the others presence.

OK, they're both supposedly new technologies to the consumer market, so they both have flaws. Personally, I hate MiniDiscs, because they're small and fiddly and expensive, and I don't see the point in small fiddly expensive things like MiniDiscs when you have a CD-RW. Now, you are going to have to fork out large wads of english money to buy either of these pretty useless gizmos, so if you're buying one, be careful.

Minidiscs are generally more expensive, they are fiddly, they still have moving parts, and you still can only fit the same amount of music on one as you can on a normal CD. Mp3 however, you're talking longer battery life, slightly smaller (and madly shaped) players. Problem with traditional Mp3 pl
ayers is, you get a piffling little 16mb flash card with them, and that equates to about as many minutes of music, which isn't impressive, plus, flash ram cards ain't cheap, oh no, a 32mb one probably costs about £40, jeez!

Well, both of these technologies are all good and great, but companies are only just starting to hit on the one true king.

MP3 CD!! Yes, it's good, it's great, it's marvellous.

Mp3 compression Technology, take away those crappy little memory card things, replace them with a 650Mb CD, and what do you get? One CD capable of housing up to 200 of your favourite tracks. Oh yeah, and the cost of the player? Between £80 and £120. Yep. Cheaper too.

Summary::
Mp3 is king and always will be, because you can swap it online, download it, and have it in your pocket with the minimum of fuss, now, all we have to do is figure out where we should be storing the Mp3 files, flash Ram is pants, CD's are excellent, but will skip. Perhaps we can store Mp3 ON a minidisc? Or a DVD? (That's about 1000 songs then) or even a Mini-DVD (Do they exist?)

I'm sure we'll all figure out where it's heading, and probably before those big smelly companies do too. At the end of the day, it's up to you, but I know where me and most of the market is heading..

Summary: