However, the agreement stipulates that Sony Electronics must stop further development of the format.

"Sony Entertainment was harsh on us" said Miyazaki Kendo, head of Sony Electronics Minidisc development lab, "Everytime we explored adding features that every other modern audio recorder offered but that were glaringly absent from Minidisc, such as unrestricted uploading and downloading of audio, the entertainment division would start throwing their weight around and making everyone miserable, insisting that such flexibility would somehow be used for pirating audio."

Sony MZ-RH1 Minidisc Recorder

"Eventually, we engineers just got fed up and secretly built the device we had always wanted to make. By the time the project was discovered it was so far along, and so compelling, that an agreement was struck with Sony Entertainment allowing us to introduce the unit to market in order to recoup expenses they said we had wasted in developing it. But this agreement came with the proviso that we never innovate on our own again without explicit permission from them."

"We did finally make the Minidisc machine everbody knew Sony was capable of," said Miyazaki, "but at a considerable cost." Some members of Sony's vaunted Shinagawa engineering labs have felt the burden has been too high however; since January over two dozen engineers and scientists have left to join Google Japan where, it is rumored, a wireless portable audio device with a wow-factor exceeding the iPod is under development.

The new Sony Minidisc portable, a long-wished for "Prosumer" quality machine, provides nearly every bell and whistle that Minidisc hobbyists have asked for including USB 2.0 support, high-speed uploading of legacy ("SP-mode") audio recordings, and a durable housing with sturdy and attractive switch-gear. "The thing is gorgeous, it looks like a Minidisc version of Sony's classic TC-D5M cassette recorder", said Eric Woudenberg, editor of the Minidisc.org. "If Sony had put these features into their original MD machines of 15 years ago, there's no telling where Minidisc might be today".

Sony TC-D5M Cassette Recorder

Some hobbyists still fault Sony for not taking the unit's development to its logical conclusion however. "What is Sony's problem with simple, basic, drag-and-drop audio handling?" asked Andy Lufkin, a long-time MD aficionado. "Their stupid SonicStage program gets in the way of all computer interaction and is the bane of computer-coupled Minidisc work. In fact I think we'd all be better off if Sony just left the device's firmware in Development Mode like that one batch of MZ-R50's that got into production with the wrong firmware. I'll bet Sony's engineers don't have to horse around with SonicStage to get audio on and off their machines. They've totally got to have the machine's audio upload/download functions dialed to a simple USB storage device interface. I'm sure of it."

The MZ-RH1 is scheduled to be available in April, for about $300.

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