When I clicked on the video, I didn't know this product existed. Two minutes in, I desperately wanted one. Four minutes in, I didn't want one anymore. Oh Techmoan, your videos always send me on such a roller coaster of emotions.
Sony really did try getting everyone on board with MD - but the pushback from record companies in the west (which started with DAT ua-cam.com/video/F4K1QKKPX_g/v-deo.html ) really put the dampers on home digital audio recording formats outside Japan.
It's the same with cars. Any American Honda fan will tell you how frustrating it is that literally every cool car Honda makes is purposely screwed up for the American market... lol things have gotten better since the 90s but it's still true.
@@user-pi5xz5je4y I got one around 2001. I bought the DCC portable recorder before that, but that wasn't that practical. At the time I was getting big into Linux and there was a huge learning curve meaning quite often your PC would be out of action while downloading lots of packages, fixing X11 config etc. So I got a minidisc recorder so I could listen to some music while waiting.
@@pmgodfrey I have two: a Sharp portable that stopped working, and a second-hand Sony Lissa that I never got working period. And yes, stupid me is thinking of buying a working one, like one of those really cool 19" Sonys...
@@SeverityOne -- I have an MDS-E12 rack, but they're prone to just as many problems as the others because of their age. If you need parts, be careful about loading belt sizes when ordering online. You'll find a lot of sellers stamp the right part number on it, but it's designed for different mechanisms. It took a month to find the right one before my unit would happily ingest discs. If you really have a need for a much newer one, I'd recommend the Tascam MD-CD1MKIII. They're quite high in price though.
@@danieldaniels7571 -- I still think the format was pretty slick. My brother enjoyed it so much, he used to steal my deck and take it to his room so he could record the music he wrote onto something digital. It does have limits, as we both discovered. High frequency noise (synthesizer generated) produced many artifacts. It wasn't ideal for that, but if you just wanted to carry around a mix of songs that you recorded directly from CD, it was great and the (later) units were ultra small. Hell, I still think DAT is cool.
I think it was "I heard you liked unusual old tech..." - further I think it was a reference/joke about Xzibit and Pimp My Ride meme... stackin' ol'tech yo! :)
If I was an anorak in the late 90s with a lot of unlabelled minidiscs and no computer (and could read japanese), I would probably find one of these very useful.
I reacquired one recently. Even bought some NOS blanks. Never touched it since. Same goes for my Psion 3a and the Cambridge Z88. They're just nice to look at though :)
@@isaakwelch3451 Why on earth would you want to use a Minidisc player regularly nowadays? Even if you dislike Smartphones, there are far cheaper, smaller and better MP3-Players nowadays. I get that some people buy them out of curiosity as a novelty item, but using it regularly?
I was very close to buying one a while ago but it didn't have any labels. Once again you've scratched the 'what if' itch. Those labels would also be great for data MDs to list all the file names.
It's too bad a device like this wasn't available back in the late 1980s. My Headstart LX-CD came with a disc of shovelwared games, but the ones with save features like _Lords of Conquest_ or _Alternate Reality: The City_ weren't programmed to save to floppy/HDD while running from the CD. Thus, some of the games I'd copy to floppy for personal use. This was back when 3½" floppies came with a plastic sleeve, so instead of having to waste a permanent label, I just wrote what I wanted on a piece of paper sized to fold over the label section of the disk. Of course, once manufacturers stopped adding plastic sleeves, I was forced to use hand written adhesive labels.
I always love watching these minidisc items. They remind me of a time when I was a student and travelled with the train. That minidisk player was a lot easier to travel with then a discman.
Completly forgot about that, indeed radiostations were full on using these MD discs. Yup, sony was too greedy back then. And eventually MP3 came into play (no pun intended).
I worked for a radio station until last year and we used MD’s to record local bands and play them back on the air. The station gave me a sony MZ-N920 when i quit and it‘s a fun little thing to listen to music on.
@@tristanadamski8479 believe it or not, we used tape for instances like that up to 2015 when I left. I heard after that they finally switched to something else.
You have the patience of a Saint. This printer was a great idea and a perfect complement to the ultimate MD system, and personally, I think MD was a great format. It was sad seeing its demise. Love your channel.
@ Dutch guy from the Netherlands reporting here: we actually had (or rather, have: 124 episodes and counting) a localised version of it called "Buurman & Buurman" (Neighbour & Neighbour) which (AFAICT) is one of only two versions where the characters were given voices (voiced by Kees Prins and Siem van Leeuwen), the other being the English dub of the first 49 episodes, created in South Korea. Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_%26_Mat) tells me that, aside from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, it's been broadcast in 19 countries. :) A lot of the Dutch ones can be found here: ua-cam.com/channels/g040vh3QpyCzd38Vlfwj2g.htmlplaylists The English dub is found here: ua-cam.com/video/iu2dEMCY3Ys/v-deo.html
"So I heard you like unusual old tech - so here's some unusual old tech that works with your unusual old tech to improve how you use unusual old tech. So you can old tech while you old tech!"
" I heard you like unusual, old tech. So, here's something you probably haven't seen before." I want this to be printed on every possible item in your merch store!!
I fully understand the desire for this printer. Going back 35 years ago, I had the Commodore plotter printer for my C-64. The paper for this plotter was roll paper 4.25 inches wide, and it used mini-sized ball point pens to print. Just about ideal for printing liners for cassette tape boxes. I wrote a program that would prompt for the title, side 1 and side 2 tracks, and any recording options like Dolby NR. The liners then printed with some formatting divider lines and the needed cut and fold lines. Possibly my most useful program I ever wrote, and I used it for many years.
That's VERY cool. Amazing how versatile the C64 was and how friendly it was to budding programmers. But it takes talent and persistence like yours to make the most of that potential. Did you ever try to sell your program? There was such a burgeoning scene of magazines (with ads including small ads placed by indie programmers) plus catalogs, subscription services etc.
@@IrishCarney Never sold it, but I put it out there on BBS services as public domain back in the day. The required plotter printer was kind of a rare device in homes though.
MD was so much fun... I had machine with a full size keyboard plugged in to type out the track info. It also serve as a wired remote. I miss those days! :)
Great video. As the owner of 4 MD Player/Recorders, I didn't even know this printer existed. I used to use a template on my Atari 1040 STFM and print out to my DOT Matrix printer. We learn something new every day.
Hope it still works buddy. The attic is never a good place for electronics. 😬 I have some up there too, since I don’t have much room in the house. I think I‘m a hoarder due to Techmoan videos.
One wonders, if the stickers are part of any sort of standard, for your Dymo-type label makers. Pop the cartridge open, replace with roll from Dymo cartridge, er, profit?
Techmoan, did you ever visit the tech shops on Tottenham Court Road, London in the late 80's early 90's ? I used to love looking at the JDM products, high end Walkmans and gadgets , I bought a programmable Casio calculator and a Top of the range Technics personal CD player.
Im glad I still have my Sony md deck, a portable hi-md player and a win7 laptop with sonicstage and an audigy z2 with optical in/out. MD 4 lyfe. The audigy software came with an md suite with label creator
Did anyone ever get Sonicstage to work well though? OpenMG was even worse as I remember. NetMD was a great product ruined by that awful bloody software.
@@lemagreengreen well tbh, my first netmd came with sonic-stage V2, which crashed often but near the end with v4.3 and the latest openmg patches and drivers i got it to work flawlessy on win7. Also i only use WAV in my library to convert to omg so maybe that is more stable than MP3, WMA.. i don't know. Works fine here
Such an amazing equipment, I wish I could have done such a thing at the time of minidiscs. Nice layout for the credits at the end of the video. Kudos to you, your hard work and methodology.
1:18 If you had japanese 0.3 or 0.25mm stationery, you'd be able to write on those labels a little easier. Also using their writing system would help =P
@@the_eminent_Joshua_E_Hrouda I have a 0.4 mm mechanical pencil. Rather than importing lead for it, I generally take 0.5 mm leads and roll them between two sheets of paper until they fit.
@@EvertGuzman Generally, mechanical pencil lead in the U.S. comes in odd-numbered fractions only: 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9. The only source of 0.4 I had was in Japan, so it's much quicker to do it myself.
Wow - would have loved this back in the day. I used to do all the Station ID's / ad's on MD for our community radio station. Handwriting labels was painful! One major thing that I instantly think of - I'm guessing the adhesive on these was specifically made to stick to MD? Because I did (once) print a round of stickers on inkjet label-paper but found they got hot and pealed off inside the deck causing the MD to be lodged inside the unit. I'm just wondering if I could have been bothered to author a CD-Text, burn it at x4 speed, then print the various labels parts. Still - what an amazing device to have existed!! I'm glad I never knew about it :-P
Lovely video! Your the reason that there now is a Sony duo cassette deck I bought for €5 in my room. Both mechanisms taken out waiting for new belts. Thanks! For al the inspiring content!!
Probably the only control the printer was using is the "Next track", and if your player is set to cycle or loop, then it would just repeat again and again?
Amazing. Back in the 90's when I used minidisc I just created a template for labels & case inserts in Amipro (trial and error until I got it right) on my PC and then used that to label all my discs... The joys of a computer and a printer. I really have no idea how people of today get on with life WITHOUT a computer and printer, managing with only their phone!
I'm glad I watched that Bigclive video, I bought that labeller, it's very nice. You could probably use one to do MD labels if you didn't mind having to cut them to size and apply about 6 strips on a disc.
Very interesting. I live in Japan. There are tons of small printers and labelers. I imagine that there are some small, modern labelers that might work for minidiscs. I will check into it...
@Bryan O'Leary I'm in the UK. I didn't see these over here either. It's only Techmoan s video that made me aware. If I had seen it back in the late 90s I'd more than likely have got one though.
@@a500 i lusted after MD when they came out in NZ but never quite got round to getting one then got a PC with CDRom which made it irrelevant. I can't remember many titles if any coming out on MD in stores there.
Heath Newland : the cost of pre recorded MDs was a bit crazy and seldom seen. You could get the blank minidisc and CD for about half the price. Which is what I did because it was a lot easier to carry around MDs and they were harder to damage not to mention not skipping. I also really liked the sound. I rate ATRAC over mp3, it’s crisper and punchier.
I bought into MD quite late, mainly because all my mates had it and it was a popular way of sharing albums. Didn't last long though, NetMD killed it off when MP3 players became available and better in every way.
My 2005 JDM Toyota (imported grey-market to NZ) has a MiniDisk player underneath a standard CD player in the middle of the dashboard. The MD content could then be downloaded onto the car’s internal audio storage. My use of these features in the vehicle will be limited at best.
Great video! Love your immense knowledge bank, and way of, kind of slipping education in there without one realizing it, occupied as one is with being entertained by your easy-going approach and dry humour. Thank you for yet another little gem from the wonderful world of electrotech! By the way, I fondly remember my first Minidisc back in the 90's, and how gratifying it was to crack open a new pack of discs and just admire the colors before popping one in to hear that whirring sound of it spinning up. Good stuff :) -
I loved MiniDisc back in the day. I had a Sharp MD-MS701, followed by a MD-MT831. Expensive machines, but they both broke down and I soon got fed up. I look after my stuff *extremely* well and rarely have any problems.
9:07 − "Without any line wrapping, the maximum number of track names you could fit on one sheet is eighteen." 9:07 − Picture of sheet with nineteen tracks
@@meyer_brown Whose posterial girth is assuredly enveloping two tracks. So theoretically thirty-eight tracks? But aught not a MiniDisc filled with "Ms Fat Booty" be considered an oxymoron verily deserving a moniker worthy of its grandiose proportions? MaxiDisk, or perhaps GiganDisk?
Other than Sony being sort of "proud," of their products in the pricing department; They were always doing something awesome. My Vaio (I think Z series) had some kind of insane intel usb 3.0 + fibre integration just to make the optical drive external, AND make the GPU external. This was before those awesome usb-c boxes you can buy, and it was a REAL GPU not a port replicator or a DisplayLink emulator. Funny enough, the Sony Driver was about annoying as the DisplayLink software, but if you did it in the right order; it worked for the life of the OS, unlike DisplayLink! The hardware physically outlived the plastics of the machine. I miss seeing what kind of crazy Vaio thing they are doing lately!
Love this Channel, I still have my 1979 Sony Walkman without the orange headphones 😫. Loved the minidisks had a Sony unit in the car as well as the Minidisk Walkman. I genuinely believe people are missing out on the fun of these machines. Keep up the great work.
I had a minidisc player and I loved it. I was super proud of this hi-tech from Japan. Unfortunately, no one else really cared and it never caught on here.
I miss my MD player so much.. lost it about 6 months after they came out, man those things were *so* high tech feeling for the time. Fantastic designs in those old MD players, packed with features.
@@Techmoan I've made a terrible mistake. I bought a Hitachi MD/CD combo on eBay, only to find it's an OEM-sourced horror. It's so shonky I can actually hear the VFD flashing "LOADING" through the audio output.
Say what? Was that Yuck- abomination available anywhere outside Eastern Bloc? I used to work at computer store which was its official importer and retailer and it was a nightmare. We had to buy back majority of them due every possible issues- faulty firmware, dead batteries, burned out displays etc.
I wouldn’t mind a copy of that hip-hop mixtape you’ve made at 9:03 i love that you’re such a fan of golden era hip hop. Its always made me mad that there’s this stigma that hip-hop fans can’t be audiophiles because the music isn’t instrumental, but I’m glad you, much like I’ve been trying to do, are out here proving that generalization to be false.
As someone who still records to MD (and prints labels), I use a A4 glossy sticky back sheet in my laser printer and it works fine, although you do need to cut it out with scissors. Nice to see this machine, but in my view my full colour labels are far better and possibly even less hassle.
You have to remember that MD was first dreamed up and intended for an era when the PC was not the center of your music life. This label printer, for example, dates before NetMD (which was Sony conceding an inch to to the rise of PCs ripping and copying music to digital players). The entire MD ecosystem was originally envisioned as not needing any PC. From copying digitally onto MDs, to entering track titles, and here, printing labels.
I did everything manually back in the day. I remember buying myself a dedicated JVC MiniDisc hi-fi component with a keyboard so as to make the digital labelling easier. But I did painstakingly handwrite ALL of my labels! I could definitely see past-me getting one of these, if it were sold/available in English.
Cracking vid. I’m still a MD user and carefully wrote my labels and found some Avery ones I could print. I had an app on my Handspring which could fire the the track list at the MD stereo system component to save typing on the remote.
I used to spend ages making up and printing labels for my minidiscs, there was a kit (I think from Pressit) that had the front and spine labels on a sheet you could put through an inkjet printer. I would scan in CD covers and add track listings, they looked great at the time but have mostly peeled off now. Still have my MD player but doesn’t get used much these days.
Funnily enough, I was showing my roommate Cowboy Bebop recently, and on this watch thru, I've noticed that all the characters are using minidisc! Seems that they envisioned MD as the format of the future.
MiniDisc was my favourite format. I got into it when my locker at school was broken into and my DiscMan and 10 cds were stolen. The school agreed to cover it. I wandered into a shop with a $750 voucher to buy a new DiscMan...and walked out with a shiny new Sony MZR-90 MiniDisc player! Basically a high tech version of cassettes. I was lucky enough that (in the 90s) my parents had a CD deck with optical out which made recording MDs completely automatic. Ahhh kids today will never know the joys of living through all the formats.
It's always nice, especially in the digital era, to see a piece of physical media and accesories from the past. I've never owned an md, jumped from cassettes/vinyl right to cd's and seeing your vids...I have to have one :) even for the sole sake of just owning it
9:32 "But of course, time moves on." Yes, it certainly does. But thanks, Techmoan, for holding it still long enough to reminisce about the gadgets we grew up with.
Wow, if only I had one of these back in the days! All of my MD labels were typed on a typewriter, centred of course, but they were only about 45% the size of the full label. I like the idea of just the Album name on the disc, not complicated at all! 👍 😎
That Amber Sony mini disk show at 0:44 looks so good. Wish I had one for my obscure collection. Guess I'll just have to keep an eye out online. Wish things came like that nowadays. That clear Amber that's then broken up by the solid metal door just looks amazing.
Hi TechMoan! In the late '90s, there was a function on some Sony MD and CD portables called „Joint-Text“ which allowed for automated transfer of text data from CD to MD using a propritary cable plugged into the „remote“ jacks on both machines. My Sony CD walkman has this feature and I know for certain Sony MZ-R900 was the first MD walkman to have it too. Your MZ-E900 MD player likely uses the same protocol to transfer data to your label printer as it is a player-only version of the MZ-R900. Cheers!
Another fascinating bit of kit. There was a short period when location sound recordists would use either a Nagra for the main sound recording, and a MiniDisk for wild-track or background. The trouble was that by that time film cameras could record timecode in a machine readable form on the edge of the negative, and the sound recorder would also record timecode. The camera would be synchronised to the sound recorder. However I don't think there was ever an MD recorder with timecode, so it could not be used for sync sound, and for editing the tracks would need to be transferred. I edited a couple of jobs where some of the sound was on MD, and I just copied them onto a DAT with timecode. The disk made it much easier to use than tape, but not having timecode and the lower quality eventually stopped their use. During the 90s there was a general transition to using DAT for location sound. This is still true, though most recordists now use one or other of the solid state recorders instead. I still have a couple of MD disks amongst my collection of stuff I can no longer play!
You say (at 8:24) that this only works with discs recorded in SP rather than LP. The disc TOC is no different - and indeed the SP/LP type is per-track not per-disc. So I suspect you could put any titled disc into your 1998 machine and allow the label printer to read them. I realise that pre-MDLP machine can't play those LP2/4 tracks (or it can but they will play as silence) but the title extraction I suspect would work just fine.
Hello! Great channel! I love the fact that the mini disc that kept repeating featured Jamiroquai''s "Travelling without Moving"" album. i am a huge fan of him/them and especially of the album. All the best!
When I clicked on the video, I didn't know this product existed.
Two minutes in, I desperately wanted one.
Four minutes in, I didn't want one anymore.
Oh Techmoan, your videos always send me on such a roller coaster of emotions.
Eyy I'm the 50th like, good for you
Oh yes! The same for me! Every time! 🤣
Once again Japan keeps all the cool tech for themselves. So cool to see though.
Sony really did try getting everyone on board with MD - but the pushback from record companies in the west (which started with DAT ua-cam.com/video/F4K1QKKPX_g/v-deo.html ) really put the dampers on home digital audio recording formats outside Japan.
@@Techmoan record companies must die they so mean!!!
It's the same with cars. Any American Honda fan will tell you how frustrating it is that literally every cool car Honda makes is purposely screwed up for the American market... lol things have gotten better since the 90s but it's still true.
I really wanted a minidisc player back in the day, they were too expensive though.
@@user-pi5xz5je4y I got one around 2001. I bought the DCC portable recorder before that, but that wasn't that practical. At the time I was getting big into Linux and there was a huge learning curve meaning quite often your PC would be out of action while downloading lots of packages, fixing X11 config etc. So I got a minidisc recorder so I could listen to some music while waiting.
"Fortunately I've got a few more [Minidisc player] machines I can try."
Of course you do. 😄
Who doesn't? I have three.
@@pmgodfrey I have two: a Sharp portable that stopped working, and a second-hand Sony Lissa that I never got working period. And yes, stupid me is thinking of buying a working one, like one of those really cool 19" Sonys...
@@SeverityOne -- I have an MDS-E12 rack, but they're prone to just as many problems as the others because of their age. If you need parts, be careful about loading belt sizes when ordering online. You'll find a lot of sellers stamp the right part number on it, but it's designed for different mechanisms. It took a month to find the right one before my unit would happily ingest discs.
If you really have a need for a much newer one, I'd recommend the Tascam MD-CD1MKIII. They're quite high in price though.
@@pmgodfrey I have 10 : from decks, portable, bookshelfs and MD Data, Sony Laptop built in MD .....
@@danieldaniels7571 -- I still think the format was pretty slick. My brother enjoyed it so much, he used to steal my deck and take it to his room so he could record the music he wrote onto something digital. It does have limits, as we both discovered. High frequency noise (synthesizer generated) produced many artifacts. It wasn't ideal for that, but if you just wanted to carry around a mix of songs that you recorded directly from CD, it was great and the (later) units were ultra small.
Hell, I still think DAT is cool.
This is the sort of deliciously specialized, fiddly gadget arcana that I love.Great video!
0:06 "I hope you like the usual old tech"
Me: *Yes*
I think it was "I heard you liked unusual old tech..." - further I think it was a reference/joke about Xzibit and Pimp My Ride meme... stackin' ol'tech yo! :)
@@808v1 yeah I didn't quite get exactly what he said lol
He says, "I heard you like..."
That's... why I'm here.
love the obscure tech, keep it coming
Fr
Here I was printing on label paper through an inkjet printer having to typeout everything like a sucker. Really neat piece of tech.
Yeah, but, by doing that, you saved several hundred dollars.
@@StarkRG And almost certainly got a better looking end result, without the weird text wrapping issues.
If I was an anorak in the late 90s with a lot of unlabelled minidiscs and no computer (and could read japanese), I would probably find one of these very useful.
I love printing labels for CDs and compact cassettes. It looks so neat and organized. I know exactly what anything is at any moment.
And here i am having to use my lungs to breathe like a sucker
I still write on my wax cylinders with a quill and ink made from the blood of my enemies. This will be a nice upgrade.
Unfortunately my enemies' blood was discontinued years ago.
Unfortunately my enemies' blood was discontinued years ago.
Unfortunately my enemies' blood was discontinued years ago.
Unfortunately my enemies' blood was discontinued years ago.
Unfortunately my enemies' blood was discontinued years ago.
"Fortunatelly, I have few MD players laying around..."
I reacquired one recently. Even bought some NOS blanks. Never touched it since. Same goes for my Psion 3a and the Cambridge Z88. They're just nice to look at though :)
I've got one. It sees regular use. I'm considering upgrading to a model that sounds better but they get spendy fast.
@@isaakwelch3451 Why on earth would you want to use a Minidisc player regularly nowadays? Even if you dislike Smartphones, there are far cheaper, smaller and better MP3-Players nowadays. I get that some people buy them out of curiosity as a novelty item, but using it regularly?
@@gayusschwulius8490 mine is a home unit, it's plugged into my stereo. I use it because I like it and I have some good titles.
I was very close to buying one a while ago but it didn't have any labels. Once again you've scratched the 'what if' itch. Those labels would also be great for data MDs to list all the file names.
It's too bad a device like this wasn't available back in the late 1980s. My Headstart LX-CD came with a disc of shovelwared games, but the ones with save features like _Lords of Conquest_ or _Alternate Reality: The City_ weren't programmed to save to floppy/HDD while running from the CD. Thus, some of the games I'd copy to floppy for personal use. This was back when 3½" floppies came with a plastic sleeve, so instead of having to waste a permanent label, I just wrote what I wanted on a piece of paper sized to fold over the label section of the disk. Of course, once manufacturers stopped adding plastic sleeves, I was forced to use hand written adhesive labels.
I always love watching these minidisc items. They remind me of a time when I was a student and travelled with the train. That minidisk player was a lot easier to travel with then a discman.
Man I would've KILLED for this machine back in my radio station days.
Me too 📼😎
Completly forgot about that, indeed radiostations were full on using these MD discs. Yup, sony was too greedy back then. And eventually MP3 came into play (no pun intended).
@@JCD87 we used them primarily for archiving our small news reports/indepths and promos.
Also jingles.
So many jingles 😲
I worked for a radio station until last year and we used MD’s to record local bands and play them back on the air.
The station gave me a sony MZ-N920 when i quit and it‘s a fun little thing to listen to music on.
@@tristanadamski8479 believe it or not, we used tape for instances like that up to 2015 when I left. I heard after that they finally switched to something else.
It takes all the skills and nice spirit of Techmoan to make a video about a label printer almost interesting! I'm impressed...
You have the patience of a Saint. This printer was a great idea and a perfect complement to the ultimate MD system, and personally, I think MD was a great format. It was sad seeing its demise. Love your channel.
2:57 I looked up the instructions and it does say インクリボン (inku ribon) or "ink ribbon".
2:36 Pat & Mat?
_Oh, those wonderful childhood memories_
I'm actually surprised that TechMoan knows about Pat & Mat. It's an absolute classic.
Dun, dun, dararara, dara, dun duuun...
@@supra107 I'm surprised anyone outside of Czechslovakia knows Pat & Mat :D
@ It is well known in Poland, and probably in various post-Soviet countries too.
@@supra107 From what I've heard they're very popular in Denmark. They even have live theatre plays.
@ Dutch guy from the Netherlands reporting here: we actually had (or rather, have: 124 episodes and counting) a localised version of it called "Buurman & Buurman" (Neighbour & Neighbour) which (AFAICT) is one of only two versions where the characters were given voices (voiced by Kees Prins and Siem van Leeuwen), the other being the English dub of the first 49 episodes, created in South Korea.
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_%26_Mat) tells me that, aside from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, it's been broadcast in 19 countries. :)
A lot of the Dutch ones can be found here: ua-cam.com/channels/g040vh3QpyCzd38Vlfwj2g.htmlplaylists
The English dub is found here: ua-cam.com/video/iu2dEMCY3Ys/v-deo.html
"So I heard you like unusual old tech - so here's some unusual old tech that works with your unusual old tech to improve how you use unusual old tech. So you can old tech while you old tech!"
Oldtechception?
Yo dawg.
@@Chris5685pimp my old tech
" I heard you like unusual, old tech. So, here's something you probably haven't seen before."
I want this to be printed on every possible item in your merch store!!
I was a big minidisc-er back in the 90s, and always appreciate your videos on this subject.
I fully understand the desire for this printer. Going back 35 years ago, I had the Commodore plotter printer for my C-64. The paper for this plotter was roll paper 4.25 inches wide, and it used mini-sized ball point pens to print. Just about ideal for printing liners for cassette tape boxes. I wrote a program that would prompt for the title, side 1 and side 2 tracks, and any recording options like Dolby NR. The liners then printed with some formatting divider lines and the needed cut and fold lines. Possibly my most useful program I ever wrote, and I used it for many years.
That's VERY cool. Amazing how versatile the C64 was and how friendly it was to budding programmers. But it takes talent and persistence like yours to make the most of that potential. Did you ever try to sell your program? There was such a burgeoning scene of magazines (with ads including small ads placed by indie programmers) plus catalogs, subscription services etc.
@@IrishCarney Never sold it, but I put it out there on BBS services as public domain back in the day. The required plotter printer was kind of a rare device in homes though.
Please replicate the owners manual warnings with the puppets 😊
Outro of the Moans recreating the do's and don'ts as shown in the manual.
Mehdi from ElectroBOOM could volunteer!
Flipping heck that's a top idea like.
I noticed those characters all appeared to be white...
@@fryloc359 Japanese cartoon characters often are
MD was so much fun... I had machine with a full size keyboard plugged in to type out the track info. It also serve as a wired remote. I miss those days! :)
I was considering getting one of these, but it was a professional MD recorder and wouldn't fit with my system.
I would have loved this back in the 90’s when I was heavily into MiniDisc! (Oh look - a MiniDisc emoji! 💽)
Awesome!
How can a UA-cam video about a label machine become so interesting? This is so fascinating!
Keep up the great work!
I used my 9-pin dot matrix printers compact mode when labeling MDs for my then girlfriend. Worked great.
@Nigel Kipling How would that matter? No break up's are beautiful, but ours were as close as they can be.
Same but with mixtapes! Huge old late 80s Panasonic thing that took forever to print one J-card and could be heard halfway across the street.
Great video. As the owner of 4 MD Player/Recorders, I didn't even know this printer existed. I used to use a template on my Atari 1040 STFM and
print out to my DOT Matrix printer. We learn something new every day.
Note to self: run up the stairs to the attic and search hundreds of cardboard boxes for my Sony MD player.
@Bryan O'Leary Jumanji Vibes.
Bryan O'Leary
I think he had an MD player not this printer.
Hope it still works buddy. The attic is never a good place for electronics. 😬 I have some up there too, since I don’t have much room in the house. I think I‘m a hoarder due to Techmoan videos.
My MD discs are in cardboard boxes in the garage, together with boxes of VHS tapes and cassettes.
@@mikeos1 VHS tapes are vulnerable to weather so they shouldn't be in a garage or shed.
"Traveling without moving" definitely mini disc era album.
Great content by the way thank you!
One wonders, if the stickers are part of any sort of standard, for your Dymo-type label makers. Pop the cartridge open, replace with roll from Dymo cartridge, er, profit?
HP read your comment from the past and invented lockout chips on cartridges.
Maybe rolls of similar width could be found, but the sticker shape is very specific to the MiniDisc
@@AaronSmart.online nothing a pair of scissors can't fix.
@@AaronSmart.online True enough. It's not the "cut to shape" type.
@@Jehty_ At that point you might as well skip the MZP-1 and just use your Dymo/Brother to print out the labels
How you've not surpassed 1 million subs already baffles me? Keep it coming Matt, I'm always learning something new!
I really love your choice of music for displaying those machines 😍
Love your hip-hop interest. 90s hip-hop really was (and is!) just the best
Techmoan, did you ever visit the tech shops on Tottenham Court Road, London in the late 80's early 90's ?
I used to love looking at the JDM products, high end Walkmans and gadgets , I bought a programmable Casio calculator and a Top of the range Technics personal CD player.
C M B was so much fun, for me it was the video game shops. Seeing stuff like the ‘Virtual Boy’ and ‘TurboGrfx 16’ that no other shops had. 👍
Techmoan u rule!
I recently got into Minidisc and I love it. Thanks for the videos on Minidisc.
Im glad I still have my Sony md deck, a portable hi-md player and a win7 laptop with sonicstage and an audigy z2 with optical in/out. MD 4 lyfe. The audigy software came with an md suite with label creator
That software was shit and annoying 😂
Did anyone ever get Sonicstage to work well though?
OpenMG was even worse as I remember. NetMD was a great product ruined by that awful bloody software.
@@lemagreengreen well tbh, my first netmd came with sonic-stage V2, which crashed often but near the end with v4.3 and the latest openmg patches and drivers i got it to work flawlessy on win7. Also i only use WAV in my library to convert to omg so maybe that is more stable than MP3, WMA.. i don't know. Works fine here
Yeah, I have a dedicated laptop with windows 7 to run sonic stage. I tried on windows 10 with no luck.
Such an amazing equipment, I wish I could have done such a thing at the time of minidiscs.
Nice layout for the credits at the end of the video.
Kudos to you, your hard work and methodology.
1:18 If you had japanese 0.3 or 0.25mm stationery, you'd be able to write on those labels a little easier. Also using their writing system would help =P
yeah you don't need as much space for labels when your written language has basically every noun represented by one or two characters
@@the_eminent_Joshua_E_Hrouda I have a 0.4 mm mechanical pencil. Rather than importing lead for it, I generally take 0.5 mm leads and roll them between two sheets of paper until they fit.
Mal-2 KSC just buy it
@@EvertGuzman Generally, mechanical pencil lead in the U.S. comes in odd-numbered fractions only: 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9. The only source of 0.4 I had was in Japan, so it's much quicker to do it myself.
Wow - would have loved this back in the day. I used to do all the Station ID's / ad's on MD for our community radio station. Handwriting labels was painful! One major thing that I instantly think of - I'm guessing the adhesive on these was specifically made to stick to MD? Because I did (once) print a round of stickers on inkjet label-paper but found they got hot and pealed off inside the deck causing the MD to be lodged inside the unit. I'm just wondering if I could have been bothered to author a CD-Text, burn it at x4 speed, then print the various labels parts. Still - what an amazing device to have existed!! I'm glad I never knew about it :-P
I'm getting an Aiwa cassette tape player next week the earliest I'm so happy about it 🙏🏼😀😀😀
Lovely video! Your the reason that there now is a Sony duo cassette deck I bought for €5 in my room. Both mechanisms taken out waiting for new belts. Thanks! For al the inspiring content!!
Probably the only control the printer was using is the "Next track", and if your player is set to cycle or loop, then it would just repeat again and again?
Amazing. Back in the 90's when I used minidisc I just created a template for labels & case inserts in Amipro (trial and error until I got it right) on my PC and then used that to label all my discs... The joys of a computer and a printer.
I really have no idea how people of today get on with life WITHOUT a computer and printer, managing with only their phone!
First big Clive, now techmoan
What a week for labelling
I'm glad I watched that Bigclive video, I bought that labeller, it's very nice. You could probably use one to do MD labels if you didn't mind having to cut them to size and apply about 6 strips on a disc.
6581punk I have very little need for one as a broke student, but damn do I want one. There are higher priorities to look after first though:)
I have a home music studio, so there's like 60+ cables to label.
That's a real gadget! I don't have minidisc or a minidisc player but still I want this printer
4:46 A man of culture, I see
Very interesting. I live in Japan. There are tons of small printers and labelers. I imagine that there are some small, modern labelers that might work for minidiscs. I will check into it...
Still love the MD. It was/is a a lovely format. I would have so wanted one of these back in the day.
@Bryan O'Leary I'm in the UK. I didn't see these over here either. It's only Techmoan s video that made me aware.
If I had seen it back in the late 90s I'd more than likely have got one though.
@@a500 i lusted after MD when they came out in NZ but never quite got round to getting one then got a PC with CDRom which made it irrelevant. I can't remember many titles if any coming out on MD in stores there.
Heath Newland : the cost of pre recorded MDs was a bit crazy and seldom seen. You could get the blank minidisc and CD for about half the price. Which is what I did because it was a lot easier to carry around MDs and they were harder to damage not to mention not skipping.
I also really liked the sound. I rate ATRAC over mp3, it’s crisper and punchier.
I bought into MD quite late, mainly because all my mates had it and it was a popular way of sharing albums. Didn't last long though, NetMD killed it off when MP3 players became available and better in every way.
My 2005 JDM Toyota (imported grey-market to NZ) has a MiniDisk player underneath a standard CD player in the middle of the dashboard. The MD content could then be downloaded onto the car’s internal audio storage. My use of these features in the vehicle will be limited at best.
That’s the coolest audio accessory I’ve ever seen! If MD became the standard, that would’ve sold like crazy.
Travelling Without Moving - what an album! The first 3 Jamiroquai albums are gold
It's a classic
Great video! Love your immense knowledge bank, and way of, kind of slipping education in there without one realizing it, occupied as one is with being entertained by your easy-going approach and dry humour. Thank you for yet another little gem from the wonderful world of electrotech!
By the way, I fondly remember my first Minidisc back in the 90's, and how gratifying it was to crack open a new pack of discs and just admire the colors before popping one in to hear that whirring sound of it spinning up. Good stuff :)
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0:37 No. 9 - Jenny from the block.
That song came out 18 years ago... Let that sink in y'all.
The first studio MD I ever bought was J-Lo's "On the 6." Hard to believe that was 21 years ago...
I loved MD. I had a stereo with a MD player and a walkman one. It was great for recording in the rehearsal studio with my old band.
Ah nice, something good to watch! Thank you sir!
I loved MiniDisc back in the day. I had a Sharp MD-MS701, followed by a MD-MT831. Expensive machines, but they both broke down and I soon got fed up. I look after my stuff *extremely* well and rarely have any problems.
9:07 − "Without any line wrapping, the maximum number of track names you could fit on one sheet is eighteen."
9:07 − Picture of sheet with nineteen tracks
One of the tracks being titled "Ms Fat Booty."
@@meyer_brown Whose posterial girth is assuredly enveloping two tracks. So theoretically thirty-eight tracks? But aught not a MiniDisc filled with "Ms Fat Booty" be considered an oxymoron verily deserving a moniker worthy of its grandiose proportions? MaxiDisk, or perhaps GiganDisk?
I've never owned a minidisc player and I doubt I ever will. I watched this entire video. Well done Techmoan.
Other than Sony being sort of "proud," of their products in the pricing department; They were always doing something awesome. My Vaio (I think Z series) had some kind of insane intel usb 3.0 + fibre integration just to make the optical drive external, AND make the GPU external. This was before those awesome usb-c boxes you can buy, and it was a REAL GPU not a port replicator or a DisplayLink emulator. Funny enough, the Sony Driver was about annoying as the DisplayLink software, but if you did it in the right order; it worked for the life of the OS, unlike DisplayLink!
The hardware physically outlived the plastics of the machine. I miss seeing what kind of crazy Vaio thing they are doing lately!
Minidisc is like Some tech from the future! I love the format
Sony design is so simple and beautiful. Miss the aesthetics of these players, media and cases :)
One thing what in minidisc "walkmans" i didnt like was those awful little buttons
3:46
Labels on the buttons:
電源 (dengen) "power supply" or "power"
行読込 (gyō yomikomi) "read line"
フォーム (foomu) "form"
修飾 (shūshoku) "modification"
変換 (henkan) "conversion" [kana (あ) to kanji (字) conversion]
スペース (supeesu) "space"
枠 (waku) "frame"
入力 (nyūryoku) "input"
シフト (shifuto) "shift"
濃度 (nōdo) "concentration"
記号 (kigō) "symbol"
確定 (kakutei) "confirm"
消去 (shōkyo) "erase"
削除 (sakujo) "delete"
印刷 (insatsu) "print"
I would have absolutely loved this in 1998.
Love this Channel, I still have my 1979 Sony Walkman without the orange headphones 😫. Loved the minidisks had a Sony unit in the car
as well as the Minidisk Walkman. I genuinely believe people are missing out on the fun of these machines. Keep up the great work.
Hmm, approaching LGR Oddware levels of unusual hardware...
Dude, two days ago I was literally looking for a way to print MiniDisc labels. I use this format for audiobooks. Man...this thing is grat, I need one.
I had a minidisc player and I loved it. I was super proud of this hi-tech from Japan. Unfortunately, no one else really cared and it never caught on here.
I miss my MD player so much.. lost it about 6 months after they came out, man those things were *so* high tech feeling for the time. Fantastic designs in those old MD players, packed with features.
Some early generation emojis on that printer too.
as with many of your videos this was way more interesting than initially expected
Please show us your MD CD combo unit in more detail with HIGH SPEED DUBBING
I plan on it.
@@Techmoan I've made a terrible mistake. I bought a Hitachi MD/CD combo on eBay, only to find it's an OEM-sourced horror. It's so shonky I can actually hear the VFD flashing "LOADING" through the audio output.
You can also watch my vid about my minidisc stuff.
@@thisisnev Its my understanding that only the sony stuff is worth buying in the MD world.
Say what? Was that Yuck- abomination available anywhere outside Eastern Bloc? I used to work at computer store which was its official importer and retailer and it was a nightmare. We had to buy back majority of them due every possible issues- faulty firmware, dead batteries, burned out displays etc.
I wouldn’t mind a copy of that hip-hop mixtape you’ve made at 9:03
i love that you’re such a fan of golden era hip hop. Its always made me mad that there’s this stigma that hip-hop fans can’t be audiophiles because the music isn’t instrumental, but I’m glad you, much like I’ve been trying to do, are out here proving that generalization to be false.
That's a pretty neat little machine.
I had no idea you knew who Pat and Mat are.
This was also suprise for me. I wonder where in the world where they aired.
@@filipbarski6990 in a few countries :)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_%26_Mat
As someone who still records to MD (and prints labels), I use a A4 glossy sticky back sheet in my laser printer and it works fine, although you do need to cut it out with scissors. Nice to see this machine, but in my view my full colour labels are far better and possibly even less hassle.
You have to remember that MD was first dreamed up and intended for an era when the PC was not the center of your music life. This label printer, for example, dates before NetMD (which was Sony conceding an inch to to the rise of PCs ripping and copying music to digital players). The entire MD ecosystem was originally envisioned as not needing any PC. From copying digitally onto MDs, to entering track titles, and here, printing labels.
The closest thing i had to this was a word document template and some label paper
been loving this techmoan minidisk saga
Damn Techmoan listens to Jamiroquai. He's got good taste in music.
I did everything manually back in the day. I remember buying myself a dedicated JVC MiniDisc hi-fi component with a keyboard so as to make the digital labelling easier. But I did painstakingly handwrite ALL of my labels! I could definitely see past-me getting one of these, if it were sold/available in English.
Cracking vid. I’m still a MD user and carefully wrote my labels and found some Avery ones I could print. I had an app on my Handspring which could fire the the track list at the MD stereo system component to save typing on the remote.
Listening to music was never as fun as with MiniDiscs. Thank you for sharing this!
I used to spend ages making up and printing labels for my minidiscs, there was a kit (I think from Pressit) that had the front and spine labels on a sheet you could put through an inkjet printer. I would scan in CD covers and add track listings, they looked great at the time but have mostly peeled off now. Still have my MD player but doesn’t get used much these days.
I was printing the labels supplied with the discs using my then inkjet printer. Even the spine labels. I still have these disks and they look great.
Epic! Does rather take the fun out of MiniDisc in 2020. Recording the disc, labelling the titles, then doing a sticker is why MD is fun!
Funnily enough, I was showing my roommate Cowboy Bebop recently, and on this watch thru, I've noticed that all the characters are using minidisc! Seems that they envisioned MD as the format of the future.
Another enjoyable review from the past. Keep em' coming. A big thumbs up.
MiniDisc was my favourite format. I got into it when my locker at school was broken into and my DiscMan and 10 cds were stolen. The school agreed to cover it. I wandered into a shop with a $750 voucher to buy a new DiscMan...and walked out with a shiny new Sony MZR-90 MiniDisc player! Basically a high tech version of cassettes. I was lucky enough that (in the 90s) my parents had a CD deck with optical out which made recording MDs completely automatic. Ahhh kids today will never know the joys of living through all the formats.
It's always nice, especially in the digital era, to see a piece of physical media and accesories from the past. I've never owned an md, jumped from cassettes/vinyl right to cd's and seeing your vids...I have to have one :) even for the sole sake of just owning it
9:32 "But of course, time moves on." Yes, it certainly does. But thanks, Techmoan, for holding it still long enough to reminisce about the gadgets we grew up with.
Wow, if only I had one of these back in the days! All of my MD labels were typed on a typewriter, centred of course, but they were only about 45% the size of the full label. I like the idea of just the Album name on the disc, not complicated at all! 👍 😎
That Amber Sony mini disk show at 0:44 looks so good. Wish I had one for my obscure collection. Guess I'll just have to keep an eye out online. Wish things came like that nowadays. That clear Amber that's then broken up by the solid metal door just looks amazing.
Hi TechMoan! In the late '90s, there was a function on some Sony MD and CD portables called „Joint-Text“ which allowed for automated transfer of text data from CD to MD using a propritary cable plugged into the „remote“ jacks on both machines. My Sony CD walkman has this feature and I know for certain Sony MZ-R900 was the first MD walkman to have it too. Your MZ-E900 MD player likely uses the same protocol to transfer data to your label printer as it is a player-only version of the MZ-R900. Cheers!
Another fascinating bit of kit. There was a short period when location sound recordists would use either a Nagra for the main sound recording, and a MiniDisk for wild-track or background. The trouble was that by that time film cameras could record timecode in a machine readable form on the edge of the negative, and the sound recorder would also record timecode. The camera would be synchronised to the sound recorder. However I don't think there was ever an MD recorder with timecode, so it could not be used for sync sound, and for editing the tracks would need to be transferred. I edited a couple of jobs where some of the sound was on MD, and I just copied them onto a DAT with timecode. The disk made it much easier to use than tape, but not having timecode and the lower quality eventually stopped their use. During the 90s there was a general transition to using DAT for location sound. This is still true, though most recordists now use one or other of the solid state recorders instead. I still have a couple of MD disks amongst my collection of stuff I can no longer play!
9:25 cartridge label is similar Ruvi Hi8 photo also first prototype pre-Betamax video (similar VX of Panasonic) in the 1972-73.
You say (at 8:24) that this only works with discs recorded in SP rather than LP. The disc TOC is no different - and indeed the SP/LP type is per-track not per-disc. So I suspect you could put any titled disc into your 1998 machine and allow the label printer to read them. I realise that pre-MDLP machine can't play those LP2/4 tracks (or it can but they will play as silence) but the title extraction I suspect would work just fine.
Hello! Great channel! I love the fact that the mini disc that kept repeating featured Jamiroquai''s "Travelling without Moving"" album. i am a huge fan of him/them and especially of the album. All the best!
Nice to have a look on this almost forgotten device. Thank you.
Just bought a Grundig, Minidisc/CD player, always loved the MD format.
Interesting item for all us MD users - perhaps a simple label writer will do the trick, but getting the track titles across is the clever bit here.
Another awesome vid Matt. Keep em coming.
Brother PT-210 does the job for the spines with 3.5 mm tape very well. For the MD itself I print sticky labels on an A4 printer.
Amazed how you find all this oddball stuff... well done...
Very cool, love the Mini Disc players. Would love to have had one back in the day.