From Slashdot news: Sony's has announced it's new new range of Hi-MD players at the CES show. The range of players (which should hit the shops in April) will start below $200 for a device that can function as a USB hard drive as well as storing a claimed 45 hours of music. The twist is that the data is stored on a new type of removable 1Gb media, a development of the minidisk format, with blanks costing about $7 each. The BBC have some more details including backwards compatibility with old-style minidisks and an ominous mention of 'built-in copyright protection' but I can't find anything on Sony's official site yet.

Sounds good to me

sounded very good till the part about copyprotection, though that would depend on how it is implimented.

backwards compatible?

Means the older Sony Mini-Discs(remember those things that looked a bit like a floppy) will play in it

You guys here don't quite get sarcasm...

Don't you know sony for backwards compatibility issues?...
Thousands of PS1 games never worked on PS2...

That's another reason to stick with PC games. I'll bet X-Box won't suffer from that issue, as its largely PC based.

Wait, still thousands of PS1 games do work on PS2
But that's another issue for another topic

I remember being at a computer show when the mini disc player came out (about 1992 ?), & seeing one hooked up to a PC for use as storage then. Never did understand why Sony did not make a better push for using it as removable storage.

I love my minidisc- best archival format around as the discs last forever and you can abuse them no end as they are in their own case and only cost about a buck a piece. I highly doubt that they will be backwards-compatable with regards to the new device as a one gig density on a platter that size almost certainly implies a blue laser or some such voodoo tech.