> * Simon Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Fri, 10 Mar 2000
> | I'm not convinced the manufacturers spend a lot of time
> | consulting consumers about what they'd like.
>
> No, but they do listen when, say, 10 out of a hundred ask,
> "what use is this?" and the remaining 90 say nothing.
I think the companies we're talking about have always a very precise
idea of what "an average customer" wants for his money. Unfortunately,
this doesn't include digital-out on portable MD. I've already got used
to this policy, which always makes you pay extra money for features
you'd expect to be "default".
What makes me wonder, is that there's not a single such MD model, say,
by S*ny, which would have a digital-out, even if it carried a ridiculous
price of $800. And no, I don't believe there are any technical issues
that would make it impossible to enable digital-out on most of MDs. I'm
not saying I would pay $800 for digital-out, but believe that this kind
of feature would find its users.
Remember consumer digital videocameras: all of the reasonably prices
ones come to Europe with all of their line inputs factory disabled,
compared to their Japan & US versions. Enabled models sell for twice as
much. How do you call that? Marketing policy? Of course, you can always
buy (or assemble) a simple cable, download a utility from Internet and
change the service codes in the camera to enable the inputs.
Unfortunately, there's no way I know of, to do this with an MD.
Anyway, it's the digital-in that is necessary to do a perfect copy of a
copyrighted CD and the SCMS does limit the possibility of further
copying of such material, so why not give the digital-out to those who
want to transfer their field recordings into PC without loss of quality
and without having to buy a deck which takes up more space on your desk?
My $0,02...
Filip
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................. filip hajny // [EMAIL PROTECTED] ...
....................... http://swnet.cz ...................
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