I never even heard of minidiscs till 2000 when I was trying my darnedest to purchase a CD player that would read CDRWs with MP3. There were only two on the market at the time, 1) extremely expensive Kenwood. I think $1200! And 2) a $350 aiwa, which was in back order forever. One day I was at a Best Buy and an employee asked me if he could help me find something. I told him the exact product model number and he looked it up for me. There apparently was one on the opposite side of the metroplex.
I was 17, and had never really driven on the highway before, and surprised that my father offered to drive me all that way to get it installed that same day. So I called them up, and told them to put it on hold. They kept wanting to put some aiwa mini disc player on hold instead. But I kept telling them MP3. MP3!!! Aiwa CDC-MP3! I know it was 2000, but it ticked me off that no one knew what MP3s were. It wouldn’t be till 2005 when the mainstream would finally catchup. Though ask people now, and they still probably don’t know what they are.
So we drive all the way out there to buy it with money I earned from my first job. I had been saving all of it, so this was my first real purchase. First major mod to my mustang. Big deal for me. I go to get it from hold to pay, and they can’t find it. All they could find was the freaking MINIDISC player! If any of you remember what a Y2K Best Buy looked like, it still had a major CD section, a cassette aisle, and a few DVDs and VHSes, which took up half the store. WTF is a minidisc? Where do I find minidiscs?!? Thankfully they were able to locate the player, and have them install it while we start wondering about my 8yo brother, who would soon be coming home from school to an empty house. Thank goodness my mother could be reached.
Anyway, IMO, minidiscs essentially are laserdiscs. Something I didn’t even know about till the early aughts, though remember seeing a vinyl record sized CD our computer teacher in 1996 8th grade inserted into a device, only it played videos, not just audio. Strange. Like minidiscs, I never saw laserdiscs sold anywhere. Other than that one time in 8th grade and in a film class in college, I only saw laser discs thrown out in the garbage in back to the future II. ...couldn’t tell WTF they were on VHS, and didn’t know when I saw it in theaters. Had to wait till Blu-ray, because even on DVD, the screens were standard def and small.
Then the mid to late aughts came. Does anyone know what a UMD was? Sony released a neat kick ass portable gaming device called the PSP. All the games were on UMDs. This little round floppy disc, only inside was what appeared to be a minidisc. Sony later released all their movies on that format including a few other companies. It became a neat travel video device. Even my own mom bought one for herself to watch movies on the plane with. Sony really loved that failed media format.
