April 17, 2003 | Category:

Net MiniDisc

NetMD is a fantastic idea: hook up a NetMD player to your computer and just drag music over. Simple.

Of course, anyone who has used one can probably tell you that it isn’t that simple in practice. The default software, OpenMG (known as Sonic Stage in some areas), is dreadful. Prone to crashing, not starting up, ignoring your USB connection, and a plethora of other problems. The only other official software available is Simple Burner. It takes a CD and transfers the contents over to NetMD very quickly. This, however, only helps if you want to move a CD across, and not a bunch of random songs.

Now there’s a new solution: M3U2SimpleBurner. It is a bit of a beast to set-up (you need either Daemon tools or Nero Burning ROM, as well as Simple Burner and the OpenMG secure modules,

Once you’ve got it all down, you drag your mp3’s into M3U2SimpleBurner and it creates a virtual image (a fake CD that only exists on your computer). You then mount this virtual image onto a virtual drive (created by either Nero or Daemon Tools), and tell the real Simple Burner to use that.

Now, while I haven’t had a chance to use it all properly yet, it still seems like a lot less hassle than the OpenMG software. Only time will tell.