As a strong backer of MD, I see this as a step in a good direction. It still employes ATRAC3 (which I think is one of the worst versions of ATRAC, btw), but there's one piece of gold in that entire article:
>> For example, with the new upload function musicians or note-taking students can use the mic-in feature on several of the models to make a self-recording on the device and transfer the content back to the PC. <<
Bingo. We got it fellas - NetMD UPLOAD through the USB!! No more having to buy a seperate home deck and digi soundcard. The larger capacity disc is nice, but the USB upload is the greatest innovation for MD yet.
I'd say that competing with other recording HD or CF based portables makes sense on one level - they're portable. But this talk about total number of songs you can fit on one disc makes little sense to the MD user - when you run out, you can just pop in another disc. Bam, problem solved. And these discs are great, you can't scratch them, they're much smaller than CDRs, and even if you use a little extra compression, they sound pretty good.
Now the only problem here is that for some reason, Sony has always spearheaded the MD product, and then Sharp comes along and perfects it. The only Sony product that I enjoy listening to my MDs on is my in-dash Sony MDX800REC player/recorder. And I never use the MDLP modes for anything I listen to.
Will I buy into this? Probably not. My entire setup is based on the older MD standard, before ATRAC3, so I'm not inclined to buy a portable that will record discs that my home and car decks won't play. But for the newbie, I think this is a fantastic device, and should strongly be considered alongside the JB3 or IRIVER.
On a side note, are these discs going to be the technology that Sony built it's Universal Media Disc (UMD) for the Playstation Portable (PSP)?