Black Hawk said: I have spent this weekend trying to buy a mini-disc player locally. Nowhere (including car audio retailers) keeps them in stock these days.

John J said: I have found it increasingly difficult to buy the actual discs. A shame as the system is wonderfully flexible.

I've encountered both situations recently with minidisk myself. Blank disks have disappeared from most high street shops and are really only readily available on-line. Likewise I had to replace my recorder the other week and found to my dismay that even major Sony outlets now have them as a special order item only. Fortunately, the recorders are still pretty readily available online.

It is a self-destructive circle, because the lack of ease of purchasing replacement units and blanks is going to further drive down demand. Wierdly all this happens withing 12 months of Sony bringing out the MZ-RH1 which solves almost all the previous limitations on MD recording (ie it now does PCM recording and can upload both standard and hi-capacity MD directly via USB to a PC).