God, I loved my MD player. I rocked the MZ-R70 in blue hard for five years:
Then I got my first iPod and my MD collection got tucked away. However, a couple of years ago I scored a CD to MD deck from Craigslist, hooked it up to the stereo setup I was putting together, and proceeded to have way too much fun making new mixes and dusting off old discs.
The sad thing is that MD was the perfect successor to the cassette tape for the CD era, which seemed to be broadly understood in Japan and Europe but mostly ignored in the US. It's a damn shame - I loved the format and wish more folks could have enjoyed it during the MD heyday.
As for disc aesthetics, the first set of blanks I got, courtesy of the folks at MiniDisco, were 80 minute Sony Neiges:
I wound up with a lot of other random MDs - mostly Sony Color Collection discs that were readily available from Best Buy - but the Neige line was always my disc of choice.
For anyone who still has a MD player handy, Sony is still selling 80 minute MDs new in Japan; you can import them for around $4 each for a 5 or 10 pack after shipping.
