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Portable CD-RW/DVD Player

Posted by michael on from the everything-is-portable-if-you're-strong-enough dept.

BugNuker writes "If your CD/MP3 player wasn't enough, you have to check this out. Sony has released this all in one media device that can play mp3's, wma's, cd's, and DVD's... yes, DVD's. It can be hooked up to your computer, and be used as a CD-RW and then hooked up to your TV, and play your favorite DVD's. But can it play my mp3's recorded on my DVD? Ultimate media device I would say, same size as a personal cd player. Comes with a Memory Stick expansion slot, a rechargeable battery and a USB 2.0/1.1 interface." There's a picture. It's cute. And expensive.

20 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. KINDA IRONIC by r_arr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder how Sony's Movie and music branch feel about this. On one side you have Sony telling people to burn DVD's cd-rw's and other stuff. While the other side says don't do that.

  2. Sony is actually two companies? by Mr_Silver · · Score: 5, Interesting
    What's going on with Sony? One half is doing stuff like this and the other half release their NetMD minidisc line with so much DRM crowbarred into it, that it's cumbersome and annoying to use.

    What happens in there? Does one team produce cool stuff and then try and sneak it out before the music side get their claws into it? Or is this clearly a case of two different companies (or should I say cultures and ideals) releasing products under the same name?

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    Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
    1. Re:Sony is actually two companies? by thatguywhoiam · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Besides being a giant zaibatsu with dozens and dozens of subsidiaries, Sony basically embraces the hydra approach. Many heads, all attacking. Like AOL/TW, they straddle the media divide, so it gets a bit schizophrenic at times.

      While there are certainly folks at Sony who are right in there with the whole DRM thing, I think what happens is that the hardware sales have a polarizing effect on these efforts within Sony.

      Look at their competition with MS in the game space. Sony knows that, push comes to shove, they sell TVs and Walkmans and Glasstrons, and Microsoft sells the occasional keyboard or router. They will price MS right out of the market on the PS2 (in fact, they are already turning a profit on those things), while selling all the hardware they are known for. Microsoft cannot lean on an alternative revenue stream so heavily... although they do have that ridiculous war-chest in the bank. Investors won't stand for raiding it without a visible means of putting that money back, though.

      Sony can do this, and the tech industry is simply that much bigger than the media industry. Hell, Sony co-invented the CD; I think they actually take a tiny bit of profit from every CD-based game sold on the Xbox (someone correct me if I'm wrong about that; I know the PS2 has some CD-based games, some -DVD).

      --
      If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
  3. Re:cute, but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Ugh. How does this get modded insightful. Everytime a multimedia device like this is mentioned on slashdot at least one person has to ask about Ogg Vorbis. It is getting to be like the Beowolf and 1,2,3 Profit posts. Mod it redundant and teach them a lesson.

  4. Re:VCDs by kc2dpt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yeesh! You guys are a whiny bunch. $300 doesn't seem like a lot to me for all that functionality. Granted, it'll be 1/3 that in a year, but that's a normal price for new technology.

  5. why by mydigitalself · · Score: 5, Interesting

    when you have something as sexy as the MZ-N1 would anybody want something this big to lug around.

    actually, a better why...

    why do americans not like/use minidisc players? i noticed that when i was over there about a month ago - everyone had clunkly cd-size walkmen. in london mini-disc players are continuing to become more ubiqitous and i would assume for two reasons:
    1) size
    2) re-recordable

    does this just not go down well in the US?
    i mean, discover the sony mz-n1....

    1. Re:why by (trb001) · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They never took off here because Sony never released pre-recorded stuff on them. All you could get for a long time (note: I had a MD player/recorder for 2 years) was blank discs, and to record on them was hell. You had to play music and hit the record button. Mine did a pretty good job of picking up on the space between tracks and splitting them, but it was still problematic.

      The only people that I know who used them were those that had them as part of their entertainment centers. That means you had to have the portable player and the standalone recorder which, in this day and age isn't happening.

      I suppose the greatest dilemna for Sony was that they didn't let anyone else produce material or hardware for the minidisc, it could have taken off had they done that.

      --trb

    2. Re:why by Mr_Silver · · Score: 4, Interesting
      why do americans not like/use minidisc players? i noticed that when i was over there about a month ago - everyone had clunkly cd-size walkmen. in london mini-disc players are continuing to become more ubiqitous and i would assume for two reasons:

      Well, I'm a Londoner and I wouldn't say they are becoming more ubiquitois. Yes, there are a larger number of people with them than I've ever seen before, but what is become more seen is those people with the little white clip on their clothes. That is the Nokia 8310.

      Plus those people that do have MD's are often holding several year old models rather than the latest one. Which either means there is a damn good trade in ancient MD's or these are players bought a while ago.

      But anyway I'm digressing, here's why I don't use the NetMD:

      MD's are good quality. If you can overlook the fact that you have to copy all your music to MD at realtime.

      Of course, you could get the NetMD, but then you'd have to jump through hoops (read check in/check out) to get the songs onto the MD, you can't copy them back off, you can't check them out more than 3 times, you have to convert them to Sony's propriatory ATRAC format, LP4 compression is so poor quality-wise you can only use LP2 at the most, you can't delete the songs off the MD without checking them back into the software and you sometimes find that the software refuses to convert an MP3 (often a VBR one).

      Oh, yes, and you get to pay £250 for the privilidge of the above when my player was over half the price.

      NetMD was an attempt by Sony to capitalise on the MP3 boom, unfortunately their content division were so paranoid about piracy that they effectivly cripped what would have been a seriously good product that might have stemmed the death of the MD.

      If, however, MP3 means nothing to you or you have no need for such a thing, then a plain old bog standard MD player is both cheap, light, jog-proof and rather cool. But NetMD is a joke.

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      Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
  6. 256MB memory stick? by Cutie+Pi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is sort of off topic, but the way that Sony is pushing their Memory Stick technology (it's in almost all their products now), you'd think that Sony would be focusing more on getting larger capacity Memory Sticks out the door. Currently they max out at 128MB, while you can get 1GB compactflash cards for pretty cheap. I have a 4MP Sony digicam, and it fills a 128MB stick pretty quickly. I think I remember Sony was planning to release the 256MB Memory Stick at the end of last year, with plans to take it up to 4GB(!). Well, Sony, we're almost at the end of this year, and 256MB sticks are nowhere to be seen. Not to mention a 128MB stick is still way too overpriced, even by Sony's licensee's. You have to wonder if Sony is having problems manufacturing higher density Memory Sticks. However, they are still pushing the technology, so maybe that is a good sign.

  7. Where does it say it plays WMAs? by The-Bus · · Score: 3, Interesting
    has released this all in one media device that can play mp3's, wma's, cd's, and DVD's


    Where does it say this plays WMAs? I couldn't find it in the article. What I did see is that it provides enough playback for 1.5 hours of DVD, so less than a lot of movies.


    This should be a nice alternative to car DVD players which are always ridiculously expensive.

    --

    Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

  8. I am asking myself... by McFly69 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I am asking myself, why do people really need a portable DVD player? Are not cdr/mp3/audio-cd disk players enough? Sounds to me just another product to make consumers pay up.

    --



    NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
  9. yeah, but memorystick? by doodleboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sony owns the memory stick format. They're expensive and no one else uses them. Hell would freeze over before it happened, but I'd prefer something like a 128mb usb diskonkey dongle. You can use them on pretty well any computer without a separate reader. However, if my motherboard didn't have it built-in I'd want to get a usb 2.0 card before trying to burn CDs or transferring large files.

    But save for those couple of issues, this seems like an incredibly versatile unit for 300 clams. I expect we'll see a lot more machines like this, and probably for a lot less cash once Samsung, et al, get in on it. And they'll probably come to market with a more useful replacement for memorystick, too.

    Oh yeah: Does anyone know what, if anything, this unit has in the way of DRM support? One would not like to buy a device that was deliberately crippled in any way.

  10. Archos - 20Gb and a screen for $449 by DrSkwid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    US
    UK

    MP4 Video Player (DivX compatible*) JPEG/BMP Viewer MP3 Player & Recorder

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  11. ogg files? by Omnifarious · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Will it play ogg files? My absolute requirement for anything I get like this is that it be able to play oggs.

    Also, does it use the USB storage interface, or some other standard USB interface so I don't need funky drivers to use it under Linux?

    --
    Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
  12. No Linux support by InodoroPereyra · · Score: 3, Interesting
    From the Article:

    The MPD-AP20U includes a Memory Stick media slot, a USB 2.0 port and supports both Macintosh and Windows platforms.

    This alone is a showstopper for me. Of course people will hack around and maybe get it to work. The price doesn't seem too high if it is under US$ 300 as the article mentions though.

  13. Re:Expensive???? by macrom · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sure you can get external drives cheaper, but they are usually enclosed in a 5.25" external case, making transportation of the unit cumbersome. This device, by all appearances, will slip into a side pocket of a laptop bag. Add that it doubles as a portable CD player (which can't be said of a dedicated drive), a DVD player (which may be said of a traditional external drive, but if you built your own), an MP3 player AND it has Memory Stick capabilites, which can't be said of any external CD burner that I know of. Acquiring all of the requisite hardware for the same price is not an issue, but getting all of the functionality in the same lightweight, small-footprint device is an issue for those the live on airplanes/airports and their ilk.

    One additional bonus that this device presents laptop users : most modern laptops have some sort of swapable drive bay that houses the optical drive but will also house a second battery. With this (IMO, relatively inexpensive) drive, you can add a second battery but still retain portability and optical drive connectivity.

  14. Re:MD == Slow by Darlock · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Read my post above. There is no 1x recording anymore... it's USB... so what do they say the speed of USB is 24x... I don't know. It's blazing fast copying the files over to the mini-disc. The slow part is converting my mp3's to ATRAC format.

    Also, to note: I believe that the ATRAC format is better than mp3. The files are smaller and of the same quality.

    But I agree with you. If I could copy mp3 -> minidisc, I would be in heaven.

  15. Something better (IMO) by lfarenw · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I saw this bad boy at Target a little while ago:

    http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/ref=br_1_2/60 2-7461077-2529429?asin=B0000632FZ

    And I gotta tell ya, I take this $99 beauty of that $300 Sony anyday. It plays CDs/CDRWs/MP3s AND DVD Video which you can hook up to a TV! No, you can't hook it up directly to a computer but who cares?

  16. mp3's play longer than CD-audio? by phorm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    it offers up to four hours of CD audio playback, up to 10 hours of MP3 CD playback and up to 1.5 hours of DVD-ROM playback

    Interesting that it gets more power playing an Mp3 CD than a regular CD. I would have assumed that it would take more juice to decode for mp3's.Perhaps mp3's cache to reduce disc spinning laser usage?

    Also, it would be nice to get a stat on the load-time for mp3's. I've noticed that some Sony mp3-disc players in cars (such as mine) seem to prefer caching the filenames on spinup, which can take annoyingly long.

  17. Re:Can you read? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Hmm- actually the zdnet guy can't read - the
    actually press information from sony states that there are THREE connections: USB 2, headphone and memory stick. They also mention nothing about tvs.

    http://news.sel.sony.com/pressrelease/2873