Portable CD-RW/DVD Player

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Posted by michael on Wednesday October 23, 2002 @01:02AM 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.

26 of 269 comments (clear)

FINALLY by Anonymous Coward · 2002-10-23 01:05 · Score: 5, Funny

I've been waiting for one of these for like 4 years, ever since I bought a Sony Glasstron. For those that don't know those are the "glasses" with the equivelent of a 56 inch tv inside. Now I can watch p0rn on the airplane without my seat-mate complaining about the moaning.
1. Re:FINALLY by guidemaker · 2002-10-23 01:06 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Now I can watch p0rn on the airplane without my seat-mate complaining about the moaning.
  
  Perhaps you should moan more quietly, then?
Play mp3's off DVD? by Havokmon · 2002-10-23 01:05 · Score: 5, Informative

But can it play my mp3's recorded on my DVD?
"When away from the computer, the drive then works as a stand-alone CD player that can play standard audio CDs, and MP3 or WAV files from a CD, DVD or Memory Stick."
Damn, sure sounds like it to me.

--
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
VCDs by gerf · 2002-10-23 01:07 · Score: 5, Funny

Can it play them? If it's "all" in one, and i'm payin 300 clams, i sure as hell hope it gets up and gets me a beer too.
KINDA IRONIC by r_arr · 2002-10-23 01:08 · 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.
Sony is actually two companies? by Mr_Silver · 2002-10-23 01:10 · 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 guidemaker · 2002-10-23 01:17 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
  How depressing must it be to be a product developer in there, busting a gut to produce neat stuff that people will love, only to have the weasels in legal forcing them to eviscerate the product with ill-considered DRM?
2. Re:Sony is actually two companies? by dackroyd · 2002-10-23 01:24 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Sony is way, way more than two companies. You can find their list of subsidaries in Japan and outside Japan, which seems to be about 85 companies.
  
  The subsidaries seem to be free to act as they see fit and their seems to be very little interference in how they are run from the Sony group company.
  
  Just the computer games divisions are divided into Sony Computer Entertainment Japan (SCEI*), Sony Computer Entertainment America(SCEA) and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe(SCEE). All of these companies are separate entities, with seperate responsibilities and ideas about how they should be doing business.
  
  *Yes I know it should be SCEJ, but it isn't, okay?
  
  --
  "Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
3. Re:Sony is actually two companies? by marc_gerges · 2002-10-23 01:32 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Large corporations typically are divided into various legal entitites in different country, to maximize on government grant, subsidies, local taxation and such. Totally apart from that there's businesses/business units/segments/whatever you call them that deal with different products, markets or technologies. Explaining different directions within such a monster by referring to its legal entities doesn't make that much sense...
Links by uk_greg · 2002-10-23 01:11 · Score: 5, Informative

Sony press release: http://news.sel.sony.com/pressrelease/2873

Product page: http://www.storagebysony.com/cd-rw/product.asp?id= 185
why by mydigitalself · 2002-10-23 01:11 · 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 hexdcml · 2002-10-23 01:36 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  indeed.. it seems that only now that MD has really taken off.. i used to be an owner of a large and chunky MD player. At that time (it was only 2 years ago) I had all my mates gawking at it, and looking confuddled..
  *Cue Apple switch music*
  I had it... it worked... but it kinda sucked in the fact that to put music on.. you HAD to do it in real-time. I bought a HI-FI deck which allowed x2 speeds, but still it did not really satisfy my needs - who wants to waste 30 minutes waiting for a CD to copy over? Oh yeah, NetMD now apparently is better, but I've never had one, nor will I ever get a MD player again. For me? 20gb iPod all my music, all my documents and 'some' of my movies in my pocket. It brings a smirk to my face everytime I see people fumbling around with CDs/MDs on the train platform.. hehehe. If you're willing to spend *THAT* much on a personal audio device, you might as well buy the best availble... I'm Michael Jin, and I'm a student....
  
  --
  Fight Crime - Shoot Back!
2. Re:why by Mr_Silver · 2002-10-23 02:39 · 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.
  
  --
  Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
look at it objectively by hype7 · 2002-10-23 01:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

I mean, seriously, is this such a bargain?

If you want a DVD player, you're much better off going with a dedicated unit for the same $$$. It will give you infinitely better picture quality.

If you want an MP3/etc player, head for an iPod or that new Creative device. It'll be smaller (and even the cheapest version will still have as much memory as a DVD), and the battery life will be better because it doesn't have to spin the damn dvd around all the time.

One of those cases of big wow factor because of convergence/size/cuteness, but when you look at it objectively - jack of all trades, master of none.

-- james
1. Re:look at it objectively by iceT · 2002-10-23 01:21 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It will give you infinitely better picture quality.
  
  Really? I've seen NO appreciable difference in DVD players.... The TV makes the most difference.
  
  --
  -- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
256MB memory stick? by Cutie+Pi · 2002-10-23 01:14 · 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.
This sounds cool, but... by Canuckanuck · 2002-10-23 01:16 · Score: 5, Informative

...it can't be hooked up directly to a TV to view a DVD. Only through a computer linkage can it that be done. This product will be totally cool when I can take it to my luddite grandmother's house where there is no computer and hook it up to her TV while she's baking brownies.

Only then will it rock!
Perfect for travelers with subnotebooks! by Brento · 2002-10-23 01:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

I've always longed for those super-ultra-tiny notebooks like you find on Dynamism, but the coolest ones don't have built-in CD or DVD drives. I hate carrying around a drive just because I might need to read a cd-rom, but this little gizmo would be the perfect companion. I could use it to watch movies on the road in hotels, plus listen to music, and still play cd-roms with the computer.

The drawback of the bundled add-on CD drives that come with the notebooks is that they don't function separately - you're just lugging around a mostly useless cd-rom reader, not a CD/DVD Walkman. This thing is going to sell like hotcakes to business travelers!

--
What's your damage, Heather?
Really cool, but, what about regions? by pigeon · 2002-10-23 01:17 · Score: 5, Funny

Can it be hacked to be regionfree? And macrovisionfree?
Platforms... by facelessnumber · 2002-10-23 01:20 · Score: 5, Funny

supports both Macintosh and Windows platforms

They say this like there are only two.

"We got both kinds of music here - Country and Western."
Another /. RTFA! by 3583+Bytes+Free · 2002-10-23 01:23 · Score: 4, Informative

Read the f*cking article!
Sony product page
Sony's cool new Digital Relay(TM) portable battery operated CD-RW/DVD-ROM/Memory Stick® drive burns CDs when attached to a PC or Macintosh® computer using the USB 2.0/1.1 port. Detach the drive from the computer, and you now have a portable CD player that also plays MP3 and WAV files on CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, or Memory Stick media.
It plays DVD-ROMs, not DVD-Video discs. This basically is a MP3 player that can use DVDs. So you can get 4.7GB on a MP3 disc instead of 650-700 MB. I still think it's worth a link on /., but for pete's sake, RTFA before you submit, and editors, RTFA before you post!
Archos - 20Gb and a screen for $449 by DrSkwid · 2002-10-23 01:26 · 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
Expensive??? I don't think so. by forged · 2002-10-23 01:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's cute. And expensive.
For a portable device which records and reads CDs at 24X, rewrites CDs at 10X and reads DVDs at 8X, for less than $300 I think it isn't too bad actually. IMHO of course.
Re:Why not just get a notebook? by selderrr · 2002-10-23 01:42 · Score: 5, Funny

yeah, jogging while watching a DVD...

I'd pay an entrance fee just to see you do that.

--
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
OK... some things don't look right here... by ClumzyKid · 2002-10-23 02:11 · Score: 5, Informative

After reading some comments here about the fact that it doesn't support display nor Linux... I did a lil' research...

The ZDNet article states "...When connected to a television or PC, the device can also become a DVD player for watching movies. "... Now that is not entirely false... As you'll see in a copy of the press release (scroll down the page to find it) here... You'll see that you can play DVD movies via the PC's USB.. "Hi-Speed USB Interface (USB 2.0/1.1)"! at 8x speed... only... as for the TV it's not supported; as stated "Output: Mini analog stereo (headphone jack) only"... So that is one fact down... Prolly in the future they may provide the means to do it via USB>DECODER>TV... :)

Now for the other problem... support for Linux... the press release states "System requirements: Pentium® II 233Mhz or faster PC with 32Mb RAM, HDD with 1.2Mb sustained transfer rate or faster, Direct-X supported sound card, Installed USB 1.1 or 2.0 port, Power Macintosh G3, Power Mac G4, iMac DV or iBook® computer running Mac OS 9.2.2 or higher OR Windows 98/2000/Me/XP operating system..." So the answer for the time being is no... no Linux support... but it's less than a month away... and who knows... if everyone rants on their head they may support it ;)... However, I think the Linux community will find way ....

--
Great ideas happen at 4am. Bad career moves happen at 4pm...
Re:Expensive???? by damiangerous · 2002-10-23 02:31 · Score: 5, Informative

Portable CD/MP3 players can be had for under $100 dollars
Portable CD/MP3/DVD players can be had for under $100. The only link I can find has them for $107, but my local Target has one on clearance for ~$70.