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New Walkman-Branded Hard Disk Player
Darian writes "Following on the heels of Commodore's introduction of portable digital music players Sony has stepped up to the plate with their first Walkman branded product. Reuters has the story and The Register has a couple more photos. Gizmodo has an anonymous tip from a Sony insider. The NW-HD1 is a 'credit card-sized' 8.9m x 6.2 x 1.4cm unit fitted with a 20GB 1.8in hard drive. There's enough RAM on board to provide 25 minutes of skip-free playback. There's a seven-line LCD for track information and player status data. "We couldn't come up with something using the Walkman brand until it survived the 1 meter (3 ft 3.37 in) drop test," said Robert Ashcroft, senior vice president of Sony network services Europe. So digital music rights had nothing to do with it? Right. The unit is planned to undercut the iPod price point. Apple lawyers do have the upper hand with the scroll wheel." Update: 07/01 21:34 GMT by T : It's also the Walkman's 25th birthday; read on for more.
Player Blog writes "The Sony Walkman, icon of the 80s and direct ancestor of the iPod and its ilk, first hit the streets 25 years ago. I don't know if July 1, 1979 was the actual first day for the Walkman, but Sony is celebrating it today. I had one, I loved it and I thought it was the greatest invention ever. Take a trip down memory lane with the history and photos at the Walkman Museum."
now if they cut the price of this to less than 200 dollars, I might consider it. As of now, I'll stick with my giant 200 Gig harddrive based computer-mp3 player in my car.
Reg Kit Watch Sony today announced yet another attempt to displace the iPod from the top of the digital music hardware charts.
But unlike the clunky-looking players launched in the Japanese market, the European model appears a serious challenger for Apple's market leadership.
The NW-HD1 is a "credit card-sized" 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.4cm unit fitted with a 20GB 1.8in hard drive. There's enough RAM on board to provide 25 minutes of skip-free playback. There's a seven-line LCD for track information and player status data.
The device uses USB 2.0 to hook up to a PC running Sony's own SonicStage software, from which consumers will soon be able to download songs from the European Sony Connect online store - which appears to have entirely failed to launch in June, as promised.
The NW-HD1's primary format is Sony's own ATRAC 3 Plus - other formats are converted to that mode when they're transferred over to the player.
In addition to the NW-HD1, Sony will also release the Vaio Pocket Music Player VGF-AP1, which recently debuted in Japan, though Europe will get two models - 20GB and 40GB - rather that just one.
The player sports a 2.2in, 320 x 256 26,000-colour LCD - "designed to be viewed in daylight without difficulty", Sony claims - and can download photography from a digital camera, Sony said. In that respect, it's pitched more at next Christmas' Microsoft Personal Media Center devices than the iPod, a fact confirmed by its October 2004 availability. It will ship with earphones and a USB 2.0 connection cradle that doubles as its battery recharge unit. Sony claims the Lithium Ion battery will provide 20 hours' playback time.
The device sports Sony's G-Sense interface which maps sectors of the display onto a series of 25 buttons. The handheld unit measures 11.5 x 6.3 x 1.7cm, but the right-hand side rear bulges out to 2.7cm thanks to the battery. The VGF-AP1 weighs 195g.
The NW-HD1 is scheduled to ship in Europe in August. Before then, early this month, Sony will ship a pair of Flash-based players, the NW-E55 and NWE75. Just over 2.5cm in length and 40g in weight, they offer up to 256MB of storage capacity and are each powered by a AAA battery - enough, says Sony, for 70 hours' playback. Both have a backlit LCD and a colour silver (NW-E75), or blue, red or pearl (NW-E55).
Prices were not disclosed.
Sony's been in the portable digital music player for some time, but it's lack of support for the MP3 format has hindered its success, as has its preference for its own MiniDisc format. That has kept it away from the hard drive-based player segment, which has allowed Apple and others, like iRiver and Creative, to build up strong market share.
Sony will have to work hard to counter the brand awareness Apple has in the digital music player and store sector, but its established presence in the portable music hardware market will take it a long way. Early indications suggest Connect isn't much good, but the Walkman brand certainly is and we expect Sony's players to be too. Sony's kludgy MP3 support may hinder it, but if Apple can get away with what is essentially its own music format, so can Sony. ®
This shows how nasty their format sounds compared to Ogg, mp3, aac, wma, and mpc. The test is done with multiple listeners ranking them from 1-5. Pretty well done, and now I'm probably going to be making the move to ogg once I start ripping my own stuff. Well, that, and moving my home pc to gentoo.
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
Not to mention the exact same storage (20gig) is on an Ipod for the same price at best buy.
Um, actually there are plenty of MiniDisc drives you can install on a PC. You should do more research -- MiniDisc is simply a format of disc. You can store anything on them -- audio OR data. Why carry a stack of 20 discs? I didn't suggest this. I keep all of my music on a 120 GB hard drive dedicated to media storage. If I go out and want music, I'm not going to get through 20 discs before I return home. The solution? Simply grab 1-2 discs and head out. I guarantee you that a small MD player with a disc in it is MUCH smaller than any HD-based player (at the moment).
Two freaks, no foes. It takes absolutely nothing to make some people angry.
Who modded this insightful?
It's 25 minutes of memory is used for antiskip. It has a 20GB harddrive for storage.
-Reid
MP3 support isn't a problem, exactly -- the Register article says that Sony's connection software will convert MP3s to the ATRAC format, which has a smaller file size (and no royalties) and thus makes sense for Sony to use.
It's a shame that it won't play MP3s natively, though, because that would doubtless save a lot of time on converting a large library. Users and reviewers will decide for themselves if the sound quality is worth the price and package.
As for the Sony online store, a year ago it might not have made any difference -- Apple's iTunes was just getting off the ground and most people were using iPods to listen to their own CD collections, not music they bought online. Now that Apple's got iTunes Music Store working well under Windows, it's a real advantage for them -- but by no means an unconquerable one. However, IMO the iTMS is so darned easy-to-use -- and often enjoyable, with the improvements they've made over the past year-- it'll take some truly hard work to overtake it.
Apple doesn't have this market locked up by any means, but they know they have to keep pushing to stay ahead. Sony will catch them if given the chance.
I've been researching MP3 players and found the Neuros. It has an extensive list of different formats, including Ogg as well as the others.
The key features of the Neuros that are motivating me to buy one are the "record stream from FM" (as well as record from any audio input or onbord mic) to MP3 or WAV, and the "broadcast low power FM" (so I can listen through my car stereo on an unused frequency.)
To be balanced, though: there were some user complaints about the power level of the FM broadcast not being sufficient, but these were not universal. The Neuros II, which seems to have come out in the past couple of days, is supposed to help fix some of the version 1 drawbacks.
Frankly, about the only thing the Neuros lacks now are 100bT with on board Apache, 802.11[abg] interfaces (it has USB 2.0), but there don't seem to be many player/recorders out there with those right now.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They're claiming undercutting because the Sony can store 13,000 songs (as opposed to 10,000 on the Apple) for $99 less. Plus, they're anticipating price drops in the future whent Sony ramps up HD usage. ...Nevermind that it's 13,000 ATRAC songs. *shrug*
Thus, the ONLY way this new device could be useful to consumers is if they infringe copyrights and download music illegally.
Um, no. It encodes other formats to ATRAC as they're imported to the player.
Volumes (in cubic centimeters)
iPod mini: 59
Walkman HD: 77
iPod: 100
Pretty good for a 20GB unit, though! I'll probably stick with iPod for myself.
MP3 is a lossy format, Atrac is a lossy format. Converting from lossy to lossy is equal to losse more data and a worst audio sample. Add to it that ATRAC is the worst of all lossy format and then you have a sure looser :( Too bad, the format and the design of the player is cool.
Anyway, my main concern and the reason I am not going to buy another minidisc player (I currently own and enjoy an older model, MZ-R70), or any Sony recorder similar is because of the DRM implemented by Sony. Basically, you can put whatever you want to into the thing digitally or analog, but you can only output analog via line-out or headphones. While it might not sound like much of an issue, one thing these devices are actually good at is recording live audio. They are small and discreet enough (more so than most hard-drive media players that can record, and much less expensive than a DAT) to record without being noticed, and do so with good sound quality. However, once you get the good-quality recording into it, the only way to get it out is by the analog output, at 1x play speed. The next portable I will buy will be a harddrive based audio/video recorder that does NOT limit input/output by DRM.
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
"its really not as hard as you think to legally aquire that many songs in digital format."
"They have a online store opening soon which will be selling music in Atrac format."
You're totally missing my point. IF you buy it legally, you're going to spend about $10,000 to fill it. It does not matter if you rip your own CDs, you download them from legal servicse, or from Sony's coming store.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
You know, I bought the first MD machine in early 93. Back then, it was like I just stepped off a flying saucer when I put in a disc. People would stare. Back then, using fiber optics to record CDs, even in real-time, was cool.
But now, Sony has dropped the ball. I just bought a Hi-MD unit on impulse. (I can be that way)
Sonic Stage is an unbelievable pain. Even if I use the cracked non-DRM version, it still has to do the things you say. What's the point in having a 1GB Minidisc if I need more than that in HD storage to accomodate the weird conversion process?
But I disagree about there not being a simple one click process. Didn't you notice a program called MD Simple Burner?
But overall, yes, you have to jump through hoops to get what should be simple...
Not all legal music costs money! Riaa isn't the only group that makes music you know. sheesh
Why bother with sony (one of the bad guy companies), when there is already a great hard drive solution on the market that is cheaper, and more compatible than the alternatives. I've had my rio karma for almost a month now (after years of searching for a viable portable music player), and I have no regrets. I can easily upload music to it from my linux environment, the "nipple" (:-D) control is easier to use than the ipod, and it plays all my ogg-vorbis (and flac also if I had any) files with no problems!
donfede
Actually, the newer SonicStage versions are quite OK user friendly-wise and act fairly fast to transcode music. The real problem is a) you will need to maintain two copies of your music library (unless you switch to SS as the primary media player) and b) it only runs on Windows.
Therefore Sony lost me as a customer.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
The Register article noted that atrac3plus would be used, which is better-sounding than atrac3 at the same bitrate. However, Roberto's listening test compared atrac3, not atrac3plus, because a bitrate near 128 kbit/s for this codec wasn't available in Sony's software encoder, SonicStage 2.
BTW, Roberto is currently conducting a low-bitrate streaming test (32 kbit/s), and everybody is invited to participate.
ff123
Not Invented Here
See you, space cowboy...
And, just to add a voice to the fugue, there is no way in hell I would consider buying this product. First off, their press release is filled with marketspeak lies: "price undercuts a 40GB iPod!!" (er, actually their unit only has half the storage but they encoded the songs at 48Kb/s and compared it against Apple's standard bitrate of 128Kb/s so they could claim that it fits more songs and hope idiot consumers won't figure that out.) "will play MP3, WMA and WAV!!" (actually, it only plays ATRAC3 and you have to use their proprietary, buggy software to make a copy of your entire collection using ATRAC3 before loading it onto the device. BTW, this process could take hours.) "ATRAC3 sounds better than MP3!!" (according to their VP of Marketing's 5 year old nephew, at least, though there are a lot nuts out there doing double-blind listening tests which show that ATRAC3 is the worst audio CODEC out there, even at 128Kb/s never mind the fact that Sony assumed 48Kb/s encoding in order to make their ridiculous capacity comparison to the 40GB iPod.)
So. To sum up: decent ergonomics, no real price advantage in an apples to apples comparison (no pun intended), only supports a crappy DRM'd Sony format. Read this Wired article on why Sony sucks, and why you shouldn't buy anything from them until they get their head out of their asses and start making things their customers actually want.
...iPods play both mp3 and AAC natively. There is no transcoding. Obviously the iPod can play any format in existence (including ogg) if it is first transcoded to mp3/aac/wav.