Sony's "iPod killer" Fails to Draw Blood

Mr_Silver writes "Walter Mossberg (of WSJ fame) managed to review the new Sony NW-HD1 and was distinctly unimpressed. The upsides: it's smaller, lighter and has a battery life of 20 hours. The downsides: goodbye MP3 - hello ATRAC3, slow upload (and converting) times and the confusing user interface on the walkman, PC software and the music store. When will someone pass Sony the cluestick?"

Comments

Poor hardware engineers

[fname]

My heart really does go out to the hardware engineers at Sony. After all, they created a really nifty device that bests the iPod in two important areas (battery life, size). All they needed was workable software and no intentional crippling, and the NW1 would have been at least a strong #2. Instead, Sony intentionally crippled it by not enabling MP3 playback, over-promised what it really did (based on lousy, lossy 48kbps ATRAC3+), and provided mediocre software at best.

One of these days, the hardware guys at Sony will get the upper hand again, and Apple really will have something to worry about.

Re:Poor hardware engineers

[SuperBanana]

After all, they created a really nifty device that bests the iPod in two important areas (battery life, size)

Uh...with the new iPod, there's much less of a difference. The iPod also weighs so little and is so small, it fits in a pocket just fine. The old ones were too big, but Apple hit it right with the 3rd/4th gen models. I don't see a need to make it smaller, sorry. If anything, the iPod is good hand-sized.

Reading about how the iPod is inferior because it weighs more and has "only" 12 hours of battery life is insane; Sony's figures drop quite a bit if you play "higher bitrate" files, which you'll invariably have to do because ATRAC3 blows goats. Why didn't he test battery life at a bitrate that showed(in his judgement) no degradation from the original Mp3 file? I'd be willing to bet it's the same, or worse, than an iPod.

Reading Mossberg's comments about how the iPod Mini is inferior because it has much less capacity misses the point- the iPod mini wasn't designed to compete with devices like the Sony player. It was designed to compete with all the high end solid-state-memory players, and it's done so nicely. I hate it when "technology writers" can't recognize distinct markets; it'd be like an auto reviewer comparing a corvette to a pickup truck. "The corvette sucks because it has no cargo capacity"...

Nevermind that both the Mini and the iPod cost LESS than the Sony by at least $100...

Re:Poor hardware engineers

[Wtcher]

Actually, historically, the big winners in the Sony space (walkman, Playstation, etc) were heavily (re)developed by Sony designers... not just "hardware guys". Sony has a famous design studio that is somewhat exclusive. So does Apple. This makes it kind of interesting to see the two groups compete.

Did you know that one of the major Playstation designers was heavily influenced by the Macintosh Classic? ;)

Re:Poor hardware engineers

[fname]

Geeze, I don't know where to start on this one. First, let me clarify one thing: I'm a giant Apple booster. But I use Apple products (iBook G4, PowerMac G4, Airport Express, 3G iPod, even a damn iSight) because they are great products; I don't defend Apple products strictly because Apple makes them. I've been accused of being a basher before (not that you have accused me here), oftentimes because I'm not afraid of calling a spade a spade.

I read the review last week, so my memory may be fuzzy. But Sony claims a 30 hour battery life, making the cardinal mistake of overpromising when it's unnecessary (22 hours is damn good; they also overpromised on song storage-- saying it could hold 13,000 songs was just a stupid thing to do). But in Walt's test, he got 22 hours of usage for 132kbps 8TRAC compared to 12+ hours for the iPod. It clearly is the winner.

Your other points are self-contradictory-- first saying that iPod is so small it doesn't need to be any smaller so Sony wasted their effort, then defending the iPod mini as being in a different class, so the comparison to the Sony is unfair. That's just wrong, as the Sony is small enough that many miniPod users would opt for the NW-1 instead. As for distinct markets, that's wishful thinking. There's a spectrum of MP3 players ranging from tiny flash based players,to larger (but still light) flash players to miniPod types, to the iPods and finally to the 60-80GB devices that are quite large. Apple did a very clever thing in trying to segment the market into 2 distincts, and then pointing out they have the best device in both markets. But just 'cause Apple says it, doesn't make it true.

People still pay attention to sony?

[GlassUser]

I haven't seen anything from them lately that hasn't been a (weak) attempt to lock you into their proprietary (now-)second-rate import electronics. Seriously, it's bad enough that nothing they make is at all above low-to-average quality, but now they want to lock you into it? No way.

Sony Formats

[Anonymous Coward]

its quite amusing that Sony tries to promote its terrible formats but always fail, minidisc, ARTRAC, Betamax, MemoryStick the list of failures goes on and on

perhaps if they embraced worldwide standards instead of its own attempts people might accept them
do you think the PS2 would be quite as popular if they had used their own format of discs instead of DVD and CD's ?

perhaps they should take a leaf out of their own experiences

Re:Battery life question

[morcheeba]

The big battery-killer is the drive. Find a way to use it less, and you'll get longer battery life. Two ways: more SDRAM buffer memory, and lower data rate (like the sibling post so eloquently poinnts out). Of course, if you skip around a lot so that your music selections are not predictable, you'll force the drive to spin up and kill it much sooner -- that's why a 2-hour SDRAM buffer won't help that much in real live (but it will make the specs look good)

Clue

[apoplectic]

When will someone pass Sony the cluestick?

Sony has probably received many cluesticks...but they haven't been proprietary like the Sony memorystick, so Sony can read 'em.

I think it says a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

That now, rather than describing the iPod as the "walkman of the 21st century", we're describing new Sony products as "iPod killers"...

And as far as when Sony will find the cluestick, maybe it'll happen after the PSP totally fails as a media device in the U.S...

ATRAC? 8-Track, more like

[payndz]

How can Sony claim that ATRAC offers better performance than MP3 when the chances are it'll be converting songs *from* MP3? Lossy format to another lossy format? No thanks. When will Sony (and other companies) realise that people don't want weird, crippled formats?

Re:Sony's Business Model

[bizpile]

I wouldn't trust Sony's products farther than I could throw them.

Do you realize how far you could throw a mini-disc?

Conspiracy Theory?

[Teppy]

Big surprise - ATRAC3 has DRM!

All I can think of when I see this kind of thing is that the media companies are building a case for a future lobbying effort to outlaw non-DRM-locked hardware.

Sony just developed an eBook reader - the first to use an e-ink display, and then castrated it with DRM, and a total library of 400 expire-in-2-months books.

Obviously products like these are going to fail, and I just can't see their existance as mistakes. Sony may be smarter than they appear.

Re:Battery life question

[character_assassin]

It's nothing compared to the Rio Karma. The Karma supports true gapless playback, and has the best S/N ratio of any mojor HD-based player. The docking cradle has ethernet, and the player has a built-in webserver. Last but not least, it's less expensive than the iPod.

Stillborn

[Ralph Spoilsport]

From the Article:

One major downside of the new Walkman is that it can't play MP3 files, or any of the other standard formats. It can play back only a proprietary Sony format called ATRAC3, or a variation called ATRAC3plus.

STEEEERIKE ONE!

This means that, when you transfer your MP3 files to the new Walkman, Sony's PC software must laboriously convert them first into ATRAC3 files.

STEEEERIKE TWO!!!!

To transfer MP3 song files from your PC to the Walkman, you first launch the software Sony supplies to manage the Walkman, called SonicStage 2.... ... the Sony software must grind away, converting all of them, one at a time, to the special Sony format.

For my test, I used a very modest collection of 431 standard MP3 files.... ...it took an agonizingly long two hours and 13 minutes to transfer the remaining 416 tracks to the Walkman.

STEEEEEERIKE THREE!!!! YOU'RE OUTA HERE!

WTF was Sony thinking? Let's see, right now, I have 8991 mp3s that eat 53.64 gigs of space on my drive. If it took him 133 minutes for 416 tracks, it would take me...ummm (open crackulator) 468 hours to convert my files to a Sony compatible format!!!!

that's only about Nineteen DAYS

I think I speak for many when I say:

Sony: kindly go FUCK YOURSELF - YOU MORONS.

think about it - RIGHT.... I'm going to let my machine Grind Away for what - the better part of a month, just so my mp3 collection will fit on their stupid little player?

Ummmm, No.

I'll take my iPod THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Note to Sony: GAME OVER. Would you like to play again?

RS

Re:Stillborn

[jfengel]

I don't consider its use of ATRAC3 internally inherently a problem. If it allows me to seamlessly dump files from my computer onto the player, it doesn't really matter how they're represented in the device itself, since I only care that it plays the music.

HOWEVER, converting from one lossy format to another will cause artifacts (which I don't believe the article mentioned). And just as bad, it had better happen zippy-quick, at least on a relatively new computer. If the limiting factor is the speed of my CPU, then I don't want it.

And here's what I don't get. They're converting it to a format which is DRM'ed, but because they're converting it from MP3s you can't tell who owns it in the first place. That is, they can limit the distribution, but limit it to who? They can't tell if you own it or not.

Presumably the goal is to say, "You can use your MP3s, but they're slower to download. You'd rather get ATRACs from our spiffy music store!"

That could happen, I suppose. If the device is substantially cheaper than an iPod, then people will buy it on the shelves, and it's not clear until they get home that it's not compatible with the #1 music store. Or the #2 music store.

So it's a tactically bold maneuver, and it might work. Online music stores still account for a small percentage of music sales. Most people still buy CDs, with which this thing is compatible (albeit slowly). I'm not sure how much people would miss being able to buy stuff from iTunes Music Store and Napster and whatever Microsoft's version is going to be.

In the end, there's a lot said for being able to hit a lower price point for the same number of megs. Microsoft makes a huge living off the fact that people would rather buy a Dell/HP/etc. for a few hundred bucks less than the equivalent Macintosh, even if many people would prefer the Mac. (Not a religious war here, just pointing out that many people never look past the price tag.)

But this time, Apple already owns big market share, and compatibility with it may be the biggest problem for Sony here. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Corporate attitudes differ

[The I Shing]

I imagine that Sony has an uphill fight on its hand due to the differences between their corporate culture and Apple's. Apple engineers are, I bet, given more free reign to do things right, where Sony's engineers are probably in a Dilbert-like world of impossible demands by toga-clad marketing departments. And, of course, Apple's specialty has always been the end user software experience, an area where Sony has a lot of catching up to do. And don't forget about patents... it's easy to say, Why doesn't x-company's device do what y-company's device can do, when we don't have to worry about y-company filing an infringement suit, and don't have executives breathing down our necks to get this product on store shelves by July.

Double lossy is SUPERIOR??

[tm2b]

From the article:

This means that, when you transfer your MP3 files to the new Walkman, Sony's PC software must laboriously convert them first into ATRAC3 files. Sony claims it designed the player this way because ATRAC3 produces superior sound, [...]

Er, right. So this is a magic format that restores the information in the lost bits from the original mp3 conversion?

And, Sony marketing says, it'll give you a pony.

Re:Double lossy is SUPERIOR??

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Sony was shooting for Apple's 20GB iPod pricing as of two months ago, now that Apple's 20GB is $100 cheaper than Sony's POS, how can they possibly compete and get a market share anywhere near one that "kills" the iPod?

Re:Miss on all three counts...

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Sony R&D almost certainly would not have missed the general populace if it was just Sony in the picture. Sony's problems aren't their researchers or engineers who, IME, are some of the best - it's the influence Sony Entertainment (which deals with the media side of things- films, music, games etc) on the design decisions that causes all the problems. I have no doubt whatsoever that, left to themselves, Sony's designers would have produced something that could handle mp3, several other formats and given the ipod some real competition.

But with the entertainment division and their lawyers jumping up and down about restricting the consumer's choice, the need for DRM and so on, they keep removing features, restricting things...

I really, really wish Sony would ditch SE, but they aren't likely to :/

Re:Sony's Business Model

[Analog Penguin]

I think the MD format would be much more popular if their copyright fascism were't allowed to dictate the specs.
I got a MD recorder a few years ago to make recordings of concerts, lessons, recitals, and such (I'm a music major), and while the quality is decent and the portability useful, getting the recordings off the player is impossible to do digitally. NetMD doesn't support digital uploading unless the tracks were originally digitally downloaded onto the player, using their shitty software, which of course doesn't come for Mac, and didn't even work when I tried it on my family's PC. I understand you're limited to 2x speed uploading anyway. But the only option for Mac users, and anyone wanting to transfer home-made recordings, is analog upload. I wish I had researched this more beforehand, because this is infuriating.

I think the MiniDisc format had great potential, but Sony's insistence on idiotic copyright meaures just make it way too inconvenient to gain wide acceptance. I use it mainly because (A) I already invested in it and (B) it's easy to cart around, but the format is so needlessly crippled as to be sad.

Re:Miss on all three counts...

[ScrewMaster]

Well, Sony Electronics and Sony Entertainment are about as good a corporate match as, say ... AOL and Time Warner. As history as shown, management of both combined organizations has made consumer satisfaction their top priority.

Re:Apple category?

[Bricklets]

Because this *really* was suppose to be the iPod killer. Now that it doesn't look this way, that's good *news* for Apple. And unless these other companies start putting up more of fight, it looks like Microsoft will be the last company that has a chance of challenging Apple's dominance. They're rumored to be releasing their own online music store next month.

Lots of things can change in a few years, but I never would have thought I'd be using "monopoly" to describe Apple.

Sony is incompatible with cluestick technology...

[LostCluster]

Sony wouldn't be able to read the cluestick even if was passed to them, it's incompatible with the Memorystick technology that they're so in love with...

Sony is rarely about putting out good technology, they're more about putting out technology that consumers will buy despite a higher-than-usual profit margin on the price. Sure, every consumer electronics company has to make a profit or it won't exist, but Sony products are always higher-priced than technically equal models from other brands. Basically, Sony's profits come only from people too stupid to notice there's a better choice on most items.

Maybe Sony is getting too big

[foidulus]

for it's own good. They seem to think that just because they are so huge that they will be able enter into an already well established market with a product that is not that innovative. if you want to make money you either a) start a whole new makret, like they did with the original walkman(portable music outside a car now a reality) or b) enter into a market with a bold new idea, like they did with playstation(cd based 3d gaming)
Though this seems to be a theme with a lot of Japanese companies, they end up trying to do everything, when they should only focus on a few core markets. In Japan, Mitsubishi manufactures a ton of things, from escalotors to trains to LCDs to automobiles. The red tape must be enormous. It probably ends up hurting them in the long run because it's easier to sweep a few small losses under the rug if you are such a huge company. But they will come back to bite you, just look at what is happening with Mitsubishi motors....

Re:Sony Formats - Betamax/VHS

[ScrewMaster]

Actually, I believe it was Japan Victor Corporation (JVC) that came up with VHS in 1976. RCA Victor went head-to-head with Sony on that one, and it was only Sony's belief that technological superiority automatically equated to superior sales performance that allowed RCA to completely outmaneuver them, and foist VHS upon the world.

I'm gonna sound like a fanboy...

[rinkjustice]

I can't believe a megapowerful corperation like Sony could screw up as bad as this Network Walkman. The critical mistake, in my mind, is the proprietary Sony format ATRAC3 they're trying to pimp off on the consumer. Why are they trying to re-invent the wheel?

Which brings to mind the iPod and it's perfect design. It's clean form-factor looks like it was designed by God. The most brilliant things in life are simple in design and concept. Like the wheel.

If Sony can't beat the iPod, maybe nobody can.

Re:I'm gonna sound like a fanboy...

[dfghjk]

God would not have designed the iPod the way Apple did. I spoke with Him the other day about it and we agreed that the iPod should have a proper on/off switch so the batteries won't discharge in just a few days. He also doesn't care for how the slipcase scratches the display.

Perhaps we need a player designed by Satan. I bet it'd be way cooler than God's one and you might get sex just for owning one (though not from any mac lovers).

Re:Battery life question

[Glonoinha]

This Sony seems like a reasonable alternative so long as you don't mind the interface and ... their proprietary (file) format

That's like saying prison isn't so bad as long as you don't mind getting fscked up the ass.

Guess what Sony - we mind. We have a zillion songs already on our hard drives in .MP3 format. Our music lives on as data long after the physical media had died / scratched / been lost or stolen.

Re:Battery life question

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that it supports FLAC and Ogg (which won the latest round of public listening test. And Rio is now owned by Denon-Marantz, who certainly know a thing or two about audio. The Karma even includes Sennheisser earbuds (unfortunately mx-300 rather than mx-500).

"weird, crippled formats"?!

[theonomist]

When will Sony (and other companies) realise that people don't want weird, crippled formats?

128kbps MP3s are weird and crippled, but kids love 'em. Cassette tapes are weird and crippled, too, and they were popular for many years. Lots of people seem to think VHS was weird and crippled compared to Betamax (PS: VHS won).

The average consumer will tolerate weird and crippled formats if they're not too weird, and not too crippled. You can degrade the signal quality to a remarkable degree before the average listener (or viewer) will care.

Who cares what the WSJ thinks? They're not the target market for this device. The kids at whom the it is aimed may make purchasing decisions based on a lot of factors, some more rational than others (e.g. what their friends bought, etc.), but "it sounds like ass" is not necessarily on their radar screen. Ass sounds fine to them. As long as they can tell which song is playing, that's good enough.

Re:Battery life question

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the player has a built-in webserver.

I always wondered why I was never really happy when listening to music with my iPod. Finally I know...

Re:Battery life question

[mtempsch]

The Rio Karma requires that you convert all your files to some lossy DRM-encumbered format before it will play the files back.

Wrong. The Karma plays mp3, ogg, wma and flac. So no need to use a lossy format, nor DRM...

The Rio Karma is also unsupported by Mac OS X

While the Rio Music Manager is Windows only, the Rio Music Manager Lite is Java and should run on any platform supported by Java...

Creative is one of the most consumer-hostile companies in the world

The Karma is from Rio (as the name Rio Karma hints...). Rio is know owned by DNNA (Digital Networks North America) in turn owned by Denon. I fail to see where Creative enters the picture.

Could someone pass character_assassin the cluestick, please?

It seems to me that character_assasin isn't the one needing the cluestick...

/Michael

Re:No MP3? So what?

[JBMcB]

The problem is, converting from one lossy compression format to another equals BIG loss in quality. Perceptual encoding, which both ATRAC and MP3 use, depends on a clean incoming signal. The compression, when played back, introduces artifacts that show up as harmonic distortion. When you use another perceptual encoder to compress THAT file, the harmonic distortion is re-encoded and amplified. It ends up sounding anywhere from annoyingly bad to unlistenable.

I think Sony, as a mega-meda-electronics conglomerate, wants to protect it's music business, so uses it's own propriatary format to make sure it can do DRM or whatever other controls it wants.

Re:That's like saying prison isn't so bad as....

[reezle]

3 cheers fo you. (My sentiments exactly)

I bought a car deck (MP3, with hard drive, and rip ability MEX-1HD I think) a few years back. Found out quickly that the deck would play MP3, rip audio CD's to it's ahrd drive, but would under NO CIRCUMSTANCES allow me to move my mp3 CD's into it's hard drive.

3 days later, after tech support let me know it's a design fetaure to dissalow this kind of useful functionality. I removed the drive, and upgraded a laptop with it. (full format) Sony's idea of fair use had made it worthless to me.

Hey Sony! I don't buy your products anymore cause of that one. None of them. I even refuse to resell Sony to my customers. Great job there guys....

Exactly.

[sp0rk173]

I'm actually suprised the Karma hasn't gotten more press on slashdot. It's seriously the geek's mp3 player. The parent mentioned the webserver, but didn't mention that you can download a java app from the karma, and then upload music to it from any OS that has a working java implementation. I've been able to ass songs to mine from Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux this way. For me this is a HUGE advantage and shows a little bit of creativity/foresight on the side of Rio. Also the inclusion of open-source standard codecs like ogg and FLAC (For real audiophiles) is a huge plus. Yet, everyone on here is enamoured with the ipod.

8-track?

[ktheory]

I can't read "ATRAC" without thinking of "8-track". It's like they're subliminally telling us how crappy the format is.

Re:Battery life question

[en4ca]

At least when it comes to the iRiver - its due to the battery type. The iPod uses a Lithium ion battery, whereas the iRiver uses a more expensive Lithium polymer battery, which has a greater capacity.