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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?"
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
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.
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...
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?
You must think in Russian.
I wouldn't trust Sony's products farther than I could throw them.
Do you realize how far you could throw a mini-disc?
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.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
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
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
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...
Please help metamoderate.
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.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
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.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
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
The Rio Karma requires that you convert all your files to some lossy DRM-encumbered format before it will play the files back.
/Michael
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...
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....
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.
I can't read "ATRAC" without thinking of "8-track". It's like they're subliminally telling us how crappy the format is.
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.