New Walkman-Branded Hard Disk Player 433
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."
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Site feeling slow... (Score:2, Informative)
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. ®
here's the article with listening tests (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Undercutting Apple? (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:20-Hour Battery, 25-minute Storage (Score:3, Informative)
It's 25 minutes of memory is used for antiskip. It has a 20GB harddrive for storage.
Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Neuros II (Score:4, Informative)
I've been researching MP3 players and found the Neuros. [neurosaudio.com] It has an extensive list of different formats, including Ogg [vorbis.com] 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.
Re:Undercutting Apple? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Legal contradiction... (Score:2, Informative)
Um, no. It encodes other formats to ATRAC as they're imported to the player.
Not necessarily all that small... (Score:5, Informative)
iPod mini: 59
Walkman HD: 77
iPod: 100
Pretty good for a 20GB unit, though! I'll probably stick with iPod for myself.
Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:here's the article with listening tests (Score:5, Informative)
Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3 (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Legal contradiction... (Score:3, Informative)
"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.
Re:Neuros II (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This will have no impact on iPod. (Score:3, Informative)
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...
Re:Legal contradiction... (Score:1, Informative)
Go rio karma. It's both linux and ogg friendly. (Score:5, Informative)
donfede
Re:Neuros II (Score:4, Informative)
You'll find many happy customers who regularly give input to their CEO and developers about the Neuros.
Just recently, they added a DJ feature that lets you shift speed and other neat effects for your music.
Disclaimer: I love my Neuros and I don't work for them.
Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3 (Score:2, Informative)
Therefore Sony lost me as a customer.
Tested atrac3, not atrac3plus (Score:2, Informative)
BTW, Roberto is currently conducting a low-bitrate streaming test [rjamorim.com] (32 kbit/s), and everybody is invited to participate.
ff123
Re:here's the article with listening tests (Score:5, Informative)
This player uses Atrac3Plus as its primary format, with support for other Atrac formats. It's default format isn't the one used in this comparison
So the comparison isn't really valid, or up to date.
In fact, Watch Impress a respectable Japanese news site reviewed the Atrac3Plus recently, a more technical review and less subjective than blind listening test. The review was largely positive, with the 256kbps Atrac3plus competiting favorably against WAV (CD-Quality).
Watchimpress Atrac3Plus Comparison in Japanese [impress.co.jp]
They also have an article with pictures of the this walkman device; [impress.co.jp]
Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:News.com: Unit plays MP3s, WAVs, WMAs (Score:3, Informative)
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 [rjamorim.com] 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.com] 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.
Re:Neuros II (Score:4, Informative)
The Support is really great. When I botched a firmware upgrade they replaced my head (there is a head with the processor and a backpack with the battery and HD) for free (I just had to pay send shipping; they covered return shipping). The USB 2 upgrade, although greatly delayed, only cost $6 for shipping as well. When I dropped my Neuros while the HD was spinning they even told me the model numbers of 80G laptop drives they had tested with the unit. Even when they aren't making money they are helpful.
The backpack is simply a standard USB Mass Storage device and the database is very well documented. There are four different sync managers now (NSM, Positron, NeurosDBM, and Sorune) and the source is available to all of them (NSM isn't Free Software though; the license has a few restrictions). The only downside is the size but, honestly, what you lose in size you gain back in flexibility (e.g. when I broke my HD I just got an 80G laptop drive for $150 and swapped it into my backpack). It's the ultimate geek music player.
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