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."

Prior art

[neomac]

Doesn't Atari's paddle controller count as prior art?

Looks pretty slick...

[_PimpDaddy7_]

Looks very slick but my concerns are:

1. The jog wheel, looks AWFULLY small. Look at the guy's thumb on that!

2. That green-lit color screen doesn't look too friendly on the eyes.

About time

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I was wondering when this would come about. A lot of other compnaies, notably Creative, have ventured onto the HDD walkman market already. But with a big player like Sony involved, maybe we could see a little competition in this market.

Although in exchange for cheaper walkmen we could be subjected to DRM Hell.

P.S.
What happened that other story?

Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3

[Boone^]

This is going to flop pretty hard. I hope Sony doesn't invest too much in it. I'm all for players being cheaper than my iPod, but not if the quality/features suffer.

Not goin' anywhere!

[darth_maul25]

How can Sony expect this to take off using their own "special" format that can't be shared, transferred or otherwise used with other players and music stores? What's Sony thinking? Where's the logic behind this?!

The NW-HD1's primary format is Sony's own ATRAC 3

[ballpoint]

- other formats are converted to that mode when they're transferred over to the player.

When will Sony ever learn ?

Undercutting Apple?

[Azrael Newtype]

According to the Yahoo article, it'll ship at about $400, undercutting Apple's 40GB iPod which retails for $499. Am I the only one here who noticed that it's not really undercutting? I mean.. I'm no Apple junkie, but $99 more for double the capacity, are we really fair saying Sony is undercutting?

Atrac-3 a mistake

[SirFlakey]

"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."

Afaik that is the same format as they use in their newer Minidisc's - and it's a BIG mistake in my opinion and not just because it needs to do on-the-fly conversions.

Simplicity would be nice.

The 'NetMD' minidiscs sucked because nothing but realplayer (still haven't forgiven them) could sync with them .. I have a feeling this won't be much different (ok I conceed nothing but iTunes syncs with the iPod out of the box - but at least it handles things in standard mp3/4 rather than realaudio)

Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3

[jamie812]

Sony has been dragging it's heels in supporting MP3 for years. I initially thought they wanted to perfect a perfect IPOD-killer before jumping to MP3, but now I know that they just don't get it.

NOTE TO SONY: MP3 is the default format of digital music files PERIOD. We're sorry if it doesn't incorporate the stringent security features you would like. We understand that you run a music business and would like to protect your investments. However, you are also in the hardware business, and hardware, to be successful, should conform to the most popular formats out there. Your main competetitor, Apple, understands this. Why can't you? Do you like spending millions on R+D just to see you products tank?

Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3

[dave1791]

This is a blatant attempt by Sony to get more people to use its online music service. I see a potential pitfall here. No, I actually see a white elephant for Sony. If it only plays ATRAC and every other player (IPOD included) supports the de-facto standard (MP3), it will fail in the market. Period. Are all of Sony's players ATRAC only? Why are they attaching their most recognized product name to this dud?

Proprietary standards work in segmented markets still in infancy. Like it or not people have MP3 collections and will not be keen on converting to use the device. Prediction - In 2005, Sony will release a walkman that also supports MP3.

Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3

[nagora]

There are still millions of people who know "Sony Walkman" as the only way to listen to portable music, and its their money that counts.

There's a lot more now that know "MP3" as the only way to listen to downloaded or ripped music - that's why iPod supports it.

Cheaper than the iPod,

80% of the price for 50% of the capacity?

This product is a dead duck.

TWW

Re:Looks pretty slick...

[mab]

Who cares about the jog wheel it can't even play mp3's

Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3

[WoodenRobot]

When I saw the thing featured on the BBC website, I was tempted. But there's no way in hell I'm going to buy a product that will make me use some lame format such as Atrac3, especially if I need to run the conversion software on Windows, where presumably it's going to be all 'user friendly', and therefore a nightmare to use. I've copied 100's of my CDs to my hardrive, and I've not got the patience to convert them all to another format. Although it's far from perfect, MP3 is the universal standard of music encoding, so excluding the posibility of using it is commercial suicide.

There has to be some twisted logic behind this move, either an attempt to make Atrac the format of choice for digital music storage (won't ever happen) or to rigidly enforce DRM, which will just piss everyone off, especially /. types, who are also presumably early adopters of new gadgets such as this.

Re:Prior art

[afidel]

Even better would be the Intellivision [intellivisionlives.com] controller. In fact when I first saw the iPod that's EXACTLY what I thought of =)

Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3

[Des Herriott]

Nah. "Walkman" was big in the 80's and 90's. iPod has the mindshare now (and I'm admitting this as a Rio Karma owner :-)

Someone else said it, and it's true: this thing doesn't play MP3, so what's the point? It's just a glorified Minidisc player.

from the article...

[nikster]

It is expected to sell for ... less than $400 in the United States, Sony said, undercutting Apple's 40-gigabyte device, which sells for $499

ok?! why not compare it to the 20G iPod, being as it is that the Sony one is a 20G player as well?
the 20G iPod costs $399 as of now (and probably less when the sony is launched...).

You are crazy

[Heywood Yabuzof]

Sure, back when tapes were all the rage, "Walkman" was the generic term for portable music. Sony has already missed the boat. These days, it's "iPod". Everybody knows what an iPod is, and what it looks like. It has become as generic as "Xerox" or "Kleenex".

Also, people who buy portable digital music players (especially expensive ones) ALREADY have thousands of songs in whatever format they like, most likely mp3. Given the choice between one that plays mp3s and one that converts to ATRAC, they will choose the mp3 player.

Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3

[Pivot]

Sony suffers from the NIH syndrome. They insist on using ATRAC and they insist on using Memory Sticks. In the end it is the consumer who is suffering. My advice: stay away.

Re:Sony never learns

[mcbevin]

No, they're just the only big electronics company thats also a big music/movie business company, with an obvious huge conflict of interest which is crippling many of their electronics gadgets (this has been happening with the minidisc for years).

Re:Skipping?

[LocoSpitz]

Well, you don't have to be shakin' the thing up so bad it skips to benefit from a buffer on an HD player. It takes a lot of power to run the hard drive, so if you can spend a few seconds and dump 25 minutes of music to RAM and then park the drive, it's real good for battery life.

Re:Music technology

[thparker]

High-Capacity MD recorders in the near future, with MDs that hold 1 GB.... Why would you limit yourself to the size of a hard disk when you can carry around a few tiny discs...

I think you misspelled forty. At least, that's how many "tiny" discs I'd need to replace my iPod. (Forget that the hard disk IS the player, where you'd be carrying the tiny discs AND the player with MD.)

Even with the iPod mini, there's a distinct advantage (imo) to having it all in one place, where I can shuffle through my all favorites using iTunes smart playlists. I'm just not interested in breaking my music into 1 GB chunks to accomodate the limitations of MD.

BTW, you got a price on those 1 GB blank minidiscs yet? I think that'll make this deal a little less attractive, also. It's great if this solution works for you, but it doesn't make sense to me.

And you're right -- I really miss the sound of LPs. Especially brand-new ones. You just can't beat virgin vinyl.

Re:Legal contradiction...

[Anita Coney]

You're right, but so am I. Of course you can use it to fill it will illegal MP3s. And as I point out, unless you are willing to spend about $10,000, that's the only way you could fill it.

So my point once again, if you CAN use it to listen to illegally obtained music. And if it's ONLY useful if you use it for illegally obtained music, THEN WHAT'S THE POINT OF USING ATRAC?!?!

Sony!!! Give the people what they want! The ability to tranfer files freely without imediments that serve no real purpose!

Re:What does it look like to the computer?

[evilviper]

Is the only way to move data onto this device through Sony's proprietary SonicStage application, or does it do the sensible thing and give you file system access to the box as a USB storage device?

Ironically, that's the same problem I found with the Rio Karma.

Yet I had nothing but a bunch of /.ers scrambling to tell me how that's not a bad thing at all...

Not so ATRACtive

[nanojath]

More than this - for me part of the attraction of an HDD player is it can double as a portable hard drive. I actually own a minidisc portable - I use it for exactly one thing, as a one-button live recorder, and it works really pretty good at that (for battery life, size and ease, compared to others I've tried). But because of Sony's blinkered insistence on confounding the potential of their hardware, it is fundamentally just an analog recording device for my purposes. Post recording basically all I can do is output analog via the headphone jack - sorta stupid, IMHO. As I said, at the time I bought it it came out best comparing price point, sound quality, size/weight, battery life, media capacity, and simplicity. It beats microtape recorders hands down. I imagine HDD based recorders that write (I would hope) straight to WAV files will come around price wise.

But if I'm going to drop a fair piece of change on an HDD recorder (and I'm not yet convinced I need one) I want to be able to put data OF WHATEVER FORMAT I WANT on it. I can at least sort of justify the price then.

This will have no impact on iPod.

[nullvector]

No one wants to use Atrac.

I used a Sony Minidisc for about a year until I grew tired of the ultimately CRAPPY quality of the Sony Software. It literally took 6-7 minutes to import, convert, and transfer just 10 songs to the device, using a 2ghz, high-end system at the time. And that is when the program didnt crash all by itself.

And then, there is no 'one click transfer/convert'. You had to import all your mp3's into the 'library', which made another physical copy of the file, then it converts it, and saves the Atrac to your hard drive, yet again.

When will companies learn that we do not want DRM, or custom formats.

just like the MiniDisk player? Or Beta?

[chia_monkey]

The money is the brand, and everything else is second. While Apple may have a current spike in popularity, Sony is and always has been THE name for portable music. As soon as this hits the shelves, it's going to change the world for Apple, and for the worse.

I may have to disagree with you on this. The Sony MiniDisc didn't fare so well even though it was a Sony product. Or Beta. Hell...Betamax was even BETTER than VHS, but that didn't stick. The iPod supports the major music standard right now and it may be quite a fight for Sony to try to say "hey everyone, try this new one even though it won't work with..."

Re:Sony never learns

[vrai]

There's nothing wrong with ATRAC 3. Bit-rate for bit-rate it sounds as good as MP3 or OGG. Admittedly the older versions were a bit shaky, but that's mainly due to the restriction of real-time encoding in a cheap consumer product. As the cost of processing power has dropped, ATRAC has improved.

For me the killer is size and battery power. I would have bought an iPod had it been equipped with something that approximated a modern battery - instead of the feeble piece of crap they decided to use (thus ruining an otherwise excellent product). Sony's new machine is small and has a twenty-hour battery life. If past experience is anything to go by it will also age well; my little Minidisc player is barely bigger than the media and after two years of daily use can still run for eighty hours between charges.

Sony are no more, or less 'evil' than any other large company. Both Apple and Nintendo have acted with utter contempt towards their customers (and employees) in the past yet seem to be forgiven. The only difference between Sony and Apple in terms of behaviour, is that Sony is a thousand times bigger and has fingers in many pies. Only a liar or an idiot would suggest that if Apple had a music publishing division they'd shun all attempts at DRM.

Re:here's the article with listening tests

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

What this shows you is how the files sound on a neutral listening setup. This new HD Walkman is anything but. It is a device that is optimized to play ATRAC3 files as the sole format. Also the test standardized the bitrate. People using Sony's own software encoder will get differnet results. It is an unfair comparision in relation to the player. Personally I will wait for how files actually sound on the player just like I did with the iPod. Another reason I will try it is Apple still hasn't released a music store in my country and Sony has. Also the battery looks to last longer, if it is more economical to replace, it will have a lower TCO. Finally as the article says the prices of the device will likely come down do to Sony having economies of scale and standardized components.

Re:This will have no impact on iPod.

[jfmerryman]

When will companies learn that we do not want DRM, or custom formats.

When we don't buy them. If there's one thing big companies can do it's count money. Look at what happened to the Circuit City "DIVX" DRM-crippled DVD rental system, or all of the DRM-heavy music rental services like PressPlay - good riddance!

Sony is playing both sides

[SetupWeasel]

Hasn't anyone else noticed this?

Look at a Sony branded CD-R drive. It says "Make audio CDs" right on it as one of the features. What good is a mini-disc player if you can't copy music to it? (or a tape playing Walkman for that matter) Now a hard drive based music player? This is all part of the plan I think.

Sony knows the score. They want money, and they know that the type of piracy that takes place over the internet helps sales.

So for the music or game industry they create an illusion that they are tough on piracy. They make a lot of angry press releases and "Digital Rights Management," to appease the industry, but they leave their copy protected media very easy to circumvent. They would lose money if they didn't.

And if they get some money from lawsuit against a 15-year-old... BONUS!

That is what upsets me so much about Sony. They'll prosecute piracy, then reap the rewards by helping it to continue, and they don't care who pays.

Re:Go rio karma. It's both linux and ogg friendly.

[dave420]

And pocket unfriendly! yay! :-P

There's simply no debate about portable MP3 players any more. Apple released 3 generations and one sub-brand of the iPod in a few years, each one achieving critical acclaim and market dominance. Review after review finds the user interface superior to any alternative out there. OGG doesn't matter to 99.99% of the users out there (and quite rightly so - being technically superior doesn't automatically guarantee universal takeup).

You can add music to iPods under any OS easily, and copy tracks off just as easily. There is absolutely no comparison. I'm not having a go, but the iPod has won hands-down across the board. Kinda like sticking your head up and calling Jesus a pimp.

Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3

[Spyky]

Or the same capacity and 108% of the price (when compared to the 20GB iPod at $399).

They seem to be claiming that ATRAC is some magic format, that can encode music at half the bitrate as other formats, yet somehow still sound as good. In this way they can come up with their magic 13,000 songs versus on 10,000 songs on a 40GB iPod. Nevermind that Apple is very conservative when counting the number of songs that can fit, and clearly Sony isn't.

Obviously Sony will have to downplay the fact that it has a 20GB harddrive, and play up that it can "hold 13,000" songs. Good luck with that Sony.

-Spyky

Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3

[oneself]

Well, you have to remeber that Sony is also a record label. So they can't really support sueing people on one hand, and then go and sell an MP3 player with no DRM.

I think their best strategy, is to release the player with only ATRAC support, but make it really really easy to hack. Then they can eat the cake and keep it too.

Re:too bad it doesnt do MP3

[Anonymous Coward]

True--let's not forget Minidisc, Betamax, etc. Classic examples of trying to take over an already nearly saturated consumer market with an incompatable and proprietary product that offers little (or no) technical advantage over existing products.

I'm kind of reminded of Kodak, introducing a new film format (126, 110, disc, APS...) every couple of years.

it's even worse- mp3 is recompressed into Atrac3+

[SuperBanana]

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.

You're right, it's worse. Try to load an mp3, and it converts it into Atrac3Plus. By definition, it MUST sound worse after this, because you've compressed/decompressed it twice using lossy methods. It's akin to opening saving a TIFF as a JPEG, and saving it back to JPEG again.

Also, every comparison I've seen rates Atrac(and all its variants) well below AAC, or doesn't bother to rate it at all, given how only Sony uses it, and only sony seems insistent on forcing it on customers who really don't want it- virtually every Sony product to use it has been a dismal failure(witness MiniDisc).

Yay Karma

[rizzy]

I just bought a Karma too and aside from the crappy linux java transfer software, it's great.

If the Karma, with a nice form factor and all the formats it supports, can't get more mindshare, I don't see how Sony has a chance of gaining any marketshare with their unique format....

Re:Nice features, TERRIBLE build quality.

[Ignorant Aardvark]

The Rio Karma comes with a 30 day warranty. The iPod comes with a 1 year warranty. That should've told you something right off the bat.