Sony takes on iPod Shuffle

Ben writes "It seems that Sony has decided to take on Apple with a low cost flash based player that will go up against the Shuffle. Pocket-lint has the low down on some of the stats, as does the BBC and Engadget." The major improvement in my eyes is that some models have an FM tuner.

I don't see why they don't all have tuners

[skintigh2]

I bought my iRiver iHP-140 40GB player because it had a tuner and ogg support. The only other one I considered was one with a built-in FM transmitter, but that thing was a brick and seemed to have supply issues. You'd think for the cost of the iPod (twice what mine cost) it would at least have a tuner.

Every month

[bonch]

Every month, someone "takes on" an iPod. The next month, we don't hear about them again.

FM tuner? I can buy one of those as an accessory add-on thanks to the burgeoning "iPod economy," as Jobs puts it. I even have that FM broadcaster that lets me dial into the frequency with my car radio to hear my iPod through my car speakers without any special hookups.

I don't see Sony's player going anywhere. They feature a display, which Apple abandoned as being pointless in a tiny flash player (and they're right). And it's still more expensive.

Re:Nice

[Mr_Silver]

My guess is that it'll be the required usage of SonicStage.

Damn, I should have read the press release [sony.com] (emphasis mine):

The new Network Walkman models easily play back both MP3 and ATRAC3®/3plus(TM) music files, as well as support WMA and WAV formats. They are compatible with Sony's Connect(TM) online music store and include SonicStage® software to import, manage and transfer music collections.

Oh well, never mind Sony. Better luck next time.

The problem with AM

[Ironsides]

The problem with AM is two fold. First, the wavelengths are much longer, so the small antennas can't pick them up as well. Second, AM has to have the amplitude of the signal preserved perfectly during amplification or you get distortion in the audio quality. In FM you can distort the hell out of the original signal, you just care about the fruency it is at. This makes AM tuners harder to implement than FM tuners.

It's more a problem of the technology behind AM than anything else. Not that they don't want to implement it.

OLED @ Wikipedia

[slashd'oh]

Wikipedia OLED [wikipedia.org]:

"An organic light-emitting diode (OLED) is a light-emitting diode (LED) made of semiconducting organic polymers. These devices promise to be much cheaper to fabricate than inorganic LEDs. Varying amounts of OLEDs can be deposited in arrays on a screen using simple "printing" methods to create a graphical colour display, for use as television screens, computer displays, portable system screens, and in advertising and information board applications. OLED panels may also be used as lighting devices. OLEDs are available as distributed sources while the inorganic LEDs are point sources of light. Prior to standardization, OLED technology was also referred to as OEL or Organic Electro-Luminescence.

One of the great benefits of an OLED display over the traditional LCD displays found in computer displays is that OLED displays don't require a backlight to function. This means that they draw far less power and they can be used with small portable devices which have mostly been using monochrome low-resolution displays to conserve power. This will also mean that they will be able to last for long periods of time with the same amount of battery charge."

(but wait, there's more [wikipedia.org]!)

Re:FM Radio

[maotx]

I've never seen FM radio on a phone in the US...

My Nokia [phonescoop.com] purchased from RadioShack has a built in FM tuner.
The reception is decent but you have to have a headset plugged in before it will even work.

Re:More importantly.

[xwin]

That is a total bs. Previous CEO was a marketing guy. Sony's hardware started to diminish when fathers of the company retired from active duty. And Sony WAS interested in DRM all these years anyway.

Hopefully new CEO would actually bring some change in to the company. It is a shame to see a real "engineer's" company to become one of these American Style corporation's which is only after the money.

Founders of the company were real engineers that is why Sony made first transistor radio, walkman and trinitron. Hopefully company will get back to engineering with a content twist.

Re:Sort out the software..

[znu]

The thing about these flash players, though, is that they don't have the capacity to hold your entire library. The process of selecting and transferring files as you describe is fairly labor-intensive.

With the iPod shuffle, you can tell iTunes to automatically select just the right number of songs to fill it up, at random, taking your song ratings into account.

Re:The problem with AM

[Anonymous Coward]

AM Tuners hard to implement?!?

Have you ever had a crystal/diode AM radio?

An ear phone, some wire, an empty toilet paper roll, and a diode are all you need. It doesn't even require power.

The problem with AM is the wavelength. You need to use a big antenna for that wavelength.

Re:FM Radio

[Paul Slocum]

I use the FM radio on my mp3 player all the time to listen to NPR. So many times I'm listening to a news story or interview in my car and I use my mp3 player's tuner to listen to the rest of the story while I'm in line at the post office or at my desk at work.

-paul

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Kudo to Apple...

[I_M_Noman]

They pushed the shuffle feature because the regular iPod completely lacks one

Huh? My 20gb iPod has "Shuffle Songs" right on the main menu.

Not exactly competitive pricing...

[argent]

iPod Shuffle 512M -- $99
NW-E405 512M -- $130
NW-E505 512M+FM -- $150

iPod Shuffle 1G -- $150
NW-E407 1G -- $180
NW-E507 1G+FM - $200

iPod Mini 4G -- $200

Re:Sony may actually have something here

[moonbender]

70 hours? Odd. The Register reports 50 hours [theregister.co.uk], with a catch: "Sony claims the devices will operate for a staggering 50 hours on a single charge, but that's when playing back 105Kbps ATRAC 3 files in "power saving mode". It's not clear what this mode is - presumably it's with no EQ and the display turned off. Still, it's a big leap over the Shuffle's 18-hour play time."

Re:Ousted Sony CEO was given iPod as Gift

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, I think your humor detector is broken. The ousted Sony CEO was obviously *not* given an iPod--it's a joke.

Re:Easy solution

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

Or, get a Sony flash player with a screen for half the cost of an iPod. Or is that forbidden?

Article reads:The 1Gb model will still cost £200 compared to Apple's iPod Shuffle at £99.

Using that Bush "Social Security" math?