The Sony/MP3 Saga Continues 629
Renegade Lisp writes "Sony's rolling out their new line of flash-based music players to the
market these days. More stylish than ever, they surely look like a
serious attempt to regain territory lost to the iPod, and perhaps even
to create the Walkman of the 21st century. And it looks like Sony has
finally given in to consumer pressure: these new "MP3 players" can
finally play MP3 natively, not just Sony's proprietary ATRAC format.
But wait -- you cannot just put your MP3s onto the device, you have to
run them through Sony's obfuscation software first. The obfuscated
files, when installed properly on the device, can be played. But you
can't just move them around, share them with your friends, whatever.
Well, of course the obfuscation scheme has already been broken by a
brave hacker. But is this really the way to create the "Network
Walkman" of the 21st century? Sony, please wake up!"
They're part of the RIAA, are you surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
Distributed Labels of Reporting Companies Sony Classical Sony Discos Sony Japan Sony Labels Sony Music Sony Music US (Latin) Sony Wonder
Re:Egh (Score:3, Informative)
Sony's PSP (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This MIGHT crush the iPod... (Score:5, Informative)
The minimum price for one of these is 69 GBP tax included ($130 US). That's for the lowend 256MB version. The high end 1GB model with FM tuner is $300. The iPod shuffle 512MB and 1GB are $99 and $149 respectively before tax.
I wouldn't say that these were any more affordable.
No. (Score:1, Informative)
It is "a" way it isn't the "only" way.
I don't use iTunes. I find it clumsy and it tries to manage my considerable collection of digital music.
I personally use XPlay, a commercial solution. But there are similar free solutions.
Re:I want an MP3 player... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I want an MP3 player... (Score:5, Informative)
Plays mp3s. Plays oggs. Battery life's quite good, to. Though it's not cheap.
Not to blow apple, but... (Score:4, Informative)
The shuffle starts at 99 bucks.
2. No proprietary formats required.
All ipods play wav, mp3, and (un drmd) aac.
3. No "DRM."
Play any mp3 you want.
4. Reliable, built to last, long battery life.
I get around 12 hours out of my 4th gen 20gig ipod.
5. Connects to my machine without drivers, i.e. acts like an external hard disk.
Not sure what os you are using, but (obviously) ipods are seamless with X, and act as a lovely external firewire (or usb2) drive.
YOU DONT GET IT. A turing test for you (Score:5, Informative)
you obviously dont get it as you say. the ipod shuffle is designed to look and feel like it has infintie capacity.
that is to say I would challenge you to a turing test to see if you cold tell the difference between an ipod shuffle and a 80 gig ipod just by listineing to it in shuffle mode.
I'm not kidding, here are the ground rules. A shuffle holds 150 to 300 songs randmoly selected from the 80gigs on your hard drive. You listen to it for a day or so, and have not listened to all 200 songs. then you jack it in to recharge it and while that is going on the shuffle gets refilled. Then you listen the next day. and repeat.
From your point of view it would be no different than listening to your 80 gig drive drive or a 40 gig ipod. you could not tell the difference by listening.
You see the thing you are not understanding is that the software, itunes, makes this transparent. If you had some piece of shit software like win amp and had to drag files by hand onto the device or run them through a sony deobfuscator then you would not be constantly refilling it. But with itunes, CHARGING = REFILLING. since you can just barely play all the songs on a single charge this basically means that in any practical usage you are constantly refreshing the songs before you hear them twice.
Re:Egh (Score:2, Informative)
i personally own the ipod shuffle. what got me was how lightweight it was compared to the regular iPod or even the mini. i use it all the time when i workout or go jogging. it's quite unnoticeable.
aside from the weight factor, the main thing that differentiates this with other flash-based mp3 players i've seen is iTunes. no, not the store. i have a lot of music already and usually buy the CDs used anyway.
when i say iTunes, i mean the software itself. you see, i have yet to find a better software/hardware music player combo. i've rated all my songs (a 5-star system) from most to least favorite. i've used their smart playlists to differentiate between genre, song times (this helps keep out the skits/etc from CDs), and song rating. when i feel like working out, i plug in the shuffle and tell it to pick from my "work out" smart playlist. this playlist has all the high-rated, uptempo songs. when i feel like relaxing, i just choose the playlist with all my high-rated, mellow songs. what about when i feel like hearing random songs? i just tell it to replace all songs on the shuffle with ones picked randomnly from my library. with USB 2.0, it's quite quick. and at 1GB, i've got hours of playtime. the battery would probably run out before i'd even go through all the songs, so who needs to cary all those songs if i can't even listen to them?
iTunes (the software) is wonderful. it can be argued whether the price of the iPod shuffle is competative with others in the same class (i've found that it is), but like any other piece of Apple hardware, the software included with it seperates it from the rest of the class.
Re:CD based MP3 player's don't obfuscate (Score:2, Informative)
Brian
Re:Just IMO but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:YOU DONT GET IT. A turing test for you (Score:3, Informative)
I love MusicMagic Mixer from Predixis, which uses computer analysis of each audio file to determine which songs play well together. Pick one song, or ten songs, and tell it to make a mix that sounds similar. If only it worked with my Rio Karma. I have to create playlists with Predixis and then load them into the Karma through the awful Rio Music Manager...
Re:Egh (Score:4, Informative)
I bought an iPod because it has the best user interface in the business. I don't care if it's hip and/or trendy. I've never been hip or trendy in my life, I'm hardly going to start now.
More functions!=more usability.
Re:Digital Rights Management for rights other than (Score:2, Informative)
Fraunhofer's patent does not dictate what you, the end user, can do with your mp3s.
Bands can't sell MP3 files without paying 2.0% of related revenue [mp3licensing.com] to Thomson.
Re:Sony's PSP (Score:3, Informative)
Sony have just lost the plot... (Score:5, Informative)
I for one read the bit about the obfuscation and immediately dismissed their devices as useless e.g. "here we go again.. more of their idiot DRM crapfuscation".
Sony just don't get it do they ? They've simply lost the plot. People just want to play/copy etc. what they want when they want. That's what will sell. The original Sony Walkman was great precisely because you just taped something (either from a record, a CD, the radio or a microphone) you popped the cassette it your walkman and you played it. No fucking about with computer formats/DRM or other unecessary shite.
Sony get your heads round this simple idea "The customer should control the device". The device should not attempt to control the customer. If you try this your device will fail.
Mp3 is the "format de jour" of portable devices. People have collections of mp3 files. I for one just want to "copy them to my portable device and go" (something I can do with my cheap "no name" mp3 player). Sorry but I'm not putting up with anything that gets in the way of that. Not one thing. If I have to I'll just go back to a portable CD player with home burned CDs. And I bet I'm not the only one.
On a simiar note a mate of mine has a Sony DVD player that cost him over £ 200 (uk) It's fussy as hell about the discs you put in it and rejects most "home burned" CD and DVDRs - and it should be said here these DVDRs are mostly of home video footage (of his bloody kids and holidays too... arrghh !!!!)
One of my other mates has a Ronin 215 which cost her £ 23 (uk). In contrast to the Sony it will have a go at anything you put in it and so far she's not found a single disc that won't play in it - even some of the ones her 4 year old son has scratched to bits (another good reason for making backups of your DVD collection)
So we got the players together for a "super test" and when they do both manage to play the same disc can you tell the difference in quality ? Only just but it's very, very close (although we didn't test them on a terribly expensive television)
Moral of the story ? My first mate now has a Ronin 215 as well and it's put us off buying any expensive consumer "media playback" equipment for life.
Sorry, Sony have completely lost it big time and are simply not worth considering for portable audio players.
Re:I want an MP3 player... (Score:3, Informative)
1. Cheap.
2. No proprietary formats required.
3. No "DRM."
4. Reliable, built to last, long battery life.
5. Connects to my machine without drivers, i.e. acts like an external hard disk.
Aria "own-brand" [aria.co.uk] - £43 for "500MB", £89 for "1GB" seem to work quite nicely. Just copy MP3s onto it like a flash drive, single AAA battery lasts forever, nice easy user-interface on the player itself.
Much better than the crap that comes out of Creative Labs, for example. Anyone want a Creative Nomad Zen 80GB that only works on Windows?
Re:Sony have just lost the plot... (Score:1, Informative)
It's fairly simple to get songs onto the iPod. When you connect the iPod to the computer, iTunes can play back any of the files with no problem.
This is completely NOT the case with Sony's software (SonicStage or whatever it's called). Not only is it unusable due to a poor GUI and just old-fashioned piss-poor programming, it fails at it's most basic function...that is to playback music. After the mp3 is encrypted and copied onto the Sony's player, it CANNOT be played back by anything other than the player itself.
Even worse is that after the songs get added to the player, Sony itself has no idea how to handle the file format. Wanna perfectly format the file information on the player? Sorry, not possible. Once on the player, it can't be changed. The file is basically a mess of bits that is completely unusable outside the domain of the player.
How do i know this? I made the mistake of buying the Vaio Pocket (their answer to the iPod). Never have i been so completely pissed off at a product. Luckily the store understood my rants and gladly let me exchange the piece of crap for an iPod.
My lesson learned is that avoid SOny at all costs (it's too bad that I love the PS2). And forget reader reviews on anything Sony. These people have about the same intelligence as the trolls on imdb.com forums. Even "professional" reviewers tend to skip over the embarassing details.