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Music Media

Big Demand for Digital Music Players 259

Posted by samzenpus from the music-on-the-go dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Market research company IDC is predicting a rosy future for MP3 player sales. They predict that by 2008 it will grow into a $58 billion industry - four times bigger than the US record industry. Also in the news, Sony will finally start making a digital music portable that plays MP3s. Their present players only read their proprietary ATRAC3 format, forcing you to transcode any MP3 files you want to play on them."
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Big Demand for Digital Music Players More

Big Demand for Digital Music Players

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  • iPod=loose (Score:3, Interesting)

    by munboy ( 732717 ) <munboy@gmail.cCOBOLom minus language> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:34PM (#10324038) Journal
    now that sony will be actual compition, do you think that the ipod/ipod mini will be not in first place anymore? i want a good ipod for $200 without havibg to go to ebay. btw, i doubt it, but first post??

    • Re:iPod=loose (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dwipal ( 709116 ) *
      apple frequently sale refurbished ipods for around 200$.

    • Re:iPod=loose (Score:3, Informative)

      by SilentChris ( 452960 )
      I personally want to see where portable video players go. I bought an iPod a few weeks ago (20 GB for $300) and saw the small Archos video player this morning. That thing plays music AND DivX AND XVid AND MPEG4 AND has 10 hours of battery life AND is as small as an iPod AND has cool extra geek stuff like a Compact Flash reader and line out. AND it's only $379. I bought one and am thinking of putting my iPod up on eBay.

      I forget what the model number is. 4-something I think. 400mini? It should be on t
    • Get a Creative Jukebox Zen Xtra (30gigs, $199 at frys). Bigger (more gigs) than an Ipod, better sound quality, and about half the price. The only thing the Ipod has is a slightly better interface (slightly) and is a status symbol.
      The Creative has a nice browser feature once you install the drivers on your computer too. I've been very happy with mine.
      • Disclaimer: I'm not an iPod fan, I don't have one and don't plan to get one.

        However the iPod is also significantly smaller. Put them side by side.

        From the register: [theregister.co.uk]

        Zens have always been larger than iPods, but the Xtra is the smallest yet, coming in at 11.3 x 7.6 x 2.2cm and weighing 224g. The 40GB iPod is a lighter 176g and a more compact 10.4 x 6.1 x 1.9cm

        The Zen is more for geeks who like to count and compare features, and the iPod is more for people who don't like to have full pockets or purses.

    • Your iPod is loose? Better run and catch it!

  • They already do... (Score:4, Informative)

    by spiritraveller ( 641174 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:34PM (#10324042)
    Sony will finally start making a digital music portable that plays MP3s.

    And I own one... It's called a CD/MP3 player and you can get one at any Target, Wal-Mart, etc.

    They go for less than $50 and they hold as much space as blank CD-Rs you are willing to buy.

    • Re:They already do... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Nos. ( 179609 ) <andrewNO@SPAMthekerrs.ca> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:38PM (#10324078) Homepage
      The problem is, its not solid state. I've seen CD players that say you can jog with them, but how many can actually stand up to that much jostling, same with any type of excercise. Also, being a player with a motor (gotta spin the CD up) it consumes a lot more power than solid state device. Finally, a solid state device can be a lot smaller than a CD player.
      • I would kill for a Minidisc MP3 player. Minidiscs are cheap, sturdy, almost never skip and have battery life in excess of 10hs. Plus, the media itself, through not "mainstream", it's cheap and available.
        I use my old Minidisc all the time, but i have to re-encode to ATRAC in real time instead of being able to upload a file; newer ones support recording over 1X via USB, but the stream is raw audio and the player itself does the conversion. Otherwise, i'm very happy with it.

        PS: Having minidiscs replac

      • Re:They already do... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by pokka ( 557695 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @08:01PM (#10324781)
        The problem is, its not solid state.

        It's not really a problem with these players. They spin up for a few seconds, read the entire song into memory, and spin down. And even if you aggressively shake the player while it's buffering, it doesn't seem to stall the reading (i'm not sure what's different about Sony's anti-shock system, but it's superb). Battery life is great too, about 10-15 hours.

        Sure, size a factor, but Sony already has cd players that are barely larger in circumference than the size of the CD and less than 1cm thick. If they extended that design to the 3" CD-Rs like Philips and others, they could probably make something pocket-sized.

        Also, the disposable (or collectible) media is a huge advantage over solid-state media. I hate reloading music onto my player with my pc every time I want to listen to something different.
    • You know that's not what the article is about. A CD player that plays MP3s does not fall under the "digital music player" umbrella.

    • Sony supports MP3 on its CD products, but not in its best digital products which is what most people think of when it comes to MP3/music players.

      The real story here is shift in business strategy. Sony was the king of portable music after the introduction of the Walkman, but has seen its share slip. It seems that someone at Sony has realized that using a closed, proprietary standard and forcing customers to listen to their music collections how Sony wants them to quickly turns them into ex-customers.

      Tha

  • Mainstream (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MikeMacK ( 788889 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:35PM (#10324049)
    Is digital music finally going mainstream?

    Didn't it go mainstream a few years ago? Napster made it mainstream.

  • mp3s are the next floppy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:35PM (#10324052) Homepage
    You watch, in 10 years we'll be trying to get rid of the mp3, but it simply won't vanish ( due to cluelessness, but still ).

    Regardless, I'd like a decent sub $100 mp3 player with decent storage. ipods are damn cool, but there is no way I'm dropping that kind of cash on what is essentially a fluff item.
    • ipods are damn cool, but there is no way I'm dropping that kind of cash on what is essentially a fluff item.

      Whether or not a HDD based mp3 player is a fluff item is certainly up to debate, and I'm certainly willing to tell you why I don't think my iRiver H120 isn't. =)

      Besides the 16 GB of oggs, mp3s, and wmas (*retch*), it can also record things. For Every class I've been to this semester, I have an 80 Kbit mp3. Did I miss something in my notes? I'll just look it up in my lectures folder!

      It also has

  • What were they smoking? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by geneing ( 756949 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:36PM (#10324058)
    Don't you think market research is useless?

    $58Bn is about $10 for every person in the world icluding babies. By 2008 there will be cooler things to spend your hard earned money on.

    • by 2008 a music player will be a default feature in your pda with a phone and camera

  • I'm glad the title says "Digial Music Player" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sean Starkey ( 4594 ) * on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:36PM (#10324059) Homepage
    Everytime I hear "MP3 Player", I cringe...

    I have a Neuros [neurosaudio.com] and its far from just an "MP3 Player". My Neuros plays MP3's, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, and even the dreadful WMA files...

    I hate when people call it an "MP3 Player".

    <shameless plug>

    If you haven't looked the Neuros, you don't know what you are missing. It's the perfect player for the geek in you. Recently they have open sourced the Firmware, allowing us hackers to have our way with it.

    </shameless plug>

    • Re:I'm glad the title says "Digial Music Player" (Score:5, Funny)

      by tool462 ( 677306 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:55PM (#10324263)
      MP3 is the new "Kleenex".

      "Hey, what MP3 format do you use?"
      "FLAC"
      "Cool. I use WMA."
    • I asked my doctor about the Neuros, he said it would undo years of back therapy.

      Kidding, Neuros is a reasonable solution but just too darn big for most people. Rio Karma, whilst not OS, plays all the formats you want (including full gapless playback support which is, AFAIK, unique). It's also a lot smaller than a Neuros.

    • The Neuros looks damn cool, but does it work under Linux? The site lists Win?? as a requirement. Can you mount the flash/HD as a USB mass storage device under Linux? I have been considering purchasing a player, but ogg support (my 1000 CDs are ripped in ogg vorbis format) and Linux support are a must.

      Thanks,
      the_crowbar

      • Re:I'm glad the title says "Digial Music Player" (Score:5, Informative)

        by the_crowbar ( 149535 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @07:31PM (#10324582)

        I probably shouldn't reply to myself, but after digging a little through the Neuros site I found that there is software (written in Perl) that works great on Linux. The software, Sorune (linky [sorune.tk]), is to manage playlist and such for the Neuros. The CEO of the company also seems committed to open source (not just the firmware, but the specs of the player as well). I will do some more research on this tommorrow, but I think I may have just found my next purchase.

        Cheers,
        the_crowbar

    • I've had a Neuros for the past year. While I agree that it kicks total ass, the only problem with it is the size. It's a fucking brick and a pain in the ass to carry around on my daily walk to work. It's perfect for the car, but I'm switching to an iPod next week. I'm willing to forego the massive features for the form factor.

    • Not Too Big (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tony ( 765 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @07:51PM (#10324728) Journal
      Alla' you "It's Too Big" whiners are missing several important points about the Neuros:
      • Ogg Support
      • FM Broadcasting built in
      • Just a USB mass storage device
      • Regular 2.5" hard drive (cheap upgrades!)
      • Open Source, bay-bee!
      • Fan-fucking-tastic customer support
      • Modular, so you can have backpacks with different genres of music
      • Not as expensive as the iPod

      There are other reasons to favor the Neuros over the iPod, but those are the big ones.

      But, as for everything, personal preferences play a huge role in your selection of a personal music device (PMD).

  • I can see that... (Score:3)

    by denisonbigred ( 611860 ) <nbn2.cornell@edu> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:37PM (#10324064)
    As long as people also remain willing to pay for music to support the music industry. If people fail to support the artists and music production slows down, people will have less need for a place to keep their music.
    • oh really?

      I've been listening to free music for the better part of the last week(demoscene stuff mostly).

      if commercial music would disappear(as recordings, performers wouldn't disappear anywhere) that would not be a huge loss, and there would still be lots and lots of music to listen to.

      • I understand that there would still be lots of music out there, however, when we are discussing the VAST majority the people expected to drop a few hundred dollars on these MP3 players, the VAST majority of what they listen to IS commercial music. While it is possible that this could change, it is unlikely that it would happen quickly, if at all.

        While you (and others) might be unaffected by the loss of commercial music, you are the exception, not the rule.
        • eh?

          if commercial music became commercially unviable then they would end up listening to 'non-commercial' music quite quickly, on the same second radio stations and mtv started playing them.

          because there will be people that make music, regardless of if they get paid, and people who want to listen to music it makes little difference where the music comes from. what would change would be that a 'new' thing could strike through much easier.

          • Not only that, but from what I've read, the RIAA companies have still been raking in huge profits, despite their cries about piracy. The only thing that's affected them has been the economic downturn.

            I don't think commercial music is going to die out soon (unfortunately).

  • That's funny (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sien ( 35268 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:37PM (#10324069) Homepage
    I predict that sales will grow 5.4 fold. Really, how solid are their figures?

    For anyone who is excited or dismayed about this it's worth recalling that McKinsey, who are about the smartest and best consultants in the world made a prediction for the number of cell phones that would be in the world by 2000 in 1990. They were out by a few orders of magnitude. Motorola built the Iridium network on the basis of these figures and similar predictions and took a bath.

    Don't get too excited. This is just some press release with a few ads.

    • Analysts are full of it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:47PM (#10324171)
      Really, how solid are their figures?

      Like almost all "analysts", it's about as solid as pea soup.

      I worked in the IT department for a company that distributed analyst white papers, and these people were dumb as fucking bricks, according to the people in the company who had to deal with them on a daily basis. Like, "well, I can't figure out how to email this so I'm going to print and fax it to you", dumb.

      As IT workers we were continuously astounded by how poor the reports were, making ludicrous predictions and giving blatantly bad advice. As others on slashdot have said- people pay for and buy these reports to justify positions, not to learn how to do something. When I googled names of authors on the papers- some of which dealt with hugely complex corporate IT problems- the authors were fresh out of college, often with a degree that had absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter. Ie- INTERNS, people!

      It's like the old "it came into my email box, it must be true" adage, only with a real company with a fancy website and a list of clientele a mile long telling you that "sure, it's perfectly ok to dump water on your computers." Everyone's too concerned about looking stupid to admit they're being had.

  • Makes sense... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by echeslack ( 618016 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:37PM (#10324073) Homepage Journal

    This obviously makes sense seeing as mini hard drives are dropping in price so it is becoming reasonable to carry around a large collection of music with you (thus making it better than just carrying around a CD player).

    However, I wonder if its at all sustainable. I mean, once you have a 40 gig player, I can't imagine needing much more. Sure, there are a few people who want more, and maybe there is a market for video players, but I think the current line is all I would need for now. Sort of like how CD players have just sort of stagnated. There are no real improvements, they just get cheaper. The only reason to buy a new one after your first is if it breaks. Will there be any real innovation in the mp3 player market?

    • 40 gigs ought to be good enough for anyone?

      • Ok, I'll admit that just saying it's enough now so it's enough forever is not backing it up enough. But music files are only going to get smaller, and pretty much all an mp3 player does is play mp3s. Sure, people use it for other stuff too, but I doubt that a lot of people use it for transferring large files or large numbers of files. Most people just want it for listening to music. If new useful features are added, then sure, I can see needing more. But as of now, the only reason most people would nee
        • I disagree - I think music files will get larger. They already have. When people first started encoding music into mp3, I remember hearing "128 kbps is good enough, don't go lower or higher because it's a great comprimise of compression and quality" Now you got all these people with ipods claiming they can hear a difference between 128 and 192, so they all encode at 192 or 256 now. I personally have no problem with 128, but my point is that others thinke they *need* 192 for good quality, and soon it wil

      • Obviously 40GB isn't enough. There's no such thing as too much storage. If they gave me a terabyte I'm sure I'd find a use for it.

        But 40GB is too much for the current interface designs used on players. Even the "best" designs like the iPod make it too cumbersome to find songs when you've got 2000+ songs. There needs to be improvements in the interface before they start worrying about even more disk.

    • Re:Makes sense... (Score:4, Funny)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:46PM (#10324160)
      I mean, once you have a 40 gig player, I can't imagine needing much more.

      Yeah, I said that with my 540 meg harddrive, my 1 Gig harddrive, my 4 Gig harddrive, my 20 Gig harddrive, my 80 Gig harddrive. Once I get my 1/2 terabyte RAID5 music server, I can't imagine needing much more.
    • That's very short sighted. If there's anything that's true about storage it's that you fill up the space you have.

      When I first got my computer, I didn't know what to do with the space. My old computer had a 10 GB hard drive and I didn't know what I would do with a 30 GB hard drive.

      About a year later, I'm installing a 40 GB hard drive. A few months later, I'm adding an 80 GB external drive. Yesterday, I got a disk full message on the external drive.

      Personally, I have over 50 GB of MP3s. And I haven't even e

      • But you are not a normal case (no offense :). I know a ton of regular users who have 40 gig hard drives and use a few gigabytes. Even if they were to rip all their music, they would still not fill up their drives. I don't even fill up my 80 gig hard drive and I have 2 operating systems on it.
    • Improvement options for the iPod? Increased reliability, FM/AM Radio, built-in microphone, audio inputs, more formats supported, smaller sizes, customizable styles, waterproofing, convergence with cell phones, convergence with Palm devices, convergence with GameBoy, convergence with Leatherman, Bluetooth.

      I think there's options for improvement. I have a 40gig iPod loaded almost to the brim with audiobooks, but I might look to trade up eventually if a few of the above options (but not just any of them) were
    • I have 35 Gigs of music right now, i can see a 40 gig player being insufficient at a time near in the future.
    • once you have a 40 gig player, I can't imagine needing much more But, I already have over 60 GBytes of mp3 (just from converting my own CD collection). I can certainly imagine wanting to carry more than 40 GBytes of music around with me. Never mind that it would take more than a month to listen to it all -- when I'm in the mood for a certain song, I'm in the mood for that song!

    • 40 gigs may be enough right now, but as HD space increases then peope will go for better quality sound and music files will grow in size.

      This is not mentioning things like "Home on iPod". "Home n iPod" was an announced feature for a few hours on the Apple website. Basically, your home directory on your iPod. Go anywhere, plug in your iPod to any mac and you can log on from it just like it was your own computer at home with all your files and everything.

    • I mean, once you have a 40 gig player, I can't imagine needing much more.

      Well, you can cram about 100 hours of lossless compressed audio into 40 gig. That would be enough for a lot of people. It wouldn't hold my entire CD collection though. It would probably all fit into 40 gig at 128kbps.

      I have a large collection, true, certainly larger than many people. But it's by no means the largest of all the people I know. I have friends with 1000+ CDs, if they wanted to store all that lossless compressed, they m

  • End of Cassette Tape (Score:4, Insightful)

    by reporter ( 666905 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:39PM (#10324086) Homepage
    The proliferation of MP3 players means the end of the cassette tape and analog recordings. Henceforth, "recording" means (1) sampling the audio signal to convert it into a digital signal, (2) compressing the digital data into MP3 format, and (3) writing it into flash memory (or other persistent high-capacity storage). "Playing the recording" means (1) reading the digital data from flash memory, (2) decompressing the data, (3) lowpass filtering the data to convert it back into an analog audio signal.

    The constant in life is change. Good-bye "cassette tape".

    • The end of cassette tape maybe, but analog recording isn't going anywhere, preciously because many people will continue to be dismayed with the caveats of digital recording as you defined it.
      • Cassette won't disappear completely as long as there's still a market for ultra-low-cost recording devices that don't need high quality. It is true that the bottom has fallen out of the recorded cassette market -- if the recording industry ever allows CDs to be as cheap as they should be, the remaining market for prerecorded cassettes will vanish almost instantly. But I think it'll remain a niche market for people who need to record lectures and the like, at least until digital recording devices (with much
    • "Good riddance, linear access!" is what I say.

      I never bought music until I had a CD player. I rarely bought movies until I had DVD.

      Fast-forwarding and rewinding is maddening.

  • Further proof of Sony's idiocy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jm92956n ( 758515 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:41PM (#10324107) Journal
    Sony still doesn't get it:

    For the time being, Sony customers will have to be satisfied with MP3 support in flash-based players, which could come as early as this year... The company is also considering expanding MP3 support to hard disk devices, sources told ZDNet France, but no decision has yet been made on that front.

    Is it that hard to one unified plan? Why the restrictions on HD-based models. "It's OK to pirate music, provided it's less than 256 MB!"
    • I'd actually like to see Sony go the other route: they should steadfastly stick to their proprietary ATRAC format, and insist that customers use their products on Sony's terms.

      Then I can sit back and laugh as all the Sony fans continue to buy their crap, no matter how badly they're treated and how much the products limit them. Sony fans are a really strange bunch; they fawn over anything by Sony, and refuse to by any other brand, no matter how limiting the Sony stuff is or how much better or cheaper the o
    • Um, sony has been irrelevant for a long time now. It really doesn't matter what they do.

  • I predict... (Score:4, Funny)

    by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:42PM (#10324112)

    that by 2008, none of the recording companies will allow me to purchase an MP3 in a store.
  • Was drunk one night, messing around. On a hunch I popped a CD-R containing MP3's into my DVD player (a nice Panasonic). After a couple of seconds, it displayed the directory structure of the disc, and allowed me to select directories and individual tracks.

    I'm sure this is not news to most of you, but it was to me (I got my player as a christmas present, as a refurb without the original packaging).
  • The predictions have been rolling in all along:

    December 2003: MP3 player sales for 2003 doubled [itfacts.biz]

    February 2004: 7 million MP3 players will be sold in 2004 [itfacts.biz]

    July 2004: No, 10.8 mln digital music players will be sold in 2004 [itfacts.biz]

    September 2004: 50 mln by 2008 [itfacts.biz]

    The first link, however, will tell you that 19% of those who download music online already have an MP3 player. Furthermore, you have a whole bunch of people who use a PDA, their MP3 watch or what not to listen to the music.

  • give me multi format! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Red_Deth ( 733789 )
    I don't think I'll be shelling out for one till it plays mp3/aac/ogg. mmm it'd be nice if Sonys new 1Gig MD system would allow for multi format tunes. Think it only plays ATRAC though, of course. :(

  • Sony MP3 Player!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by jgerry ( 14280 ) * <jason.gerryNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:45PM (#10324145) Homepage
    About bloody time. Sony's portable music players (even their new hard-drive player) are a joke.

    It takes a special kind of asshat to make a portable music player with no MP3 support.

    Sony, welcome to 1999!!!
    • The funny things is, Sony is so huge and monolithic, this decision probably WAS made in 1999 -- it just took 5 years to get through the meetings and memos down to the public.

  • They are a blip in this market. They aren't even competing with Rio let alone Apple.

  • IDC 96% off (Score:4, Informative)

    by bstadil ( 7110 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:51PM (#10324220) Homepage
    Forget these kind of "forecast" my grandmother long dead can do better.

    Look at these clowns trackrecord [theregister.co.uk]for the Itanium

  • I have seen a lot of the in-car CD based mp3 players for around $150 at Fry's, but I have never seen one that supports ogg. I know there is the music keg, but I'm looking for something cheap. Is there anything like that on the market yet?

    It sure would be cool if one of these could play from DVD-R media as well.

  • Inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gordgekko ( 574109 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:53PM (#10324230) Homepage
    I can't wait for the inevitable front page /. story one year from now proclaiming a glut and collapse in the portable MP3 player market.

  • /RIAA slaps forehead... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DownWithTheMan ( 797237 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @06:54PM (#10324245)
    Wouldn't you hate to be in the boardrooms of the empire music groups now that estimates put digital music as a $58 billion industry? Big Executive: "Why didn't we get in on this music market!!!" Peon: "You said we needed to sue everyone that had anything to do with digital music" Dare I even say piracy breeds inovation? ::rolls eyes:: Look at the markets created from cassett tapes, VCRs, CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, and now digital music is an incredibly booming industry... I sure feel bad for the dinosaurs at the RIAA who decided to go after p2p instead of trying to adapt in a profitable manner...
  • Sony has a portable 8 Track player?

    I know God exists.

    www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA

  • I have this hang up on MP3 players with built in storage devices. I'd like an MP3 player with, ideally, ports for several formats of flash memory, again ideally, that I could have a card in each of them concurrently. This would let me buy memory as my needs grow, and get whatever format happens to be onsale at the time. I've been thinking about building somethign like this with the shell of a HD based player that has had the HD recycled from it, but it seems like to much of a hassle.

    Alternatively, a slot l

  • Death of MP3 Players Not Demand For (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @07:00PM (#10324318) Homepage Journal
    Once they start enforcing DRM in the mp3 players, then the 'demand' for them will drop..

    Only the diehards ( and clueless ) will buy them at that point..

    Much as the MD market is now.. either you are clueless of the restrictions, or you find a way around them as you are determined to be able to do what you want with your own music, and have it portable.. ( though I do agree lack of marketing on Sony's part hasn't helped much either, most average Joe types don't know what MD is... )

  • iPod fort 199 and more exciting stuff!!!!!!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Omega1045 ( 584264 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @07:11PM (#10324417)
    Well, I cannot believe that it took SOny this long. Really, everyone could see where the industry was going, what is there deal? If nothing, they should have been watching and learning!

    I finally bought an iPod because I was getting an audible.com account and I could get $100 off an iPod. I bought a new 4g iPod, which I love slightly less than my mother. Where was Sony? Where is my MP3 walkman? Man, they have the money, mind and moxy, why the hell is Apple getting the industry (other than the fact that Jobs has balz = steel and they hired a great marketting firm).

  • Sony Subsiduary Aiwa already has an ipod like digital mp3 player. It is disk based. I took one for a test drive here in a review for a major newspaper here in Australia.

    The Aiwa HZ-WS2000 [aiwa.com]

    Anyway 1.5gb and smaller and lighter than an Ipod Mini.

  • Sony's quality sucks! (Score:5, Informative)

    by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @07:32PM (#10324590)
    Well if their MP3 players turn out to be anything like there more recent VCRs then I won't be wasting my money on them.

    I bought a top-of-the-line Sony VHS VCR back in 1991 and it lasted 10 years, giving an exceptional picture and brilliant audio.

    The top-of-the-line Sony VHS VCR I bought in 1999 gave nowhere near as good a picture and just died, lasting only half as long as the previous one.

    The top-of-the-line Sony VHS VCR I bought in 2000 was even worse in respect to its performance and died back in late 2001 -- lasting less than two years.

    The 21" Sony TV I bought back in 1992 is still going strong and gives an excellent picture. The 29" set I bought in 1999 has crapped out twice and the tube is showing pronounced signs of softness. The picture geometry has also gone to hell in a handbasket.

    If this trend continues, that Sony MP3 player probably won't make it to the shop doorway before it craps out.

    As an electronics tech I took a look at the Sony VCRs and have to say that the standards of design and construction have fallen significantly in the 10 year period from my first to most recent purchase.

    I don't buy Sony gear any more -- they used to be a premium brand with excellent quality but now it's actually worse than some of the cheaper stuff on the market. The budget 2-head NEC VCR I bought at the same time as the 2000-model Sony is still going strong.

    When it came time to buy a new camcorder, I bought a Panasonic and have been *very* pleased with the results. Even my friends who spent 50% more on a Sony camera are very impressed (and kicking themselves a little :-)

    Sony? I don't think so.

  • You know... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by varuvaru ( 815792 )
    ... I'd really like it if someone (I don't care who) made a cheap CD player with a couple of MB of flash ROM [or something similar], so people can upload their own decoders for whatever format they wish to use the player with... it'd be insanely successful with the public (and I'll buy it as well), as people could shove on OGG, MPC, MP3Pro, anything they want to use, they just port it [with instructions and maybe a dev kit given by the manufacturer, of course]. Oh, and battery life. No huge backlit battery

  • Sony dropped the ball on MD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by erik_fredricks ( 446470 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @07:44PM (#10324685)
    Minidisc had the potential to be a huge cash cow for Sony, but for every step they took forward, they took two steps back in the name of "Rights Management." Had they initially released the format without DRM restrictions, you'd have MD data readers in a huge section of the home-computer market, and they'd have beaten the whole ~1GB portable-storage market before it started.

    ATRAC sounds great, but since music MDs and data MDs are two completely different (and incompatible) things, the whole idea is crippled. If that barrier didn't exist, there'd be no market for the flash-players out there, and Sony would be sitting on top of the world. Same goes for the appalling mess that they made of NetMD. If MD portables acted as simple mass-storage devices, they'd be huge (and in time, cheap), and folks wouldn't see a need for a HDD-based mp3 player. It's a wonderful format for live recording, but when you're done, how the heck do you get it uploaded to a PC? You just don't. I still have a great Sharp unit that I use for recording, but it's a pain to have to play it into the line-in jack of my PC in realtime just to edit and store the thing.

    If only they had done it right...

  • Here's a crazy thought :) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by danalien ( 545655 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @08:47PM (#10325077) Homepage
    let's for one sec. say the figures are ~ok/a good gues~.

    According to the Fortune 500 list [usatoday.com], M$ and Apple are resp. :

    46. Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash., 47, $32.187
    301. Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, Calif., 300, $6.207

    billon dollar businesses. - Now according to Steve Jobs himself (from WWDC2004 [apple.com]) the ipod's have a +50% market share (mesured by units!).

    - - -

    Ok, now let's do some *simple* math! :).

    $58 Billions * 0.50+ = $APPLE.MP3.PROFITS+

    ${APPLE.MP3.PROFITS}+ + 6.207 = $35.207+ Billions

    - - -

    say, if M$ has to compete with the 'Linux Desktop' for markes share(s), which *let's assume will* hamper them from further increasing *much* ... APPLE would by 2008 at least catch up to them ... simply by not competing for the 'Desktop' :-)

  • Try lossless compression (Score:3, Insightful)

    by majid ( 306017 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @02:54AM (#10337900) Homepage
    You would be surprised to find out how good an iPod (or any of the better competing models) can be if you use lossless codecs like FLAC or Apple's ALAC.

    These codecs work like ZIP, no loss of quality or detail unlike MP3, and if you listen to subtle music (e.g. classical or jazz) in a not too noisy environment, it will make a big difference.

    I am in the process of re-ripping my classical CD collection to ALAC, and once I am done, I won't have to touch a silver disc again - my G5 streams CD audio to my AV amplifier via Toslink optical fiber digital audio, and on the go, I have an iPod 15GB (3rd gen), which can store roughly 50CD's worth of lossless audio.

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