Sony's new digital music players take on Apple's iPod

[MacBytes]

Category: News and Press Releases
Link: Sony\'s new digital music players take on Apple\'s iPod
Posted on MacBytes.com

Approved by Mudbug

[KentuckyApple]

I can take a @#$& in a box and mark it guaranteed, if that's what you want. I've got the time.

[mrsebastian]

hey sony, how about you give me the millions you spent on r&d for this piece of overpriced crap and then i will tell you to go ahead and trash the whole idea... sony's proprietary format and the price make this a guaranteed loser! hello sony, you got martha stewart designing your products now?!

if you even want a shot at the market, you are going to have allow people to play their mp3s. seems to me, sony has become such a giant company with so many business interests, that it hurts their electronics business. for instance, i was going to purchase a sony dvd player about a year ago. loved the super slim design, sony quality, but wait it won't play mp3s!? uh, no thanks, next. wake the [bleep] up sony, many of your electronics are floundering, because you don't cater to your customers needs and wants and that at a very high price.

[Victoriatus]

So how does ATRAC sound like at 64kbps? 13000 three minute songs at 64kbps equals roughly 20 GB, and three minutes is a bit short for an average. ATRAC at 48kbps? Anyone?

[Dippo]

As with Sony's other players, the NW-HD1 plays songs in the company's proprietary ATRAC format only, meaning it is not compatible with other online stores and cannot play tunes in the popular MP3 format.

Being someone who doesn't want to convert all my MP3's to ATRAC, I think I will pass. I had a Minidisc player and it took a good minute to just convert ONE song from MP3, so like Sony's other "good" ideas, this one sucks!

Maybe they should try open standards???

And people complain that the iPod doesn't play WMA, so you think that something that ONLY plays ATRAC is going to cut it?

[nagromme]

Yes, 8TRAC and Sony's miserably-reviewed store are going to steal the iPod's top spot

Does the "Walkman" name really carry that much cool these days? Isn't that something from the mid-to-late 1900s or something?

[OhEsTen]

Sony used to be a good electronics "innovator" (walkman?), but what is going on with them? They are like ho's trying to get a quick buck off of any market they think will pay off.

Yes, they have built a good reputation for high-quality electronics, but it has totally gone to their head. They think that just because they step into a market, they are going to dominate it......okay Micro$oft....you go ahead and think that. WATCH OUT APPLE.....OH GOD WATCH OUT!!!!!!

[spaz]

nice style, i will give them that, but Sony's insistence on making up formats and media is just getting ridiculous.

[nagromme]

Put it this way... from a purely shallow marketing perspective, forgetting for a moment that Sony can't play the popular formats... would most people, given the choice, rather say "I just got the new Walkman!" or "I just got the new iPod!"

[nagromme]

The plot thickens...

http://www.retropod.com/

[avus]

I just read several Japanese reports of the press conference that was held in Tokyo today, and I hope that they will be translated by tomorrow because the president was so arragant that he predicted Sony would erase the Apple's lead in 6 months to a year to take 50% of the market share, and he also claimed that the iPod's battery life and interface (especially Search) were so inferior by "their" standard, they could easily improve! If they thought they could do better, why didn't they do that TWO YEARS AGO!

I sincerely hope Apple will blow them away with the 4G iPod.

[themadchemist]

Originally Posted by nagromme

Put it this way... from a purely shallow marketing perspective, forgetting for a moment that Sony can't play the popular formats... would most people, given the choice, rather say "I just got the new Walkman!" or "I just got the new iPod!"

that's what I'm saying.