Rival to the iPod?
p2pnet.net News:- You want portable music? Lots of it? Sony says you’ll get it with its new 20 gig Network Walkman NW-HD1.
But you’ll have to pay around $400 for the privilege.
The player comes with a 1.8-inch hard drive, RAM enough for 25 minutes of skip-free playing and 30 hour battery life, says Blogdriverswaltz.com here, going on:
“While initial reports mention that the NW-HD1 will support MP3, WMA, and WAV – and technically, that’s true – it seems the ’support’ comes via the same old Sony trick of converting everything to ATRAC3 on the fly.
“That still sucks as much as it ever did, Sony. Still, this is the one they’re counting, really, to make a dent in the iPod’s dominance, and right out of the gate it’s got a couple of dings again, with the ATRAC3 and probable lack of WMA DRM files. At least it’s small [8.9cm x 6.2cm x 1.4cm] …”
Sony promises it’s latest Walkman stores up to 13,000 tracks, according to Vnunet here, adding:
“In an effort to boost the popularity of Sony’s online music store, the NW-HD1 will convert songs to Sony’s proprietary Atrac 3 format.”
July 1st, 2004 at 5:20 pm
Rival? Yeah right. Can’t say that I love the iPod (personally I like the Cowon iAudio M3 and the IRiver IHP-120 but that’s just me) but give me a break Sony. There is no way in hell people are going to buy a 20 gig digital audio player that requires you to convert all your files into another format, especially a crappier one! Imagine the time required to re-encode an entire 20 gig collection. It would probably take forever.
I realize that this strategy is aimed at really pushing their new online music store but c’mon. How about serving the consumer instead of the business a little? When I saw this thing I was very interested in having my own. It looks really cool and it’s tiny. But unfortunately it’s not even an mp3 player! I mean, how are you supposed to cannibalize another person’s music collection if you have to wait for the conversion?
July 1st, 2004 at 8:45 pm
let’s see how well this thing does, considering it doesn’t work with the iTunes jukebox.
Sony’s Connect service is reportedly an absolute nightmare…
And why shouldn’t it be!? Since when does Sony know anything about software?
July 2nd, 2004 at 5:41 am
Since when does Sony know anything about Music!!!!!