Comments | longhairedhippy: Geekiness, a personal update and then more geekiness

longhairedhippy

Geekiness, a personal update and then more geekiness

Jul 01, 2004 17:53

The BBC News article Sony plans Walkman to rival iPod
mentions that the new player "will play songs only in the company's own format" and that it "cannot play tunes in the popular MP3 format" - this is all due to Sony trying to get people to buy music from their online music store Sony Connect. Is it just me or is this a dumb idea? I don't know ( Read more... )

travel, work, geekery, astronomy

Comments 8

talma July 1 2004, 17:46:00 UTC

The Sony Walkman only plays tracking in Atrac-3 format, but the SonicStage software that you use to transfer music onto it converts mp3s etc into Atrac-3 during transfer... At least according to The Register

gourou July 1 2004, 18:17:44 UTC

It's just a shame that ATRAC3 is OK, but unpopular, SonicStage is a *terrible* piece of software, and Sony haven't learned their lesson from MiniDisc.

On the upside, anything using ATRAC has fantastic battery life. Which could have made this device really popular *if* it had supported MP3 as well. Going to the trouble of converting one lossy format to another even more lossy format is just plain crazy.

Sony! Why! Why do you have to have at least one fatal flaw in each of your products?! Why!

madfuzzy July 2 2004, 08:25:58 UTC

Because they just don't like paying other people to use their IP. "Why pay someone to license MP3 when you can WRITE YOUR OWN CODEC and FORCE IT ON OTHER PEOPLE!" See also: Memorystick and the UMD thingy they're going to use in the PSP (which ALSO won't play MP3s, only ATRAC files from the documentation I've seen). I could go on, but it'll just bore people...

longhairedhippy July 3 2004, 08:14:43 UTC

PSP is the new PlayStation, isn't it?

Thread 6

salmon_of_doubt July 2 2004, 14:35:45 UTC

I liked the "e^iπ" thing. Which is good as I don't understand any of the rest. Well, not much.

I've been quite amused by the recent adverts for these cunning new devices that play grooved plastic discs at a constant angular velocity of 33, 45 or 78rpm. They are also fully portable, coming with an integral amp and speaker.

All very, um, revolutionary except that we had one of these when I was 5 and it was old then...

Reminds me of... ukwarwickdood July 5 2004, 09:41:04 UTC

Palm Tungsten uses SD/MMC cards... readily available - cheap... loads of manufacturers

Sony Clie uses Memory Stick... what IS the point of Memory stick? they're huge, slow, expensive and PINK!