[pcd2k]

As reported in the macnn

"New MP3-compatible Sony player takes on iPod
Sony today unveiled its first MP3-compatible, hard disk Walkman music player in an attempt to recover ground lost to Apple's iPod, according to Reuters: "The product will be available in Britain before Christmas at 249 pounds ($462.70) and elsewhere in Europe in early 2005 at 369 euros ($489). The new hard disk player is the successor of Sony's first hard disk Walkman, which it introduced this summer but which can play back only music compressed with Sony's proprietary Atrac software. Atrac is the format Sony uses on its Internet music shop Connect, which opened in Europe this summer.... Sony's new 20GB Walkman is 30 pounds more expensive than Apple's 20GB product selling for 219 pounds. But Sony says the device comes in five colours, plays 2.5 times longer on one battery charge than iPod's 12 hours and can contain 10,000 to 13,000 songs, at least twice as many as an iPod because of Atrac's better compression technology."

Gee haven't they heard of mp4 &/or Ogg ?

[tooki]

Sony developed ATRAC years and years before MP3 took off. It's a very good codec. The only problem is that everyone already has their music in MP3 format, and it's stupid to force people to transcode (with the inherent loss of quality) for no good reason at all.

Sony simply came to its senses and realized that if they want to sell successful MP3 players, they do in fact need to support MP3!

tooki

[CatOne]

ATRAC3 is good technology but it's not a miracle. Sony's marketing numbers are complete BS... this 10,000 to 13,000 songs assumes a 48 kbps bit rate I think, which is going to sound like crap no matter WHAT the compression technology -- ATRAC3, MP3 or AAC all sound like stink at that bit rate.

You'd want 128 kbps ATRAC3 to sound decent (I'd guess that would sound like 128 kbps AAC), and then you get the same # of songs as Apple does.

Heck the iPod can do like 75,000 songs if you encode at 12 kbps AAC.

[Spheric Harlot]

IIRC, ATRAC has consistently come in last on every blind listening test to date.

For some reason, they thought they could pull an Apple, only in stupid, by making their own player the only one compatible with the store - except making their music store the exclusive format natively compatible with their own player.

They were about six eight years too late to the game for that idea to be successful, and one year (since the iTMS) too late to be anything but dead in the water.

It'll be very interesting to see how the downloadable music format wars will pan out. I think that in order for the music stores to be able to coexist long-term, their DRM formats will have to be licensed to all player manufacturers.

But at the moment, Apple is far enough ahead in the mp3 market to be able to leverage the iPod to gain and keep downloadable market share AND draw users over to Apple hard- and software.

I get several Windows users in the store daily taking their very first closer look at Apple hardware and asking questions about the OS and specifically its security. I also notice from talking to people that iTunes for Windows was an absolutely brilliant move. I had a guy in the other day to buy an iPod, whose next computer will definitely be a Mac, and he's been hooking everybody in the office on iTunes for their music.

A lot of those G5 iMacs (we're back-ordered three weeks or so on the 20" model) are going to first-time Mac users...

-s*