[Sczervok]

Right, so Sony comes out with one player, and it's going to completely slaughter this one giant company, who's renown for good design, good innovation, and probably the best customer service.
Riiiiiight.

And what about Creative?
And Rio?
Apple?
Samsung?

Are they untouched? C'mon. That little player isn't going to do anything to the market, except help Sony sell some more.

 

[Gojira]

Quote:

but thier portable audio quality is limited to MiniDisc.

And DAT. My TCD-D100 can compete with any portable out there with its combination of sound quality, shock resistance (near immunity), and durability.

 

[sundragon]

Guys,I think this product can be the signal that sony is regarding mp3's market now!
Perhaps NW-E50/50 won't sell out too many,but what about NW's later series?
I have to told you,NW-E50/70 is really greater than IRIVER'S IFP series,it can play more than 70hours with one aaa battery!The sound quality is pretty good!The most important thing is its price is lower than ifp5xx just the same as ifp3xx!

 

[pomegranate]

"The sound quality is really cool!"
That's me sold!
Sounds to me like an advertiser. These evil big companies are getting smart these days. Not smart enough though!

 

[Hunterboy55]

I'm just laughing at this thread... IMO Sony mp3 players suck (my main reason is because of that whole checking in and out of songs)

 

[elementwrx]

Sometimes i wonder where the obscene amount of money that people pay for Sony products goes...

It's obviously not R&D like apple

 

[daveman_84]

i think it's just that sony invested their time and effort into MD, which it thought was the future....turns out it wasn't, it was mp3

 

[DigDub]

i have come to a possible conclusion:
sundragon is working for sony.

sony has other businesses other than electronics. they also make movies and music records. they would not want songs to be ripped easily into mp3 and copied into a player they make. this would be a conflict of business interest. therefore, expect any network walkmans, even future models, to come with difficult to use software just to transfer music into the player. and sony is pushing very hard for atrac3 to become popular, which i doubt it ever will.

and iriver will be over? maybe. but not by sony. sony's software is cumbersome to use and irritates the end-user more than being user-friendly. iriver supports drag and drop. now beat that for ease of use.

and sundragon has based his 'sony will pwn other mp3 players' because of its price and mp3 capabilities. i don't know which cave he lives in, but many other products already have those advantages ages ago. so yea, sony will not kill iriver. at least not yet.

 

[D-EJ915]

Since SunDragon is an advertiser, I'd like to point out that if Sony is really interested in something, they should relook at the MD market in the USA and start supporting us more.

 

[Music Fanatic]

I'd rather not listen to music than have to deal with Sony's awkward's interfaces. Their DRM is truly awful.

 

[Dweebgal]

sony learnt thier lesson with that one, and have dropped the DRM out of sonicstage 2.0

 

[bangraman]

There is still DRM in Sonicstage 2. However it's less restrictive than 1.5.


A lot of what we're discussing here has to be feel in operation. See, the iPod Mini doesn't photograph well but once you hold it, you go "ahhhh.... now I get it". The Sony NW-MS players have the same sort of feeling. They are extremely well engineered and with less DRM hindrances they could be truly excellent players, arguments about Hi-MD and iPod Mini / Aiwa Gigapavit etc killing off flash players notwithstanding (I'd have to agree with that to a certain extent).


I've handled the iFP and iHP series, and I have owned the recent iMP offerings. And I have to say iRiver products still lack the design accomplishment of Japanese manufacturers. While it is absolutely true that they are on the ball with firmware upgrades, it is just as valid an argument that were the product reliable in the first place, regular firmware updates would not be required. Customer service should not be confused with releasing a product too early and attempting to fix it in the field.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Well, if only my Sony D-CJ01 supported full-range VBR mp3s properly, I might not be owning a Nomad Zen right now...

 

[DeadTrying]

Quote:

Eagle_driver said: US and European distributors mark up the price substantially over the price in Japan

Actually sundragon said
Quote:

the price mentioned in my first post is the price sales in China

They are obviously two very different nations. In fact electronics in China tend to be more or as expensive as in europe according to a Chinese friend of mine. Obviously I'm not talking about the black-market electronics.



Quote:

What kind of poster would register and post an 'ad' as his first post?

Honestly guys, whats the difference whether it's his first post or not. Ye, I'm sure he works for sony... no.. even better.. he is the Director of sony...come to Head-Fi to save his company! Ok..it wasn't the most unbiased of announcements but obviously the guy is excited about his 'finding'. Sony and IRiver are very different companies and there is no doubt that IRiver has a niche when it comes to mp3 players, especially flash based ones. Sony has other things to worry about. Releasing an excellent mp3 player without DRM would be like shooting itself in the leg since Sony is also a Record Label.

Now.. can i hear some more about this "less restrictive DRM" please?

I find this quite fascinating, what restrictions have been removed?

And on the topic of minidisc....the concept is amazing, in general sound quality of minidisc players is superior to that of similarly priced mp3 players. If MD's didn't have the shackles of Sony's DRM I think they would be my number one preference for portable music.

 

[austonia]

please let this thread die now...