Sony's getting back into the video Walkman game
By Evan Blass 
posted October 12th 2006 10:39AM
posted October 12th 2006 10:39AM
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That must be the corporate mantra at Sony these days, where the former undisputed king of portable audio is still playing catch up with current market leader Apple, doing everything it can to pry consumers away from the iPod's loving embrace. At today's official unveiling of the NW-S700 and NW-S600 series' of flash-based DAPs, Senior EV Hiroshi Yoshioka let slip an even more tantalizing bit of info: Sony is developing a "video Walkman" that will go head-to-head with the 5.5G iPod and Microsoft Zune. No details were revealed regarding the specs of this upcoming device, but what's interesting is the fact that this will actually be the company's third foray into portable video players, following 2003's GigaPocket PCVA-HVP20 (pictured) and 2004's HMP-A1. For those of you that can remember back that far, you'll recall that these 20GB models offerred fairly attractive features for their time, including MPEG-1/2/4 support, and, in the case of of the A1, very un-Sonlylike MP3 playback. Now that the availability of downloadable video has blossomed -- both legally and illegally -- it would seem that Sony has a better shot this time around, although it's unlikely that the new PMP will achieve the status of "iPod-killer." And hey, even if this product turns out to be another flop, they still have the PS3 to fall back on, right? Right?
Sony's problem has never been the hardware (really)..its alwsays been about their crappy software..in particular the craptacular SonicStage and Connect.
Sony; develop decent software to support your hardware.
...and yet it still doesn't take a genious to work out that NW-S700 is SO MUCH LESS CATCHY than "iPod."
The average consumer (NOT us techy people)needs something catchy to make them buy it so that they can discover the features. Even M$ has finally caught in with Zune. (although studies show that pollysylabilic words are more catchy, hence names like dan, sam, mike often becoming danny, mikey, sammy, etc... especially amonst a younger demographic)
However, saying that, look at how popular Seven-of-Nine was ;-)
How about "Overprice-ey"?
Or "Potentaily Fire-ey"
That rings with my demographic.
Sony has a better shot also on their software side (Connect?) being that this market is becoming more divided (iTunes, Zune, PlayForSome, Samsung, Rhapsody, Creative? etc etc).
Yeh I loved Sony products as well, However When I boght a new Gateway comp the Sonic stage KEEPS crashing. Now I have 5 Minidiscs players and 2 Sony MP3 players and NO way to load music onto them. Sucks ass I just bought the Nexus 1GB player from Samsung for my XM radio. Gotta say so for Not hating it. Real nice and easy to work with.Sony PLEASE fix your Stupid Sonicstage. You have to realize, you have awesome hradware its your software you idiots.
Sony and MS really need to team up if they want to take on Apple. Sony for the hardware and MS for the software. In my opinion, Sony designs usually look good and have unique characteristics. MS on the other hand needs help with hardware design which is understandable given how relatively new they are to this marketspace. But put them together now and you would have some great looking and highly usable products.
From the linked article:
"Sony Corp. (6758.T) said on Thursday it is developing a video-capable Walkman, playing catch-up with Apple Computer Inc.'s (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) market-leading iPod.
[...]
Apple launched a video-enabled iPod last October."
That's a bit misleading, since Apple launched the 5Gen video-enabled iPod a long while ago, the October being the 5.5Gen model.
thats why it said _last_ october meaning october 2005, when the 5G was released.
Why not just add a HDD to a PSP? The screen is good (I'm amazed as to how well the 5G iPod has done with such a nasty screen), it can play files smoothly, and is eminently hackable.
The problem with Sony is they don't know how to market alot of their cutting edge electronics to an American audience. Sure they sell plenty of flat screen TV's and Playstations in the US but I see alot of cool gadgets coming out of Asia that never see the light of day here.
Forget about hiring a Brit or Japanese guy as the company CEO, Sony needs an American running that operation but I doubt that will ever happen anytime soon.
The reason why ipods and now zune are popular is not because the technology is especially great. It's that Apple and Microsoft know how to market it and get you to buy it.
Let's be honest here, it's not the best functioning player that sells, it's the most popular one.
why the h*ll does it fu*k up my name ? it writes "tho" even though i post it as thomas_h.
Very good point about the naming of the device.
Sony's best move they could possibly do would be to make it work & sync with WMP, with explorer integration so you could also (if you wanted to) drag and drop music and video into it like a hard drive. I'd buy it in an instant if it did. I bought their NW-HD3 which was simply awesome, but a year later Sonicstage began to get to me and it had to be sold. It's a shame because its battery life and music quality trumped the iPod's at the time.
I also meant to say that Sony Viao, Sony Walkman, Sony Cybershot, etc... are all seperate companies, hence a few years ago Viao and Walkman came out with basically the same portable audio product. Also hence the reason why PSP is a bit lacking in music/video, its a seperate company, ceo everything.
I love Constantine's comment about the iPod and the Zune being so popular... Um, dude, there hasn't been a single Zune officially sold yet. Give-aways and pre-orders yeah, but nothing sold yet... kinda goes against the idea of "popular" doesn't it.
I sincerely hope Sony gets it right this time. They've put out alot of great, stylish hardware that just didn't have the software to match... much like my Viliv P1.
Boy, consumers have a short memory. Sony's hardware is usually topnotch. But for me, the word "rootkit" comes to mind when I hear Sony's name now and I have vowed to stay clear of their products.
Why not put a hard drive in their PSP? I think that's pretty close to what they'll do - similar quality screen, same cross media bar interface. Of course, unless Sony draw on their massive resources and release a movie/tv show download store, their now respectable efforts will go to waste.
In a sense Sony is trying to catch up with Apple but then again Sony did have a video player out a year or so before apple did.