Sony's assault on the download market
Sony seems intent on trying our patience recently with gadgets that offer cool hardware but are hopelessly hamstrung by DRM and own-brand lockins. Latest of the bunch is the NAS-A1 NetJuke stereo it's launching as part of the Any Music joint venture (background), which is based on the model of living-room multimedia PCs masquerading as home audio, tied to a music download service, that can also be hooked up to a TV or a separate LCD screen for web/mail functions. The thing we find tedious about the whole deal is that it seems you can only stream music to the stereo over a home LAN from one of Sony's Vaio PCs, and that you can only check out music to portable players via MemorySticks or NetMD. The other uninspiring aspect is that the NAS-A1 costs Y90,000 (about $830), which seems like an awful lot. If you have a broadband line you likely have a PC and a stereo already, in which case you'll probably be looking to hook the two together using something like Prismiq's MediaPlayer rather than buy a box like this.
