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Hello Sony Walkman B100 -- bye bye ATRAC and SonicStage
An interesting bit of news from the kids over at ATRACLife this morning. According to "trustworthy insiders," Sony is set to introduce another Walkman stick -- the B100 series -- which supports drag 'n drop music transfer... no SonicStage required. Perhaps oxymoronic considering the source, the player will not support Sony's MiniDisc era codec, ATRAC; a milestone in and of itself. Instead, the player touts MP3, non-DRM'd WMA, and presumably AAC like we've seen in the recent lineup of dedicated Walkman players and phones. The latter necessary to get your DRM-free EMI on (at least initially). The B100 series will ship sometime before May has sprung in 1, 2, and 4GB capacities with or without FM radios. Nice, now where's that nano killer?
Sony to support AAC -- heck not to freeze over
When Sony execs recently announced that the company was prepping to take on the iPod with new software, a download service and new digital audio players, we didn't expect the company's first move to be to announce support for the AAC audio format. But plans by Sony to include the format in the latest version of its Sonic Stage software -- and, presumably, in future portable players, as well -- makes perfect sense. After all, the PSP -- not to mention most Sony Ericsson musicphones -- already supports AAC, and Sony was one of the developers (along with AT&T, Dolby and others) of the format in the first place. However, that hasn't stopped various pundits from concluding that Sony's AAC support marks some kind of victory for the company that leads the market for portable media players (or as PortalPlayer likes to call them, "our biggest customer"). But despite headlines such as "Sony bows to Apple format," which appeared on Asahi.com earlier today, Sony will not be supporting Apple's FairPlay DRM, so iTunes-purchased tracks will remain iPod-only. And, chances are, despite the AAC support, Sony's products will still be Sonic Stage-only, so you can probably forget about using iTunes with your next-gen Bean. Now, move along. There's nothing going on here.
