Sony's new player vs. iPod

satchmo · February 15, 2002 8:37AM

Okay, it 's the best MP3 player out there, but the competition is coming fast and furious.

Is it time to drop the price given what's out there?

Should Apple be concerned about this product from Sony?

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jambo · February 15, 2002 10:13AM

Sony 5 hours V iPod >50 hours

Apple worried? Nah.

J

gumby5647 · February 15, 2002 10:37AM

[quote]Originally posted by jamiemarshall:

Sony 5 hours V iPod >50 hours

Apple worried? Nah.

J<hr></blockquote>

iPod's battery only lasts 10hours

serrano · February 15, 2002 10:50AM

and once the charge is gone man, that's it. game over.

jambo · February 15, 2002 11:26AM

[quote]Originally posted by gumby5647:



iPod's battery only lasts 10hours<hr></blockquote>

Only 10 hours? I think that's pretty good actually and lots of people are reporting a battery life of 12 hours plus.

J :cool:

ijerry · February 15, 2002 11:30AM

okay so if you were to only run off the battery it would last 10 hours, but there are adapters for the car and home, not to mentions you can stll pull power off the ibook if you choose. I have been able to extend my battery life with car adapter for a three day trip, no to mention i did not have to swap any stupid MD, and I still didn't have to listen to the same song twice.

tigerwoods99 · February 15, 2002 11:43AM

Ummm......am I missing something here? Was I supposed to be linked to a Sony MD (minidisc) player/recorder that I've seen on the market for ages? Sorry, this isn't new news. The iPod is easily a lot better. I thought Sony came out with a new player judging by the topic. Moving on....

bodhi · February 15, 2002 11:53AM

God, could there be a few more buttons?

eugene · February 15, 2002 12:36PM

In real world usage, the iPod will last well over 10 hours.

sizzle chest · February 15, 2002 12:49PM

That Sony player looks interesting -- I like the idea of using the MD disc as removable data storage. But then there are aspects which are not so great, at second glance.

It holds 5 hours worth of music, or 300 minutes. It transfers data at "up to" 32x, which means it would take 10 minutes (probably more in actual practice) to fill a disk. My iPod would transfer that amount of music (approx 4-5 CDs worth of low-bandwidth music) in a snap.

Also, it's not storing MP3 files -- it's converting MP3 files (or CD audio) into ATRAC format files on the MD itself. So if you convert an MP3 to ATRAC, you're compressing twice, once in the CD-to-MP3 stage, and again in the MP3-to-ATRAC stage. Quality is further compromised.

Generally I really like Sony, but this is not an iPod killer.

[ 02-15-2002: Message edited by: sizzle chest ]

jambo · February 15, 2002 2:53PM

[quote]Originally posted by jamiemarshall:

Sony 5 hours V iPod >50 hours

Apple worried? Nah.

J<hr></blockquote>

Just to clarify, I'm talking about 'hours worth of music' not battery life.

J

eman · February 15, 2002 3:25PM

[quote]Originally posted by jamiemarshall:



Just to clarify, I'm talking about 'hours worth of music' not battery life.

J<hr></blockquote>

How many people really need 50 hours worth of music when they go somewhere?

apple.otaku · February 15, 2002 4:09PM

That Sony player is huge! Just look at the size of it compared to the car adaptor kit!

applenut · February 15, 2002 4:20PM

[quote]Originally posted by EmAn:



How many people really need 50 hours worth of music when they go somewhere?<hr></blockquote>

I need a lot more than that.

With an iPod I would be able to pick the song that I want to play anytime I want without having to worry about switching disks or whether or not I have it loaded today.

crayz · February 15, 2002 4:29PM

Right. Regardless of the battery life, I want the player to hold as many songs as possible. There are often times I bring my RioVolt on a 20 min walk, but I am very glad I've got 10 hours of music on my disc, because it lets me listen to what I want to - my choice *as I walk*, not when I prepared the disc(or loaded the songs on, in the iPod's case).

It's also a time-saver to not constantly be switching songs onto and off of a player.

ghost_user_name · February 15, 2002 6:02PM

I see the reason for concern but my head didnt really turn. Sony, Windows, the MP3 player and all, Id rather give my left ball.

OS X, iTunes, and iPod thats the sound of music that moves my bod.

[ 02-15-2002: Message edited by: FatBoy ]

jambo · February 15, 2002 6:04PM

[quote]Originally posted by EmAn:



How many people really need 50 hours worth of music when they go somewhere?<hr></blockquote>

It's all about choice my dear boy!! You're obviously not going to listen to the whole 50 hours but you can choose from the many songs within. How many people need 100+ TV channels?

J :cool:

thentro · February 15, 2002 8:20PM

MD players are shit. I had one. The sound is not that great and they are prone to breaking after a while. The storage space is not that good and to get 5 hours (bs) the sound would not be woth it. A MD player compresses data with an old codec and 1 MD holds less data then a CD.

its not in the same zone as an ipod

matsu · February 15, 2002 8:40PM

iPod wins. Thread over. hahaha

But for the iPod to go into the digital device hall of fame they need to add a digital voice recorder that records directly to MP3 and AIFF format through a high quality firewire mic, also an FM tuner wouldn't hurt. But iPod would simply be awsome as a voice recorder. You could record lectures, meetings, interviews literally for hours at a time before downloading them to your comp. You save the important stuff, and dump the rest. Imagine making a CD of an important lecture and chapter marking key explanations so you can directly to what you need. Students, journos, lawyers, doctors, researchers. iPod would become a great tool for work and play!

mike d · February 15, 2002 10:15PM

[quote]Originally posted by thentro:

MD players are shit. I had one. The sound is not that great and they are prone to breaking after a while. The storage space is not that good and to get 5 hours (bs) the sound would not be woth it. A MD player compresses data with an old codec and 1 MD holds less data then a CD.

its not in the same zone as an ipod<hr></blockquote>

MD players rock! ATRAC compression is head and sholders above mp3. It is proprietary, but sounds much better than most mp3 bitrates, with MDLP you can cram 5 cd's worth of music onto one disc.... another nice thing is that you can record on a minidisc. Hopefully this will be implemented in the next rev of the ipod (the portal player arm chip supports mp3 encoding so I don't see why it wouldn't be added). Untill the ipod can record minidisc will be my format of choice for recording live music.

matsu · February 16, 2002 7:57AM

Yes ATRAC compression is quite good, but not quite so good if you want use the MDLP function. A 320Kbps bitrate MP3 is just as good if not better. You couldn't tell the difference from a minidisc, but not many people seem to encode their MP3's that high -- mostly because they listen to synthsized music anyway: it's much harder to destroy the natural sound of a recording when there isn't any to begin with.

Sony's new player vs. iPod

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