According to the BBC it will have a 20Gb hard drive, but store 3000 more songs than an iPod

Shame it doesn't support any music formats apart from Sonys propriatory system and is therefore doomed to failure. Why do Sony insist on trying to get light to bend their way? The number of "standards" they have tried and failed to create is endless:

Betamax
Memorystick
Minidisk
etc

And the screen on that walkman looks nasty

30 hour battery life is impressive though, as is the shock-resistant drive

Minidisc didn't really take off in the US but it was okay over here in Europe and huge in Japan.

As for memory cards, everybody seems to want to mess about with creating a new standard every so often. MMC -> SD had DRM as the main thing. xD just to be different etc...

Minidisc, like most of Sony's formats, met limited success. It still works, it's still sold, and it's still a "good" format. I don't like it, don't use it, never will; but some people do.

Memory Stick is just as successful as any other flash card; not hugely successful, but it definitely has a following, especially with some of the extra things that they've added with it like TV support and such.

Betamax, a failure? Not quite. It didn't take off in the consumer market the way it could've, and quite possibly should've, given it's superiority to VHS. Beta, however, still makes Sony *loads* of money because it is the broadcast standard. That's right, I'm willing to bet 90% of taped shows/movies that you watch on television are playing off of one form of Beta or another (They have 4, SP [the original], SX [a digital version of the original], DigiBeta [upgraded digital] and MPEG IMX [don't know much about that one]).

I don't think you can really call any of Sony's expenditures "failures"; but I would have to say Sony is *far* overzealous and they really expect far too much out of every new technology they put out.

Quote:
'd respectfully disagree with Rob on this one. Minidiscs were far better than portable CD players

I'd have to disagree with you on that one. Before MP3 players existed and it was between MD and CD, Mds were recording on a 1:1 basis - which meant for 80 minutes of audio it would take 80 minutes to record. It took them a while for the consumer (price wise) level to even compete with USB 1.1 transfer speeds of the first MP3 players; and quite honestly I don't think there's any comparison between an MD player of today and a Karma, though that's just me.

Except for that whole proprietary compression algorithm thing.

ATRAC

I'm with you Rob, I use my minidisc for bootlegging concerts (Of course last Friday (6/25/04) I was busted for the first time at a Collective Soul show. Gave them the disc, took the recorder to my car, and fortunately they let me back in). In fact recording concerts is the reason I bought it. For listening use though I only use it mountain biking or skiing. And thats only because I don't have a Karma yet.

You forgot Universal Media Discs, or UMD for short. Aka the Playstation Portable media that aparently is universal across all PSP machines...

What was the digital cassete format that went head to head with the Minidisc and truely never got anywhere? I think it used standard tapes, or at least was backwards compatible with cassettes.

The main reason that Beta failed in the comsumer market was the lengths of the media were too short for most movies. I think, like the current memory sticks and ATRAC, Sony was just trying to keep studios happy?

None of you are old enough to remember the Sony hi-fi cassette, as sound is to video, so the hi fi cassette was to the Betamax - and
I was demonstrating the Sony surround sound format on reel - to - reel tapes by '68.

Two additional arguments to the thread
:
Philips (who have had their own failures(at least three other video formats)!) invented the compact cassette but Sony turned it into an acceptable format for widespread use.
Sony sit on both sides of the ripping/downloading argument, being both a record company and a hi-fi manufacturer: They must have some in-house politics!

What happened to the Telefunken cassette?: 2 ips and twice the width of tape, oh, well, up in heaven with the 8 track and I bet none of you remember its precursor, the King 4 - track!

DCC

I think that's digital command control now, the accepted digital format for model railways, where you can run 128 of your locomotives on the same track at the same time, as well as operate the points and signals.

Sony's "more songs than an iPod" claim seems to have sparked off an Apple/Sony tiff!!

LOL. I thought that might happen - I can't believe that Sony's marketing would make such a blatent play. Anyway, 13000 tracks...bah. I think Paul's up to about 57000.

You rang???

Although I did have to clean up my player to make room for new stuff. But just wait until the 100GB drives are available!