kino170878

I got exactly the same response from an ebay seller in Japan regarding the new 16gb NW-A919. Only Japanese menu display is available. Edit - I think the only hope for us is that the Japanese public attach value to learning English, so it *may* be a possibility that the option for an English menu is available somewhere on the player. Certainly a lot of electronics have English displays, this would be quite a break from tradition if Sony were to adopt such a bias towards Japanese only.

To all those still hoping for the firmware update. Sony wants you to show your loyalty by buying a brand new player.

So it's a Japanese menu display.....I wonder if other members on this board can give some insights on how difficult it is to navigate through a largely Japanese screen. Because if it is at least intuitive, I would still consider buying one.

The old models have to make way for the new ones, which is hardly surprising. At least they are still supporting Atrac with the new line of players.

No

You have our sympathies because most likely the player is gone. Sonicstage and its associated hardware are inseparable, and it looks like you tried to break that marriage by using drag and drop. In a way it's really admirable how far Sony is committed in protecting its products from any outside interference.

Go for it. This player still has Atrac the best sounding codec and native gapless playback. If I was in Japan I would buy a truckload and sell them off for a profit.

Apple has done them in mate, the whole world's turned iPod crazy. It's time to join the herd.

I don't believe these Sony MP3 players will ever have gapless, now or in the future. 1) As somebody else already stated, the demand simply just isn't there for it. 2) Sony's philosophy is why give them quality music. Don't forget that the company is still recovering from the Atrac debacle. If I need gapless playback at the highest quality for a portable, I go for my minidisc. For everything else the NWZ units seem to be unbeatable.

I have a very old Casio RZ1 sampling drum machine, which when I bought through ebay the drum pads were very loose and didn't respond as they should have. Seeing as it was totally obsolete I really had nothing to loose so I opened it up, carefully avoided the circuitry and somehow managed to keep the pads in place with sticky tape! It worked great in the end. I personally would never have dared performing any type of surgery on an advanced piece of equipment like the Sony HDD players. Best to try the repair center even though the cost is high.

1. It sounds like all the music from the player has been erased. I think only Sony might be able to recover them. 2. Always keep a back up of your files in at least two places. Everybody first learns about this the hard way unfortunately.

This is great news for those who use MP3, WMA, and WAV formats.....but probably no room for Atrac? Or is there?

Could somebody please tell me if the new NWZ units can play back WAV files gapless? The older units were able to play Atrac and (I think) WAV files with no gaps and this is important for me.

I predict that this model will eventually sell outside Japan, minus atrac support of course. It makes no financial sense to restrict your market, even Sony knows that.

Is it just me or do Apple supporters seem to be getting a little worried now about Sony's drag and drop capability? To me this is such a significant new move that I think Sony might finally be able to steal some of the market share back, or is it too late now? Interesting times ahead that's for sure.

Sony wants you to buy into the new line of products. I very much doubt that there is going to be an update for the old line. The only hope is that they will soon rectify the gapless problem on the new models. I will continue to use Atrac for my S706 and Hi-MD, as I have use for recording and gapless support.

Actions speak so much louder than words. Let's see if they really do release a new Sonicstage version.

There is hope.....buy the new Sony NAS-50HDE Gigajuke Hi-fi or the NAC-HD1E deck. These are HDD units which have huge space, either 80gb or 250gb. Simply hook up your player through the usb socket and it will transfer all of your files to the unit's hard disc. Then you can buy another Sony portable device and re-transfer all your files to the new player. Of course, you cannot back up to the computer in the usual way like through Sonicstage - this is Sony's way of protecting your music (some would say more like hijacking it, but anyway). Good luck.

Found out some more interesting stuff. On paper, the deck version (NAC-HD1E) looks incredible. It's a 250gb deck! With digital in and out! Imagine my joy, but then the sad realization that it was too good to be true. On page 80 of the manual, it states: "Use the optional digital coaxial cable when connecting to the DIGITAL COAXIAL IN and OUT jacks, and use the optional digital optical cable when connecting to the DIGITAL OPTICAL IN and OUT connectors. The DIGITAL (COAXIAL/OPTICAL) OUT jack/connector is designed for monitoring sound through the connected digital amplifier or other device. It is therefore not possible to make a digital recording from the signal on a connected digital recording device, regardless of the type of material (source) recorded on this unit." Is this Sony being paranoid again over digital recordings? And get this. The unit recognizes every single atrac device that was ever connected to it. It keeps a record of how many times you have transferred material over. Incredible. And there's more: You have to go online in order to restore the data from the PC from the previous time you backed the contents. The backed up folder on your PC can only be recognized and restored to the original unit (the NAC-HD1E) and not to any other device. And although I don't understand what it means, the manual says you can get a warning when you try and restore the contents more than 4 times. I don't know, I thought this was the answer to Sonicstage but I think I will be staying away from it to be honest. Unless some of you experts out there can give some more insights and ways around these hazards.

Some more questions if you could....if you record a cd onto the unit's hard disc in say ATRAC 256 and then transfer or back up the hard disc content to a folder on your PC, can those oma files then be transferred to other ATRAC devices through Sonicstage and also conversion to WAV? I am thinking about my Hi-md player which can play the ATRAC files. Or does the copy protection get added to the oma files as soon as you copy the cd the first time? Will Mp3 be more free of restrictions in that case? Thanks

Taken from http://stuff.tv/news/id-6165/default.aspx "The jukebox returns, looking a lot smaller and with fewer air bubbles. Still, we say 40,000 tunes on an 80GB hard disk is an improvement Sony's spooned the guts from a mini-system, added a colour screen and hard disk then crammed all the CD and DAB goodness back in to bring us the Giga Juke – the 21st century answer to the jukebox. Sony reckons it's the fastest way to rip tunes from your archaic CD collection with a 16x speed CD drive whipping the contents from your albums at a rate of nearly an hour's worth every minute. As well as converting your music collection to MP3, lossless linear PCM or, for Walkman and MiniDisc fans, ATRAC, it'll take them straight from your PC, MP3 player or even turntable, adding any missing artist, song or album tags along the way. But the piece de resistance is its inner DJ, which automatically sorts tracks into one of 23 'mood' playlists ensuring relaxation, romance or all-night party ambience is just seconds away. We're loading it with Class A pulling tracks as we speak." A more in depth article here http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/06/21/re...50hde_gigajuke/ Pictures here http://www.engadget.com/photos/sonys-giga-...r-music/197158/ Seems like it is only being released here in Europe. What an amazing piece of kit, is anybody thinking of buying one?