pata2001

In short, there is NO legal way. Bypassing the protection is illegal per the DMCA. Google and download DVD decrypter. It can use brute force method to rip any region DVDs regardless of what region your drive is. Once ripped, you can transcode and burn it back to a DVD blank, and voila, region free version. Another solution is by using AnyDVD http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html It's not free though.

... and out of stock too. A paper launch.

iPod 80GB, 20hours rated battery life for music.

NW-00x series have very noticable hiss. However, you might find on sale quite cheap. 1 biggest annoyance is that the unit lost resume position after charging with an AC adaptor.

What, a standard internal hard-drive? Seagate.

I've been using Sonicstage since it was OpenMG jukebox, with one of Sony's first ever Network walkman (NW-E3), and never had any problems (other than the lack of unicode support). However, no problems != good usability, especially by today's standard, where there are much better solutions out there. I'm spending more of my time in enjoying my music with iPod + iTunes, instead of dealing with registry edits and applocale with sonicstage.

Shouldn't have done that. Bite the bullet and re-rip your music.

Let's see: -Gapless MP3 -Usable software -Unicode software and hardware Oh, I'm already there. Those that look for battery life, the 2G nano is rated for 24hour per charge. Now, I'm wishing for a nano sporting larger screen and video playback. Of course, Sony USA doesn't seem to be bothered in releasing their own A808.

Videos are drag-n-drop, so if the A808 is a USB mass storage compliant, it should be detected as an external storage with any OS. Also, Intel Macs can run windows using bootcamp.

The general recommendation for now is not to use Vista. Even iTunes have problems with Vista. 20GB iPod? Must be a really old one.

1. No. CDDA/WAV is uncompressed, so the quality will be equal to whatever original you have (Atrac3). 2. The CD converted from Atrac3 will technically sound worse than the original CD obviously. However, there shouldn't be further degradation when converting form Atrac3 to CDDA, just like your first question. 3. Use foobar with the ABX plugin. Convert the Atrac3 track to WAV, then you can use foobar to ABX the original WAV and the WAV from the Atrac3 file. 4. No. The software simply decode the Atrac3 file into uncompressed WAV. Atrac3 is lossy compression, so there is no going back to the original quality ever.

Most current Sony players can display kanji just fine. Even my old E99 can display kanji and Korean just fine. The problem has always been Sonicstage.

This is intended for China market (and I gues South east Asia too). I don't think this will be released in Japan, let alone US.

Most current electronics use Lithium Ion rechargable battery, and you do NOT want it to deplete completely (unless for recalibration). On LiIon batteries, frequent partial discharges and recharges are recommended.

Yup. Even Steve Jobs said it at the D5 conference, but Sony just doesn't get it.

Why? Sony is in the business to make money. iPod currently has the largest market share for DAP. It's common business sense to make accesories for products with large market share to make profits. Of course, Sony could've made those accesories for their own portable players in the beginning, but they missed the boat.

Nope. When converted, that was the price in US dollar. Some electronics ARE actually more expensive in certain countries compared to the US, mainly due to taxes and/or duties.

Hey, I didn't ask you. I know you did.

Don't worry, the PS2 still has plenty of life left. Look a Xbox and Gamecube, the moment Xbox360 and Wii came out, development for the 2 older consoles went poof. Today, games are still being released on the PS2.

Done any ABX yet?

Sony's colored sound != sound quality. To superiorduck: Congrats on the iPod. Try to learn using iTunes and creating smart playlist to get more enjoyment form your iPod.

Again, I can only confirm gapless AAC playback on the S70x series, not any other network walkmen. I know that the E00x series CANNOT play AAC gaplessly. I presume anything older than the S70x couldn't either. Even the PS3 cannot play AAC gaplessly. I simply use one of my various Super Eurobeat non-stop CDs, ripped via Sonicstage to AAC 128kbps.

1. Next time if you're going to post high res screen shots, put a 56k warning on the thread title. 2. This is a "feature" of Sony/Sonicstage. 3. SS 3.0 is old. Download and install version 4.2/4.3. Also, you might want to use the Asia Pacific version, which doesn't seem to have this problem. 4. You might have to bite the bullet and re-initialize your unit, and re-transfer your music. 5. Other people are too busy bragging about Sony's hyphothetical sound quality, instead of acknowledging and helping the problems of using Sony products.

So far, I can only verify the S70x series can play AAC gaplessly. AAC tracks has to be ripped via Sonicstage. AAC tracks ripped via other method (eg. iTunes) and imported to SS sre not gapless.

Maybe because the Australian government implements higher import taxes/duties/whatever you call them for foreign companies? Or maybe the cost of running a company is higher in Australia than other countries? IMO things are pricey in Europe and Asia too, mainly because of those taxes/duties. But hey, at least you have them. In the US, they're not even available/released.