sxc

Well there is a Sony Strategy meeting in New York on 30 September by Howard Stringer. Maybe it is a continuation of last week's strategy meeting, but will contain more tangible product details than last week's announcement.

So any idea of when Connect Player is going to be released?

And there's no discount on these 1st Gen units? I wonder if their inventory system is reporting wrong numbers....

Love it! Finally something to get excited about from Sony.

Any approximate timeframe as to when it comes out?

I also had to initialize my HD5 before it would work with the install of 3.2. I wonder if its because my old SS was the US version, and this is the UK version? How do you get it to display US Connect again instead of UK Connect? Also, with my HD5, I get the 192k Atrac3plus option. The removal of LP4 is going to p.ss off the old NetMD users!

So if you convert a file to Atrac 128k and try to transfer it to a HDD or MD device, what happens?

wow - let us know if you can find any new features!

We should hope Apple sends him an ipod. As soon as John Howard is seen using an ipod it will lose all street cred.

Here it says that there are some "hidden features" added when you upgrade the firmware relating to removing the volume hack and reducing overall volume. Are you able to confirm this in your reading of the pages? http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=225784

This makes for interesting reading: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05180/530332.stm This excerpt gives us hope that an even more improved SonicStage is coming.....

With the support of playlists in the NW-HD5, and the new way that Sonicstage sorts and stores music based on its ID tags, I thought that it may have improved the way it imports m3u playlists. Unfortunately I was wrong. Just for example you already have an mp3 file in your SonicStage library. If you then create a m3u playlist using Windows Media Player which includes this song, and then you import it to sonicStage, SS makes a duplicate entry of this song in your library. If you then transfer the playlist, it will re-transcode the mp3. So you will have 2 transcodings of the same mp3 file. How stupid is that??

I noticed that if you change the fields of a MP3 file in SS 3.0 such as album or artist, SS will cleverly change the ID tags of the MP3 file. However if you change the MP3 ID tags in another program, the fields in SS will not update, even if you reimport the file. Hmmmm....

With the support of playlists in the NW-HD5, and the new way that Sonicstage sorts and stores music based on its ID tags, I thought that it may have improved the way it imports m3u playlists. Unfortunately I was wrong. Just for example you already have an mp3 file in your SonicStage library. If you then create a m3u playlist using Windows Media Player which includes this song, and then you import it to sonicStage, SS makes a duplicate entry of this song in your library. If you then transfer the playlist, it will re-transcode the mp3. So you will have 2 transcodings of the same mp3 file. How stupid is that??

Yes SonicStage 3 is okay if you can take the time to create your own playlists, but iTunes and Windows Media Player will make their own playlists such as "4-5 star rated songs" based on how often you listen to a song, and "Songs you haven't listened to for a week". The ratings from the player based on what you listen to on the player also get transferred back to the computer for further enhancement of the playlists.

Judging from this, it looks like real playlist functionality is implemented. Now if only the generation of playlists in SonicStage 3 could be improved so that playlists were generated automatically. Anyone know if any more updates like this are on the horizon?

Given the UK pricing, signs are looking good. The HD5 = GBP 199. The 20 gb ipod = GBP 209. It will be interesting for me what the HK prices will be. So far the new Network Walkman pricing is totally out of whack compared to overseas pricing. Compared to the ipod shuffle, the 512MB flash Sony is more than double Apple's pricing. In the US the premium over the ipod is much much less (10% I think). EDIT: I just realised that Sony has revised the pricing of all the network walkmans in the US and matched Apple model for model. Which makes the HK pricing look even more ridiculous.

To MDFreak: Not wanting to be pushy but did you end up getting to meet with Sony?

Has anyone tried using this with a NW-HDx HDD walkman?

They will be releasing a 30GB special edition in the UK according to reports. With the revamped UI, can anyone see if it means they have implemented real playlists? ie a song that is in 2 playlists is only copied over once? Also I wonder if the Hi-MD card reader thing will work with this?

It is MSRP, but in HK I don't think you can get much discount unless you find a parallel import. But the point is....most punters are not going to want to "work" to get a lower price on these devices that is still likely to be more expensive than the competition. They are somewhat desirable, but not *that* desirable. The pricing in HK is totally out of whack with overseas pricing for these models. $1698 = USD 212 and 117% premium to ipod (and even more expensive than 4GB ipod mini). In the US, this model is $149, a 50% premium to ipod shuffle and cheaper than 4GB ipod mini.

Pricing for NW-E105 (512MB) and NW-E103 (256MB) has been released in HK. They are $1698 and $1398 respectively. This compares to $1,170 and $780 for the ipod shuffle. ie more than 100% more expensive. The sonys should have some price premium, but not this much premium. Sony is pricing themself out of the HK market, one of the few places where Sony still has some cache.

To MDFreak: How did your meeting with Sony go? What information were you able to get?

If you could ask them about future models of HDD players and what they will have it would be much appreciated.

So does SS 3.0 let you transfer MP3s to current Hi-MDs without conversion? I doubt it...but please tell me I'm wrong!