NW-A1200 officially released to US market

[dsb]

SONY said it will be available on July 20.Looks SONY will never give up US market after encountered so many software and hardware problems.

[Beethovenian]

For now, the $199 price for an 8GB player seems pretty competitive. Of course, Apple may soon drop a bigger capacity iPod with flash memory and that will wipe any price-advantage Sony may have now. What worries me, though, is that releasing the player here may mean they don't expect to have a newer player so soon. I think the A series is way too flawed to survive long, and Sony needs to come up with something better, more solid as fast as possible. And it could make a market research to check what people really want. I doubt users of the A series see much need for Artist Link.

[Ascariss]

Anyone have a link to where this info is psoted or?

the a3000 has alraedy been cut from the sonystyle site here in canada, and I am hoping a new DAP is released in the fall, but my guess is it will come in october november time frame for christmas. shame.

[pata2001]

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP....rs_capacity_8gb

Wow, talk about late in the game, really late. $199 for 8GB might sound attractive, but everybody else is moving to flash memory. Plus, Creative Zen micro photo is 8GB also, with color screen and photo capability. When Apple start churning their 10GB flash based iPod, the NW-A1200 won't look that hot anymore.

So, is this the "iPod killer" that Sony USA was talking about? Instead of designing a new device, they just released an old product late. How smart. Funny thing is I was at a Sonystyle store today, but I didn't see any ads/announcement about the NW-A1200. No RH1 in sight either.

To me, it's probably more like this:

Sony exec1: Damn, we were blabbing about an iPod competitor, but we actually have nothing.

Exec2: Hey, we have a bunch of old stock of NW-A1200. What should we do?

Exec1: Let's dump it for the US, and pretend is the next greatest thing from Sony.

[dsb]

Obviously, RH1 is aiming for professioal. There isn't much room in comsumer market for this type machine. That's why SONY dropped all limits on uploading and copy sound tracks. You can get RH1 at SONY business solution website for $399, or $329 at minidisco.com

I guess even for the hotest Toshiba gigabeat S, the total sale in US market is far less than 10, 000 units.

Edited June 29, 2006 by dsb

[maggior]

Ugh...they finally release a new HD based DAP in the US, and it's an 8GB model. Why not the 20GB one!?!?!?

I'm so glad I decided not to wait and bought an HD3 in Ebay.

[lamewing]

Lovely to see we are getting the A-series players (but not the A3000) 9 months too late and no E00 series or A-6xx units either. grrrr.

So, has Sony given up, at least here, in the U.S.? Do they have another HDD DAP in the works? Sony keeps recreating the DAP for each "generation". There is no continuity (no to mention different units for each region) with their products. They killed the lovely pocket vaio after less than a year, the same to the HD5 and now the A-series (flash at leats) is being put down.

I would hope that Sony is able to rebound and at least compete as 2nd place with their Walkman equipment, but they are going to have to basically create a player that has the same lack of restrictions that the new MZ-RH1 has (ie. none to speak of).

They won't do this folks say. Ahem, look at the PSP. Drag-and-drop mp3 support, no software needed. Album art, ID tag support. All there. AND, the PSP still provides ATRAC support via Sonic Stage (if that is your bag, baby). Heck, add in player-to-player music transfers!!!

THIS is what Sony needs to do. They need to understand that the average Joe on the street is not the enemy. We are not the ones pirating all the software and music. So what if we share a few songs off between our players. I think I have shared maybe 18 songs via my DAP players. Heck I gave more cassette/minidisc mix tapes away when I was younger.

What I am trying to say is that the DAP is not the typical vector for trading music...if you even do this at all, so why even play the DRM restriction nonsense in the first place, ESPECIALLY when that is one of the main reasons why your DAPs don't sell so well?

EDIT...While others state the color LCD isn't needed on a DAP, I disagree. Video, I don't really care about, if it is added, with no strange restrictions, that is fine I guess. Look at the Pocket Vaio and the DH10P. Both had great color LCDs that allowed the user to view jacket art, but moreso than the iPod. With these players you can browse and choose your music based on the jacket art versus using the silly menu system. This is how we all used to find our music, by the Vinyl/CD cover, so why don't we have this option on the most current models?

Edited July 3, 2006 by lamewing

[Beethovenian]

I agree with all you say, Lamewing. All this talk about not allowing drag-and-drop because of copyright protection sounds stupid when Sony itself offers support for that in the PSP (and the Sony Ericsson Walkman phones, I believe?). What they need to do is extricate Atrac of the OpenMG restrictions and distribute free plugins for other software. Then the format could also have a second lease on life (let other DAP makers support it as well). Go on, create your own music management software, but let people use any other they want by moving the database creation to the player itself, not the PC. That may also help in reducing the ridiculous load times you have to wait to jump tracks or accessing the menu.

And I think a good interface example is the Gigabeat S one, the Portable Media Center. When you browse your artists lists, it displays thumbnails of album covers. I agree, it's nice to see the cover when looking for your music.

[lecram1971]

Here in Chile (South America) happens the same thing. All NW-HDx (The HD5 was the last one) disappeard from all the stores and now appears the RH-1 (Minidisc) and the NW-A1200 (US$300 aprox)

I can´t see how they will fight the IPOD Video with units of 8GB and at that price. The IPOD Nano (4GB) it´s expensive here too compared with IPOD Video.

I hope a new model appears soon that can compete the IPOD Video and be release in here or at least in USA.

[lamewing]

Well there is supposed to be a new device or two this fall, that will replace the A-series(?) and something about a video player as well. I hope Sony doesn't mess this up as the fall could eaisly be the time that Apple released their 6th generation iPod.

Either Sony will finally make a good showing or they, once again, will be at least 6+ months behind the times. /sigh