NWD-B100 announced

[LuLu]

From Engadget

NWD-B100

"Looks like Sony finally took the wraps off its Network Walkman NWD-B100, which we first heard about months ago. The featherweight player is landing in Europe come August (sorry, no US release info as of yet), and has a 3-line color LCD, comes in 1GB (NWD-B103 / B103F) and 2GB sizes (NWD-B105 / 105F), and features an FM tuner, mic / voice recorder, up to 12 hours battery life, and perhaps best of all, it's now ATRAC-free (MP3 and WMA only) with mass-storage mode, meaning you can officially throw out your copy of SonicStage. Sony, welcome to 2007 -- we could almost kiss you."

Click link above for pics.

LOG

[Ascariss]

told ya it was coming

wierd that the 4 gig model is not going to be sold. haha if this is not sold in canada, I might pick one up when I am in europe in december.

[AntiPod]

>.>

12 hours of battery hours??? u r kidding me, that's even lower than the S200 series. not to mention it is probably a result done in the labs, not in real life use =/

i had been spoiled by the 50 hrs of E507 that anything under 20 hours is not acceptable

getting rid of SS is a good thing to many ppl, but i think the B100s does not have anything that stands out against many mp3 players from other brands, and sony's price often make ppl back up

i will not consider this player only because it has sony's label on it

[Old skool D]

Looks nice, but do Sony think lodas of people are going to but this because it won't accept Atrac?

[Shinji Ikeda]

Unfortunately, Engadget can never see the forest through the tree. A site that is so wrapped up in their small little world. They also present opinion as news.

12 hours of battery life. Give me a break. 2GB of memory. Come on, can it really be believed that this product signals a shift away from SonicStage and ATRAC.

Sony has made various audio device since the first Walkman. From CD to MD to voice records and continue to. There is nothing evolutionary here.

[bogon07]

I hope Sony doesn't think of this as progress - only 1 or 2GB and 12hrs battery.

It is going to spend most of its life connected to a computer being recharged.

Atleast it has a standard USB connector

SS is now reasonably stable and they dump it!

[cauldron]

I think Sony has gotten a lot of criticism in the past (and still do now - see the PS3 debacle), simply because they choose to do things their own way, and not listen to the critics (who may or may not be right). So even if this doesn't make a lot of sense, they're just giving the public what the public thinks it "wants".

[Ascariss]

Ok I did some digging around, hehe since I wanted to see what else on the market is available. I can most of you are not in favour of this player, since 12 hours is poor compared to other sony products and the thing looks cheapo hehe. Sure I agree on the former, but not on the later, the player looks fine, almost like a mini PS3 lol. One thing that is weird is the players name.'

NWD-B100. anyone care to help with the name?

I know E stands for economic/economical, S stands for specialized and A for advanced. what does D or B stand for? drab? beat down hehe? just joking. if anyone knows please do tell.

I looked into the other sony players and their playback.

-The NW-E015 model

says up to 30 hours of continuous playback, reading lower on the page, that estimate is based on

"During continuous playback in ATRAC @ 132kbps at power save mode "Super" when equalizer is not in use"

-the S700 model

Continuous Playback Time: Approx. 50 hrs. *2 (with Noise Cancelling Function ON = 43 hrs.)

"50 hours playback with built-in lithium-ion rechargeable battery in ATRAC 132kbps at power save mode “Super”, Noise Cancelling/Clear Stereo/Equalizer/VPT/are not in use"

I doubt 50 hours is the average most users get, but 35-45 prob is the average, depending on what is turned on and what bitrate is used.

-A800 model

up to 30 hours of continuous playback in atrac 128, not the greatest bitrate, I myself don't use atrac, and never will once I moved off the minidisc, and will stick to mp3 since I buy my songs off online stores, plus encoding mp3s to atrac to listen to them on my player is a no no, re encoding is a sin.

Move away from sonicstage

How is this a bad thing? There should be parades or CNN specials devoted to the fact that a sony mp3 player has appeared and it's attached to a special program that you need to use to get music onto the damn thing. in fact I myself couldn't be happier with this news and hope that subsequent players from sony follow this route. sony said it would ease up and even abondon drm so I guess ditching Ss is the first step. drag and drop is the way of the future and probably the best move by sony by a long shot.

SOnictage was and still is the one thing that prevents many people from actually buying sony devices. why? just check the forum how many people have had problems with SS or connect player, too many. I myself had little problems with connect player, but previous version of sonicstage for minidiscs were horrible and just not up to spec with other sony software. I think creative has drag and drop, and sandisk uses WMP to get music across no? so in a way sony wants to battle it out with creative. we'll see soon enough in september.

12 Hours of Playback

Of course 12 hours is pathetic for a sony product, but that is because there is no atrac! and 12 hour is standard for most players. I checked around and the results are similar for other products. Rarely do people listen to music for more than 3-4 hours a day, the average users at least, and then recharging after 2 days is fine. Here are some comparisons from other products.

The ZEN stone plus at 2 gigs provides only 9.5 hours of continuous playback with this note "Actual battery life will vary with use"

checking sandisks page, it states that the playback is around up to 20 hours for music. (sansa e200 series) 4-8 gig flash units, something along the lines as the A800, so inline with the sony product, if you compare mp3 playback time.

A sansa express 2 gig player has around 15 hour playback with 128kbps mp3 files. (something like the B100 but a bit bigger)

Ipod shuffle - 12 hours of playback, fully charged.

so in reality 12 hours is not that bad for a small player from sony, and around the same for other players on the market. again battery life depends all on size of the unit, and capacity, the B100 is smaller than the shuffle i think and even the sansa express, so therefore the battery life of 12 hours is fine, the ipod site didn't mention what bitrate the files were in. I will guess and assume that the sony one is based on 128 mp3 as well.

I'll say it again, 12 hours is industry average, and sony like any other company can't squeeze out too much more battery life from a li ion than any other firm, unless the codec is different, ie atrac.

sony is on track so far regarding its devices, i was expecting the b series earlier but august is not bad, wonder if that will push back any other releases.

apologies for any spelling and grammatical errors.

[Jillako]

I think I'll wait for Sony to release the official specifications before making comments on the features. There are too many unknowns right now - this device is supposed to have recording too..

Btw, that screen is no LCD - it's OLED and does not appear color at that.

[RoGeR-atrac]

Booooo..... those specs doesnt tickle the slightest fancy for me.

No thanks Sony... I'll stick with my Vaio pocket with 40Gb and 20hrs and ATRAC happy device

[kerfuffle]

Australia's getting these - got an e-mail from My Sony about a pre-order offer. You can get the 1 GB for AUD$99 (making it cheaper than the screenless, recorder-less, radio-less iPod shuffle by $10) and the 2 GB for AUD$149. You can get either black or white.

I think I'll wait for Sony to release the official specifications before making comments on the features. There are too many unknowns right now - this device is supposed to have recording too..

Btw, that screen is no LCD - it's OLED and does not appear color at that.

It says LCD in the description. O_O If it were an OLED screen, wouldn't it have a better battery life or something?

Edit: Looks like this is replacing the NW-E00x series. You can no longer buy the NW-E005 from Sony Style.

Edited July 24, 2007 by kerfuffle

[Zizone_]

Well, I think NW-E00X series was replaced by NW-E0X0 series. This NWD-B100 has it's own territory and thus I don't think this is replacing NW-E00X series.

[Shinji Ikeda]

Well, I think NW-E00X series was replaced by NW-E0X0 series. This NWD-B100 has it's own territory and thus I don't think this is replacing NW-E00X series.

I will have to strongly agree with you on that point. The NWD-B100 is for a totally different market, which is clearly indicated by the Product line (NWD) and the series number (B100).

The NW-E00X series was replaced by the NW-E010 series. After the release of the NW-E010 series the NW-E00X series was no longer available, in regions other than USA.

[Jim]

I think I'll wait for Sony to release the official specifications before making comments on the features. There are too many unknowns right now - this device is supposed to have recording too..

Btw, that screen is no LCD - it's OLED and does not appear color at that.

Check this.

[Old skool D]

Check this.

Jim:

Thanks for that, but I won't be getting it. Looks nice through.

[bogon07]

kerfuffle,

the Oz ones are designated with F to indicate the FM radio but the Sony site doesn't mention it.

And no Violet colour, which looks pretty good in Jim's PDF link. Dam I starting to like the look of this thing.

No mention of the 3minute = 3hours fast charge ability found in other Sony MP3 players.

I agree it looks like these will replace the NW-E00x series here as the NW-E01x series is not available. I think Sony is worried the NW-E01x will eat into the NW-S705 sales here.

Edited July 25, 2007 by bogon07

[Jillako]

Check this.

Thank you, Jim. I stand corrected. It is an LCD then. The specs are nice, however I won't be buying one. The battery life with WMA is quoted at 9 hours, which is pretty bad for a Sony player. I too would miss the 3 hours charge in 3 minutes feature. Also, I think this device needs AAC playback.

Cheers!

[RobA]

Looks horrible, 12 hrs of battery and no ATRAC support, terrible!

[Akai Kenshi]

I won't shed any tears for SonicStage, but the thought of ATRAC getting ditched is rather disheartening. It's a good-sounding format capable of gapless playback and some awesome battery life. I really wish Sony would just release an SDK for it so it could be used with other media players and continue supporting it on their hardware.

But if we can get some gapless AAC playback on all walkmen, I can live with re-ripping all of my CD's.

[Ascariss]

Looks horrible, 12 hrs of battery and no ATRAC support, terrible!

you apparently failed to read what I wrote, 12 hours seems to be the standard for most mp3 players without atrac.

[Shinji Ikeda]

kerfuffle,

the Oz ones are designated with F to indicate the FM radio but the Sony site doesn't mention it.

And no Violet colour, which looks pretty good in Jim's PDF link. Dam I starting to like the look of this thing.

No mention of the 3minute = 3hours fast charge ability found in other Sony MP3 players.

I agree it looks like these will replace the NW-E00x series here as the NW-E01x series is not available. I think Sony is worried the NW-E01x will eat into the NW-S705 sales here.

It is more possible that the NWD-B100 is be released as a substitute of the NW-E010 series. The technology and features of the the NW-E010 series and the NW-S700 are somewhat different. More to the point is that the NW-E010 series lacks several feature and technology such as built-in noise cancellation. It can be strongly doubted that the about concern in the previous post is part of Sony's marketing strategies.

you apparently failed to read what I wrote, 12 hours seems to be the standard for most mp3 players without atrac.

Yes, your post has been read. The 12 hours of battery life is the low end for most mp3 players, and still is pathetic. Like most others, battery life is important that is why I chose Sony. It might be an error, but the NW-A800 series is suppose to be rated at 33 hours for MP3 and NW-S700/600 series 40 hours for WMA. With Apples products going at 20-24 hours max.

[Ascariss]

i am sure someone could do a test on the a800 playing a 128 and 192 mp3 on it non stop and see how long it plays, i tested my a1000 and a3000 that way, and its the only way to be sure what real time the player will produce.

battery life depends on the size of the battery, the bigger the more time you get out of it. again would need to check sony vs apple battert, the mvA or whatever its called.

[bogon07]

It is more possible that the NWD-B100 is be released as a substitute of the NW-E010 series. The technology and features of the the NW-E010 series and the NW-S700 are somewhat different. More to the point is that the NW-E010 series lacks several feature and technology such as built-in noise cancellation. It can be strongly doubted that the about concern in the previous post is part of Sony's marketing strategies.

I'm not entirely sure that Sony Oz has a marketing strategy.

Anyway I couldn't help myself and pre-ordered a NWD-B105FB for the collection.

[RobA]

you apparently failed to read what I wrote, 12 hours seems to be the standard for most mp3 players without atrac.

Your missing the point. 12 hrs sucks and this player sucks without ATRAC support. I buy sony players mostly because of the long battery life and ATRAC support. ATRAC sounds better and is much less energy demanding, why sony would strip it from this player is beyond me. Boneheaded move.

[Ascariss]

Your missing the point. 12 hrs sucks and this player sucks without ATRAC support. I buy sony players mostly because of the long battery life and ATRAC support. ATRAC sounds better and is much less energy demanding, why sony would strip it from this player is beyond me. Boneheaded move.

12 hours does not suck compared to other players and sony knows this since there is so much you can do with the mp3 codec to minimize battery life.

no other firms support this none, flac is more popular, aac, wma and mp3 are the leading codecs.

next, people are now buying music off websites, like itunes or whatever, and those songs are in wma, or aac or mp3 format. the latter for me, and I don't want to be transcoding from mp3 to atrac to get extra hours on my mp3 player, since the transcoding is going to make the songs sound like crap.

atrac was devoloped with drm in mind, and of course they could remove it, but sony stated it is moving away from drm in its mp3 players. it is obvious other future players might or could support atrac, but if all subsequent players ditch sonicstage, then atrac will die along with it.

I still can't find the specs on the other sony players' battery ie how many mAh the batteries have, since that will determine how much they can play in the end. if anyone knows those details would be appreciated if they could post them.

edit, the A1000 has a 600mAh battery, which is good for 17 hoirs sony claims, but I only got 12-14 hours with mp3 192.

[wcahyono]

Does anybody can give comment on its sound quality ?

How it is compared to NW E015/016................

Thank you

[wcahyono]

does it have clear bass ?

does it have hiss ?

does it have a similar sound stage as S706 ?

does it show album art ?

can it show a clock ?

I know it is the lowest grade flash mp3 player from sony.

but i like the design and hope it is not far beyond s706 or nw hd 5.

btw how good is the sound between S706 vs E016 vs NW HD 5 ?

Many thanks

[tekdroid]

atrac was devoloped with drm in mind,

No It was developed with MiniDisc in mind.

[tekdroid]

ATRAC sounds better and is much less energy demanding, why sony would strip it from this player is beyond me. Boneheaded move.

this player caters to the low-cost, maximum profit movement for Sony. Taking atrac off it reduces costs for Sony. Sony makes more money by using commodity chip(s) (presumably costing many times less), therefore increasing their profit on each unit significantly (again, presumably). Considering the overwhelming majority of the market don't care about ATRAC (despite any virtues it may have), it's a great move on Sony's part.

I think this product is cleasrly aimed at the masses - the masses don't use ATRAC; I doubt many even know what it is. For those that want it, it can be found in other models.

Much like their phones which ignore atrac, this is the same thing...

[Shinji Ikeda]

this player caters to the low-cost, maximum profit movement for Sony. Taking atrac off it reduces costs for Sony. Sony makes more money by using commodity chip(s) (presumably costing many times less), therefore increasing their profit on each unit significantly (again, presumably). Considering the overwhelming majority of the market don't care about ATRAC (despite any virtues it may have), it's a great move on Sony's part.

I think this product is cleasrly aimed at the masses - the masses don't use ATRAC; I doubt many even know what it is. For those that want it, it can be found in other models.

Much like their phones which ignore atrac, this is the same thing...

Sony has invested money into developing ATRAC, thus by not selling units that use ATRAC they are losing money on their original investment in ATRAC.

ATRAC is a codec that Sony developed and was initially introduced to be used with MiniDisc's. ATRAC also is a codec used with many of Sony digital audio players (DAPs).

The majority of the market does not know what ATRAC is. It is always funny to hear people talk about not having ATRAC files on their computers so why they want to have a DAP that supports ATRAC. This is a major error in what people assume about ATRAC.

Previous models of Minidisc would only encode tracks recorded in ATRAC. Additionally, with previous version of SonicStage you would have to encode your CDs into ATRAC to use it with your ATRAC audio device. The current version of SonicStage allows the user to 'rip' CDs into ATRAC, MP3 and other audio files.

The biggest complaint was that SonicStage was slow and would occasionally crash when transcoding files to ATRAC. There were some additional issues, but they seem to be resolved.

The just of your reasoning is based on the misconception and misunderstanding of ATRAC.

[tekdroid]

The just of your reasoning is based on the misconception and misunderstanding of ATRAC.

What misunderstanding?

The masses don't use ATRAC. Can that be disputed?

I was there before MiniDisc and DCC were released for their showdown (well before SonicStage or even PC connectivity were thought of). I know ATRAC quiite well, thanks. I am well aware early MiniDisc models transcode to ATRAC.

1) does this somehow mean the masses love ATRAC, need ATRAC?

2) How is that a selling point to keep ATRAC for the masses?

3) does that mean ATRAC should stay?

Sony is currently an "also-ran" in portable DAPs. They are in no positiion to foist ATRAC on the masses now. That ship has sailed. Dropping it makes perfect sense in this lower-end model. Much like their phones.

While their market presence and brand can't be underestimated, how am I misunderstanding things?

The market itself has spoken. The overwhelming majority don't use ATRAC. Can you argue that they do?

[Ascariss]

No It was developed with MiniDisc in mind.

err not really since, the drm didn't have to be added onto the minidiscs/songs and only the algorithm to compress the music could have been used and still allow people to transfer on and off the music off the player, but sony added the drm to stop illegal sharing of music.

[tekdroid]

err not really since, the drm didn't have to be added onto the minidiscs/songs and only the algorithm to compress the music could have been used and still allow people to transfer on and off the music off the player, but sony added the drm to stop illegal sharing of music.

right, but you mentioned they developed it with DRM in mind, which is all I was disagreeing with. ATRAC was developed to fit a CD-length recording on a MiniDisc - no other reason. DRM was indeed an afterthought, not part of the initial ATRAC development process (unless you count SCMS as DRM, which was developed before MiniDisc hit).

[Ascariss]

right, but you mentioned they developed it with DRM in mind, which is all I was disagreeing with. ATRAC was developed to fit a CD-length recording on a MiniDisc - no other reason. DRM was indeed an afterthought, not part of the initial ATRAC development process (unless you count SCMS as DRM, which was developed before MiniDisc hit).

yes that is what i am referring to scms, since once i opened my minidisc back in the 90s, that one of the first things i read about when i was reading the manual.

[Guest Stuge]

What misunderstanding?

The masses don't use ATRAC. Can that be disputed?

.

Yes this is true .I also prefer mp3 over Atrac .

[Shinji Ikeda]

What misunderstanding?

The masses don't use ATRAC. Can that be disputed?

I was there before MiniDisc and DCC were released for their showdown (well before SonicStage or even PC connectivity were thought of). I know ATRAC quiite well, thanks. I am well aware early MiniDisc models transcode to ATRAC.

1) does this somehow mean the masses love ATRAC, need ATRAC?

2) How is that a selling point to keep ATRAC for the masses?

3) does that mean ATRAC should stay?

Sony is currently an "also-ran" in portable DAPs. They are in no positiion to foist ATRAC on the masses now. That ship has sailed. Dropping it makes perfect sense in this lower-end model. Much like their phones.

While their market presence and brand can't be underestimated, how am I misunderstanding things?

The market itself has spoken. The overwhelming majority don't use ATRAC. Can you argue that they do?

What should have been said was that the explanation given is an over simplification of the reason for the release of this product. It can be agreed that the major of consumers do not know what ATRAC is and thus confused on how to use the format.

The design of this product appears to be for those with at the lower margin, late adopters and the more price sensitive consumers, of the DAP market. Should this have been a product that Sony released many years ago, I would strongly agree yes.

The majority of consumers are purchasing iPod and are totally oblivious to the technology that has been implemented to use it. This does not mean that the 3 points presented are true for the technology implemented in that media player. The majority of consumers want to be able to manage their music on their media player.

I like others, I only see ATRAC and SonicStage being replaced by new/better technology. This would be the implementation of an advanced codec, media management tool or both.

I am older that you may think. Yes, I do remember 8 track tapes.

[Zizone_]

Well, I still think there should be an options to allow people to use both Software and drag-and-drop.

Everyone has there preference. Thus allowing all the options to people is the best way to go; this should be the case for the formats. Providing all the formats and all the ways of transferring songs to Walkman should suffice everyone's need.

Edited July 28, 2007 by Zizone

[Ascariss]

hmm the thing is, if sony choose that route, they would have to provide a simpler version of sonicstage that only transfers and encodes atrac but does not add drm to it. In addition, they would have to allow drag and drop for mp3, aac and wma using windows explorer.

hmm if sony intros drag and drog for all their models, would they theoretically work on macs?

[markey]

These are now selling in the UK for:- 1 gig-£34.99 & 2 gig-£44.99.

[Shinji Ikeda]

So apparently the mystery has been solved, and clearly demonstrated. It appears that this product may not be available in Japan. I have not hear any announcement for other regions.

[juli_]

These are now selling in the UK for:- 1 gig-£34.99 & 2 gig-£44.99.

Where??? Not that I need any more players, but I like to know what's new