Audio/Video, iPod, TV, YouTube
Sony Launches New Walkman Video Players
Thanks to the iPod's success, and Sony's bumbling, the legendary Walkman brand has seen its prominence in the marketplace diminish, but don't ring the death knell yet. Today, Sony started selling two new Walkman models that offer increased flexibility over previous models and are the first ones to offer video. Sure, it's almost two years since Apple first launched video capability on the iPod, but better late than never.
The new models -- the $230 NWZ-A810 and the $210 NWZ-S610 -- play AVC/H.264 and MPEG-4 video formats, which means you should be able to play downloaded YouTube videos and video podcasts, as well as movie trailers available on Sony's Web site (doesn't look like it'll work with the movies and TV shows available at the online download stores like Amazon Unbox or Wal-Mart). Music-wise, the players are more open, offering compatibility with PlaysForSure files you might rent or subscribe to at Yahoo! Music Unlimited or Napster, as well as non-iTunes-purchased AAC files and MP3 files (those you burn yourself or buy off of places like eMusic).
As is the case with pretty much every other media player out there, both models also support JPEG image files.
Design-wise, these new players look to be ho-hum versus what we've come to expect from Sony. Both models resemble conventional cell-phones, which makes think we'd rather just have cell phones.
Crunchgear got an early hands-on look at these players and was impressed with their clutter-free, user-friendly interface (and, for more pictures, go to Engadget).
Still, we think that until these babies can play the videos you can buy off of places like Amazon Unbox or Wal-Mart, they're unlikely to make much of a dent in either the iPod's business or even the business of personal-media-player-manufacturers such as Archos or Creative (with its versatile Zen players).
And let's not forget that next week (September 5th, to be exact), Apple will likely announce some new iPods.
From Sony.
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