Sony Readies Hard-Drive Based Jukebox

By Ian Bell February 21, 2005

From the PC World story:

“The NAS-A10 contains a 40GB hard drive, a CD drive, AM and FM radio, and a MemoryStick slot. Users can add music to the hard drive-based library from CDs or downloads from the ‘Any Music’ service in Japan–and also by connecting the unit with the company’s Network Walkman or NetMD Mini Disc players. The jukebox also allows music stored on the disk to be transferred to either of the two prior portable music players or onto a MemoryStick Duo memory card for playback in a device such as the PlayStation Portable (PSP).”

“That’s because the system’s concept is that users will start with music obtained via a download site or ripped by the unit from a CD, says Yuki Kobayashi, a spokesperson for Sony in Tokyo.”

You will be able to play MP3’s stored on memory cards, but not if they are stored on the unit’s 40GB hard drive. Only files encoded in Sony’s proporietary ATRAC format or PCM will be able to be played off of the hard drive. Last month we reported that Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment says Sony ‘goofed’ when it came to selling portable audio players by not supporting the MP3 format. So we have to ask, did anyone at Sony actually listen to what he had to say? What a very poor decision on Sony’s part.

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