Sony to Offer Its First Video Walkman

Eighteen months after rival Apple raised the bar in the music player market with its video iPod, Sony will launch its first digital video Walkman.

The NW-A800 series Walkman will initially go on sale in Europe in April. They’ll appear later in other markets, but timing hasn’t yet been decided, Sony in Tokyo said Friday.

For Europe there are three models: the NW-A805, A806 and A808. The only major difference is in the amount of flash memory, which is 2GB, 4GB and 8GB, respectively.

Sony Headquarters

The screen is a 2-inch liquid crystal display (LCD) panel with QVGA resolution (240 by 320 pixels). It’s set up in portrait form rather than the landscape form used on the iPod, but videos can be viewed with the device held either vertically or horizontally, said Sony.

Audio playback in a number of flavors of Sony’s ATRAC compression is possible, and Sony supplies software for converting Windows Media Audio, MP3 and WAV files to ATRAC. It’s also possible to directly load MP3 files onto the Walkman, but battery life will be shorter. For video, the Walkman plays back MPEG4 H.264/AVC encoded files.

Playback time on a fully charged battery differs depending on the type of files. For audio it’s roughly 30 hours for ATRAC files encoded at 132Kbps, while for video it’s seven hours for MPEG4 files encoded at 768Kbps. Video files at lower bit rates will take up less space in the memory but also make the Walkman work a little harder on the decoding, so the time drops to about six hours and 30 minutes for a 384Kbps file, according to Sony’s figures.

The Walkman measures 44 by 88 millimeters and is 9 millimeters thick. It weighs 53 grams.

The NW-A805 is listed on Sony’s online store for 180 euros (US$237), the NW-A806 for 230 euros and the NW-A808 for 300 euros. In comparison, Apple’s 30GB iPod costs 289 euros in Germany. The two products are difficult to compare on price alone, however, because the iPod has a larger screen and is also bulkier and heavier than the new Sony Walkman.

Sony historians will note that the new product is not actually Sony’s first Walkman to support video. That recognition goes to the GV-8 “Video Walkman” that was put on sale in August 1998 and played back Video 8 cassettes from camcorders. It cost 118,200 yen (approximately US$820 using the historical exchange rate).

-Martyn Williams, IDG News Service (Tokyo Bureau)

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