Sony MP3 player joins Walkman celebrations
Celebrating the Walkman's 20th anniversary Sony on Thursday launched four new products for the family and announced its digital Memory Stick Walkman will begin shipping in the UK by March 2000. It has also fallen into line with the SDMI's requirements on copyright protection.
The Memory Stick Walkman -- available in Japan before Christmas -- stores music on Sony's proprietary Memory Stick 64MB removable storage media. Digital music, either downloaded from the Internet or copied from a CD, is stored using ATRAC3 audio compression codec. This will covert MP3 files, enabling them to be stored on the Memory Stick.
In standard compression a 64MB Memory Stick will hold around 80 minutes of music, the company said.
To ensure SDMI compliance, Sony has upgraded the Memory Stick with the MagicGateMS. This employs MagicGate copyright protection technology and OpenMG to allow secure exchange of content between the Memory Stick and a PC.
The Walkman, which has a full-dot LCD screen capable of showing three lines of text, is little bigger than a lipstick at 37m x 96.3mm x 19.2mm. It weighs 65g including the battery.
What about the MiniDisc range ?
Take me to the MP3 Special