Sony Finally (Really) Dumps Proprietary ATRAC Format No One Wanted For Its Walkmen
from the what,-not-enough-rootkits? dept
It's been almost 3 years since Ken Kutaragi, then President of Sony Computer Entertainment, admitted that the company had made a huge strategic error in launching its digital music players and download store (Sony Connect) with its own proprietary ATRAC music format and DRM. Of course, admitting a mistake and actually doing something about it are two different things. A few different readers alerted us today that Sony is finally shutting down Sony Connect and ditching support for ATRAC in its new Walkmen, though they buried the details of it in paragraph 17 of a press release about the new music players. For those who had bought from Sony Connect and are now left with an unsupported DRM that won't be playable on any new music player... well.... you now have another reminder of why buying into DRM'd music is a huge risk. Sony is at least kind enough to explain to people how to get around the DRM using the standard cumbersome "burn to CD, rip anew" method, but that's definitely a pretty big pain for anyone who's purchased a sizable collection. Of course, that assumes that there was anyone out there who actually bought a sizable collection of music from Sony Connect and somehow that seems unlikely.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Sony and DRM
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Re: Sony and DRM
Is there anything like a 'virtual CD burner' out there? Something that 'burns' to, say, a disk image (possibly a very large one.) That would be much faster and more convienient than burning an actual disc.
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Re: Re: Sony and DRM
Quality-wise, you're far, far better off re-downloading from another source.
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Sony's Problem
A)Selling DRM free music to everyone
B)Letting people put all types of music on Sony players (if you thought the Sony was the better player but you couldn't put the music you wanted on it, would you buy it anyway?)
would vastly outstrip whatever additional revenue Sony gets from "locking in" consumers.
These companies are so behind on what really happens it's comical. This generation that has grown up with the internet and video games does not like to be forced or locked in to anything.
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Even for free, it wasn't worth it
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Re: Even for free, it wasn't worth it
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Sony Walkman
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walkmen??
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Sony formats anyone.
Now have another reminder of why buying into Sony supported formats is a huge risk.
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So how many decades will it take?
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Must not have encoded it properly.
But I am not suprised that they are dumping the format. It is yet another example of a proprietary format (better it may be. remember betamax?) that sony tried to lock people into. Licence the technology and make it available, maybe people would actually use it. BlurRay is doomed to failure for that very reason.
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Re: Must not have encoded it properly.
As for professional recording decks... they use compression of any kind?
On an unrelated note. My dad had a sony cd burner a few years ago. I put nero on the computer because I didn't want to bother with the bundled software and was overjoyed to find that the burner would only work with the bundled, and essentially useless, software.
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Re: Must not have encoded it properly.
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Sony should support Ogg Vorbis.
Ogg vorbis is the way to go! Sony!
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ATRAC
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ATRAC
I have forced highly processed audio, with very compressed peak/average ratios
onto a Minidisc, and only then, IF you know what to listen for, are any artifacts obvious.
IF Sony had had the wisdom to make ATRAC open source like MP3, it may well have become the defacto standard.
As for Beta, it only failed as a CONSUMER format, it's advanced cousin, BetaCam, was for a long time THE videotape format for TV broadcasting.
Poor Sony...the R&D guys have come up with some really great innovations over the years, but only to have the marketing idiots derail them.
If MiniDisc had been promoted for what it CAN do that an iPod CAN'T, like in-situ editing, live recording, and with HiMD, a choice of NO-compression LPCM recording, the format would have probably taken off much better.
Also, I would rather have a cheap $1 disc fail or be lost, than the 20 gig HD that is non-removable from the iPod! Guess each has their good points and bad, it depends on what you want. For my money (and ears!), I am going to miss ATRAC (and MD) very much!
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I'm going to buy me a NW-A3000 again.
Will look into getting a NW-A3000 from amazon.
Silly Sony. What a mess.
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