What on earth were they thinking? Did you know that the original Sony HD walkman products could not play MP3 files? At the time, Sony’s market-droids said that it was possible, however the process of playing an MP3 involved tediously converting MP3s to Sony’s proprietary ATRAC format; Loss of quality due to transcoding is inevitable.
Sony’s refusal to drink the MP3 kool-aid comes from a corporate conflict of interest. Sony makes more money from licensing music than it does from selling equipment to play that music. Consequently, their portable music hardware has to be crippled to eliminate the possiblity that their machines could be used for any kind of piracy. By making a player that could not understand MP3, Sony customers would have little desire to obtain pirate MP3 files, and a greater desire to buy music from legitimate sources.
Of course, the only legitimate source of ATRAC files, is Sony Music’s own on-line music store (Windows Only). or ripping your own ATRACs from CD using the Sony-Walkman software (Windows Only). If you do not own a Windows computer, then you may be out of luck.
It came as no surprise at all when Sony eventually relented. Just in time for the Xmas rush, they announced that henceforth, all new players would support MP3, however what they did not tell buyers was that these files needed to be loaded-on with proprietary software that encrypts the MP3s. The player could not play a normal un-mangled MP3 file. I guess this is what record companies call ‘Rights Management’, however truthfully, this system only deprives customers of their rights.
Anyway, somebody has cracked Sony’s encryption algorythm, rendering it all rather pointless. Doubly so when you consider that almost nobody has a Sony HD Walkman. I prefer iRiver’s H Series players. They play all common media formats including Ogg-Vorbis without any silly mangling at all.
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