All the latest UK technology news, reviews and analysis
|
|
|
31 Aug 2007
Sony has admitted defeat in the audio format war and will phase out its proprietary Atrac format in North America and Europe. The company will also close its Connect Music Services portal.
Sony made the announcement as it unveiled new products that will handle MP3, Windows Media Audio and Advanced Audio Coding files.
"With these new Walkman players, Sony has widened its digital music environment to support Windows Media technology," a Sony statement said.
"As a result, Sony will be phasing out Connect Music Services based on the Atrac audio format in North America and Europe."
Sony said that it had emailed Connect users to tell them of the service's eventual closure.
However, the company confirmed that Connect, which launched in 2004, would not close before March 2008 and that its Connect e-book service for the Sony Reader was not affected.
Latest stories from Software
Related articles
Related jobs
Poll
What is the most important IT priority for your company this year?
Connect with V3.co.uk
This paper focuses on a series of best practices and techniques for development teams looking to improve their software development processes
Why good data management at all levels is essential in the modern business (video, 6mins)
Onsite IT Support Technician / Manager - Leek - circa...
Lead Infrastructure Engineer (Microsoft) – Hosted Services...
Hi Greetings, Job Title : Business Analyst Location...
Magento Senior Developer, London : Magento / PHP / CSS...
Keep up to date with the latest products, services and technologies from the world's leading IT companies. IThound.com brings you over 2,000 white papers, case studies and analyst reports.
Do you agree?
Yea...ok, Rent A Clue!
"Sony is always trying to corner a market with something I.E. Beta Max, Minidisc, Blu Ray.." This guy obviously has no idea what he is talking about. I can agree that Atrac wasn't as good as Ogg Vorbis nor as good as AAC,BUT, Sony usually pioneers some damn good technology. It's the consumers that are f*cking cheap. Sony released SACD which was such a strong contender to DVD-Audio,Granted their stereo line pretty much sux. They created the benchmark for all TVs including HDTV with their Trintron line.BetaMAX was better quality than VHS but lost out because people didn't want to spend the extra money & the porn industry embraced VHS as a their favorite format. People buy PS3 because its abetter machine and doesn't freeze up & sh!t itself like the XBox... BLU-Ray already has market support, so you might as well kiss DVD-HD good bye. In the big scheme of things Microsoft doesn't have sh!t to do with anything, nevermind codecs, that's why they bought stock in Apple. Their new OS "Vista" blows f*cking chunks and will still get dominated by OSX. Face it, Mp4 is on it's way soon and I'm pretty sure Sony will re-invent themselves by working on that codec.
Posted by: sYgnal 01 Sep 2007
What, no Ogg?
Why do so many vendors fear Ogg? Is it the better quality audio, or just the fact that it's free and unencumbered by patents? The software for embedded platforms is freely available, so they don't even need to do much in the way of development. Even with this concession by Sony, it's easy to see they still fear their own customers.
Posted by: Mace Moneta 31 Aug 2007
First
First Sony is always trying to corner a market with something I.E. Beta Max, Minidisc, Blu Ray.. I'm glad they keep loosing. Blu Ray is popular because of gamers who love the Playstation brand so much that they are willing to pay for an over priced game system. Not because it's a better format. Sony just takes advantage of their customer (along with everyone else Microsoft included).
Posted by: Fisrt Post 31 Aug 2007