Where you @ Sony?

Sony can thank Antone Gonsalves for this one: Sony To Ship AppleTV Rival in July

I really had no idea what direction this entry was going to take, at first I thought it was going to be about the digital set-top box market, but it began to take another direction as I began to compare Sony and Apple. I’m quite certain that there are several articles that do just that, specifically how Apple re-created a market that Sony once dominated. Sony’s had many blunders in the past and they’ve repeated some of them, what’s exactly in store for the once dominating electronics giant? Who knows, but I will say one thing though, if Sony continues to do what they’re doing, they’re setting themselves up for failure.

So, what do I mean by “continues to do what they’re doing?” Sony may have a great brand name, but one of their biggest drawbacks is their atrocious user interface. Despite Sony’s profits and their success, it still appears that Sony hasn’t created a usability team. It also appears that Sony cut the department that actually came up with clever names. (Walkman anyone?)

NW-HDx — Best Name EVER

Sony has made several attempts into the portable digital music player market with their extremely catchy NW-HDx series. Oh wait, that wasn’t the complete name, as if seven syllables wasn’t enough, it’s complete name? Network Walkman NW-HDx, x denoting the model number in the series. The first Sony portable digital music player, portable digital music player because Sony had decided to push ATRAC, the NW-HD1 was actually a decent product.

This could’ve been the “iPod killer,” like every other portable digital music player out there on the market. From a technical standpoint, the NW-HD1 was great, it had a sleek, small design (it’s about as big as a deck of cards), comes bundled with a remote and dock, an amazing finish, and up to 30 hours of battery life. It’s problem? A few things, like any other Sony product it was $$$, ATRAC only (for a limited time), Sony’s Connect store, and the biggest bitch of all, SonicStage.

Sony began to see that they were going to be in another Betamax type war with ATRAC and mp3, but thanks to the digital age, Sony was able to turn their NW-HD1 into a mp3 player with a firmware upgrade. Well, thank goodness for that! At least Sony got to take control of that situation.

The other problem Sony had is, as I stated prior, their software’s atrocious user interface and how much of a bitch it was to transfer music to. Granted, I didn’t own the NW-HD1, but I did own the NW-HD3, which was the HD1’s successor. (The NW-HD3 was nothing more than an updated HD1 — plays mp3 right out of the box! — without all the extras, thanks a lot Sony.)

Sony’s SonicStage was the biggest pain in the world and probably was the most difficult and frustrating one to use of all. One of the lack of features that bothered me the most about SonicStage was the lack of ease in just creating a playlists. The NW-HDx do not have playlists, rather, they are called “group” instead. Sony and SonicStage really like for people to take many extra steps in what one would assume, or hope, to be an easy process. There is limited drag-and-drop support, you’d think they would’ve applied it across the board.

Everything is an involved process, you first have to import any music you have, which really was a pain when you had certain folders to add as you’d have to either let the software scan the entire folder again, or select all the new folders you want to add. My main gripe is that you couldn’t simply drag-and-dropped files to the library or directly to the music player. I would have been much happier had they included this functionality.

What excited me about the NW-HD3 and what disappointed me at the same time was that Sony was giving away 50 FREE Downloads, a $50.00 value!, to their Sony Connect Store. Why didn’t the electronics division work together with the recording division? Selection on the Sony Connect Store was sparse and disappointing, I had a hard time finding 50 songs that I actually really wanted to download/purchase. Sad huh?

Sony did create some cool looking mp3 players, like their smaller, flash-based mp3 players, just check out their page. By the looks of it, Sony is no longer going to pursue the hard-drive mp3 player market at least, hast thou conceded to Apple?

I actually enjoyed the NW-HD3 itself. It really was a great device, the only physical aspect that I didn’t like about it was the lack of an ability to quickly scroll through many songs, groups, artists, et alia. It was the software that drove me crazy and that is where perhaps Sony began to go wrong. Sony was successful in creating electronics that didn’t require management software and maybe it was Sony’s lack of experience in such a field or their arrogance in trying to one-up the competition that prevented them from seeing such a problem. Ease of use is the world to consumers.

Back to that AppleTV Rival Thing

Oh, yeah, back to that. Anyways, Sony is looking to enter the internet set-top box market with their AppleTV Rival — I highly doubt Sony actually dubbed it this, so they can probably thank Antone Gonzales for the verbiage — called the “Sony Bravia Video Internet Link.” Another long winded-name, they really did get rid of that department that came up with cool names.

The Sony Bravia Video Internet Link is…not going to be compatible with most pretty close to all televisions. Why? Well, Sony has a line of Bravia TVs out, and guess what? The Sony Bravia Video Internet Link is the $300 toy that accompanies it! On top of about $1,299 for the cheapest Bravia TV according to the SonyStyle website, that’s $1,600. It’s not exactly a cheap solution.

So, exactly how does it rival the AppleTV? I don’t know, it doesn’t have a hard drive, it’s more expensive, it only hooks up to Sony Bravia TVs, it doesn’t look like it has wireless, apparently you can no longer mount your TV along the wall if you have this, and oh, there’s hopes of bringing YouTube video? Oh wait, that already happened with the AppleTV. Ah, so that’s the reason why it’s dubbed the AppleTV rival!

What makes this Sony device very interesting is how segmented and selective Sony intended for this product to be — it’s only compatible with Bravia TVs. Sony expects to load this device up with access to free content (YouTube? — yay for pixelation on a grandeur scale!) and perhaps movie titles from the Sony catalog? Who knows, but if Sony’s internet video store looked anything like the Sony Connect store expect to see some tumbleweeds tumbling by.

Additionally, with Sony’s track record, browsing for videos is probably going to be another pain in the ass. Sony’s software/user interface can turn something so enjoyable into something where I feel as if my teeth are being pulled. I’m not saying the AppleTV is perfect, but I’d say it’s a hell of a lot better solution than what Sony has to offer.

Don’t Weep! All Is Not Lost!

(Unfortunately, this is my 3rd 4th time having to re-write this thanks to wordpress -_-)

All is indeed not lost for Sony. Recent news have been quite positive for Sony. Although Sony is no stranger to a format war, it always feels better to know that you’re probably winning, and with the news that BlockBuster has released, Sony can rest assure a bit longer that BluRay is here to stay. The recent BlockBuster news reports that customers are picking BluRay over HD-DVD 70% of the time! Can you imagine if Sony can push BluRay the same way they did with DVD?

On other positive news, it was also recently announced that Sony expects to release 380 titles by sometime next year. That’s extremely positive news for Sony, they can begin to start recovering the cost of the PS3.

Sony’s Chief Executive, Howard Stringer, said to look out for Sony in the electronics segment again. Is Sony making a come back or are come backs so passe nowadays that consumers are going to shrug Sony off? Or does Sony think it has played catch-up enough to begin innovating once more? (That plastic bendable screen was pretty cool though.)

What Sony needs to do is to also address the needs and concerns of their customers; their atrocious software user interface clearly has not reflected that they care about their customers. Given Sony’s past track record in an area that requires management software Sony’s consumer electronics division will continue to suffer. Yes, Sony, it is about the product, but it is more about the whole user experience.