Sony adds TV to video Walkman players

Sony is adding mobile digital TV to the video Walkman it sells in Japan.

The new Walkman will be launched on Nov. 17 and will be compatible with Japan's "OneSeg" digital TV system for mobile and portable devices. The system is only used in Japan so the TV function won't work overseas. Sony did not announce similar products for other markets.

OneSeg has proved a popular addition to many portable electronics products in Japan and can now be found on many high-end cell phones, laptop PCs, car navigation systems and even electronic dictionaries. It's an MPEG4 stream of the major terrestrial TV networks and is offered at no charge.

The only difference between the three new Walkman devices is their memory capacity. The NW-A916 has 4GB of memory, the NW-A918 has 8GB and the NW-A919 16GB.

The screen size has been increased to 2.4-inches from the 2-inch screen used on the first-generation video Walkman players that went on sale in April.

In addition to displaying live TV, they can also record programs. About 100 hours of TV can be stored on the 16GB model, as long as the memory is empty of other content. Users can also call up an electronic program guide or subtitles to TV shows.

Sony says a fully charged battery provides enough power for as many as six hours of TV watching and 36 hours of audio playback. Other features include the ability to directly connect a Compact Disc or MiniDisc player and record content into the Walkman's memory.

Sound recording and broadcast digital TV isn't available on Apple's iPod. The iPod is Sony's chief competitor in the digital audio market and Sony has been trailing the popular music player on features ever since it was first introduced. In the case of video, when Sony introduced the feature earlier this year it was 18 months behind the iPod.

The new Walkman remains compact. It measures 47 millimeters by 86mm by 12mm and weighs 74 grams.

The NW-A916 will cost about ¥30,000 (US$260), the NW-A918 ¥35,000 and the NW-A919 ¥45,000.

Making the iPod family, all over again

All right, that may not be what you're thinking these days. But that is what Apple was thinking when it intro duced its annual revision of the popular iPod family last week. Over all, these music/video players have shrunk in size and price, but have grown in capacity, features and number of models.
The baby of the family, the screenless iPod Shuffle, is almost unchanged. It's still only about one-inch square, with a spring clip. It still holds about 240 songs, but now comes in five brushed-metal color finishes.

The full-size iPod has had a visit from the brushed-metal makeover fairy, too. Its face now comes in silver or black brushed metal - the first major departure from the iconic acrylic façade that has served it well since 2001.

This model, now called the iPod Classic, is the only iPod containing a hard drive. It's for people who want to transport big music or video collections - or who want to use the iPod as an external computer hard drive.

That prospect is easier to imagine than ever now that the hard drives in these iPods hold 80 or 160 gigabytes (for $250 or $350).

Wait a minute - 160 gigs? That's bigger than many computer hard drives. It's enough to hold 40,000 songs, which would take about three solid months to play. If the battery could last that long, that is; Apple clocks the larger model at 40 hours of music playback, 7 hours of video.

Stir the stew, surf the Web

Dream kitchens may soon include a computer along with the latest refrigerator or oven. That way people gathered at the family hub can satisfy their digital needs along with nutritional ones.
Hewlett-Packard's new TouchSmart IQ770 PC ($1,699 at Circuit City) is designed for that kitchen of the future, where people turn on the computer along with the coffeepot, and then check the screen for the weather, ball scores and the family calendar as they breakfast.

The calendar on the TouchSmart is easy to use. Entries can be written on the touch-sensitive screen with a finger or stylus, or entered on a keyboard, so that everyone knows what's ahead during the day, from the dentist at 9 am to the PTA at 7 pm.

The computer also has a high-definition TV receiver, a DVD player and a 19-inch screen that moves up and down as well as tilting, so that people having a snack at the counter or a nearby table can watch their favorite show or video. Putting a computer in the kitchen is not a new idea. Neiman Marcus, the department store, included an ad for a Honeywell kitchen computer, priced at $10,600, in its 1969 Christmas catalog, said Dag Spicer, senior curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

The ad featured a woman in need of a computer to manage recipe quantities and carried the slogan, "If she can only cook as well as Honeywell can compute." But Mr Spicer said the marketing campaign failed. "As far as we know, Neiman Marcus didn't sell a single computer."

The latest generation of kitchen computers may be more successful, and not just because the ads are less patronising. The difference instead may lie in the spread, and speed, of broadband connections and the way that, in turn, is changing people's computer habits.

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