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General discussion

Sony Mp3

Jun 2, 2005 7:34PM PDT

Hi I am from Australia and i was wondering what your thoughts are on the NWHD5 i am looking to buy one.

Thanks
Rob

Discussion is locked

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don't bother with sony mp3 player
Jun 11, 2005 3:26PM PDT

If I were you I would not get a sony mp3 player. Why, you ask, Sony has lost the mp3 player race a long time ago. Sony, through true stupidity chose to only support Atrac format (sony only format). Now I think the newer Sony mp3 player support mp3's without converting it into Atrac format, but they do not support WMA's or protected WMA's, which buy.com., walmart.com, msn music, etc. all sell. Give up Sony it is over, Creative, Samsung, iRiver, Rio, etc. all make players that support mp3 and protected WMA's.

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well,
Jun 11, 2005 7:07PM PDT

If you don't care about .wma files like some people, then it's a fine purchase. Though you may want to research some of it. And the dude above me is somewhat ignorant. Sony makes great players, he just can't see past the .wmas. I mean, how many people who actually know what they're doing even bother with .wma?

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WMAs or not, SonicStage is terrible
Jun 12, 2005 5:33AM PDT

I don't bother with WMAs either, but I would never buy a Sony player because you're forced to use Sony software to load songs. I think Sony makes fine hardware, but I really hate SonicStage and all the other Sony multimedia software. I think the problem is that they put copyright control first and foremost, and only consider the user interface as an afterthought.

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Examples?
Jun 12, 2005 8:36AM PDT

I'm considering what MP3 player to buy. What are the problems you've had with SonicStage that make you not like it? What players come with better software, in your opinion?

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Well,
Jun 12, 2005 11:25AM PDT

The problems with Sonicstage are myriad. It's slow, and bloaty. It converts stuff to ATRAC to transfer it to the older Sony MP3 players. It craps out half the time, but yeah.

The iRiver H10 uses WMP10 to sync everything, so that's not too bad. I have a Toshiba Gigabeat and the gigaroom software isn't so bad.

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k
Jun 12, 2005 9:42PM PDT

well mate, we currently don't have gigabeats in melbourne, australia so thats a bit of trouble. but i reckon u could get a nwhd5 cos it has a removable-self-replaceble battery. But then the iriver (h10 20gig version) is pretty good, but then i found out that it doesnt have a removable battery but i would still get it for its coolness and fuctions over the ipod and stuff....Go for the sony according to me

nwhd5 is for 479AUD dunno about the rest

cheers

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It's just so awful
Jun 12, 2005 11:16PM PDT

I find the user interface to be terrible -- I couldn't figure out where how to find existing files to add to the library, for example (I think I figured it out eventually, but I can't remember -- I never use it anymore now that I don't use my old MD player). Adding new songs from CDs was awful. I could barely get it to do what I wanted. They go with this skin design that eliminates the menus from the top (their DVD software does the same thing), but it makes it impossible to do what I want it to do.

My preference for software is none at all. The mp3 player I currently have just looks like an external hard drive, so I just drag over the files I want. My wife has an iPod, so I use iTunes to rip my CDs and keep track of my music (although I find iTunes to be pretty slow and bloated too -- when I'm listening to music on the computer and anything else is happening, it tends to skip -- winamp doesn't skip at all). MusicMatch is fine for ripping CDs as well, although the unregistered version is a little pushy.