News Sony ditches ATRAC, Connect music store

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/08/31/sony_ditches_atrac_connect_music_store/1

After four years of being open, Sony's Connect music store will shut down in March 08 which will effectively kill their proprietary ATRAC format.

 

Do you think there will be a firmware upgrade for existing players to make them behave in this updated fashion?

 

you must be joking, sony are going to cut and run just like they always do

 

explain

 

basically a "screw the client" technique.

edit: but these new walkmans do look nice.

 

If it's not working then why keep it? It's financial suicide.....am I right?

 

either that or make it work from the beginning...

 

It's usually hit-n'miss with things like that....either it will take off and be profitable or it will be looked over by another service (ie Napster, iTunes, etc.)

 

I think that it was just a matter of time really...

 

Renewing everyones faith the worlds favorite consumer electronics company... So any one fancy investing in my new blu-ray factory?

 

imagine if minidisc technology was cheaper (as in cheaper discs and players)? or this ATRAC had less limitations and excellent encoding algorithms?

 

No, they certainly do not. Last week I walked into my local Tesco supermarket and picked up a 5-pack of blanks as my 04 plated car has a factory-fit MD/CD/Tuner.

I wouldn't call Minidisc a 'failed' format.

 

Your about the only person on a forum of thousands who believe that, the only reason minidisc still existed past 1998 is because Sony is very rich and very very stubborn.

 

MD was one of the more successful formats from Sony. Look at Betamax, Memory Stick series (no one except Sony use it) and a myriad of other stuff

 

I still have a MD hifi seperate with over 100 recordable MD disks which I use instead of my original music CD's to save wear on my CD's.

Shame my portable MD player died but they were not expensive. My Portable MD player was cheaper then my Portable Cd player or my Wifes MP3 player.

I liked it

 

But still not exactly successful like CD or MP3, in fact by comparison you could say it was a failure!

 

Sony have made some things that are great, but customers just aren't willing to pay for anything.

 

We're willing to pay, but not over the top for stuff which doesn't work with other products

 

My NW-S706F mp3 player is the business. I play standard MP3, but ripped an album in Atrac to compare and it's brilliant, real shame. If only sony didn't want such high royalty fee's for other people to use their stuff.

The memory stick thing pisses me off with sony ericsson phones too, it's the only thing I use the M2 stick in. It needs an SD adapter.

 

I agree with that. Still waiting to upgrade my k750i