Sony's other hard drive digital audio player, the "VAIO pocket," will be receiving MP3 playback capabilities as well.

But there's a twist -- while Sony did announce yesterday that Network Walkman users would need to pay a small fee and send their NW-HD1 or NW-HD2 in for the upgrade, the VAIO pocket will support MP3 through an end-user downloadable upgrade. Moreover, it's free.

We reported o­n the VAIO pocket back in May, when it was first announced.

Sony announced o­n the 30th that they will begin offering a free update program for the "VAIO pocket" (VGF-AP1) portable hard drive audio player o­n December 24th.

With the application of the upgrade program, MP3 transfer functionality and gapless playback are supported. Furthermore, a high speed scroll function, as well as a funtion to change the screen's design have been added. Other features include general speed improvements; there are 34 updates in total.

The VAIO pocket, released in June, is a portable audio/photo player that features a 2.2" color LCD. It contains a 20GB hard drive, and audio format support was ATRAC3 and ATRAC3plus o­nly. MP3, WAVE, WMA, and other formats were converted to ATRAC3/ATRAC3plus during transfer using the included "SonicStage Ver.2.0" software. With this update, users can now transfer MP3 files without converting them.

The screen of the unit can be used to display the album art of the audio currently playing, or be used as a photo viewer, for the viewing and management of digital camera photographs. Also, next to the LCD is a touchpad style interface called "G-sense."

On the "NW-HD1/2" hard drive Network Walkman Products, the MP3 support update is a pay-service that costs 2,000 yen (including shipping). The reason for this is that the update cannot be performed by the end users because of its specifications, but the maker must perform the update themselves. o­n the VAIO pocket, however, users conduct the update themselves by downloading an update program.



Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20041130/sony3.htm

Download Page:
http://www.vaio.sony.co.jp/Info/2004/products_1130.html

Support Information:
http://vcl.vaio.sony.co.jp/support/acc/vgf-ap1.html

VAIO pocket (TechJapan):
http://www.techjapan.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=276