Sony finally launches its video Walkman

Eighteen months after rival Apple  raised the bar in the music player market with its video iPod, Sony will launch its first digital video Walkman.

The NW-A800 series Walkman will initially go on sale in Europe in April. They'll appear later in other markets but timing hasn't yet been decided, Sony in Tokyo said Friday.

For Europe there are three models: the NW-A805, A806, and A808. The only major difference is in the amount of flash memory, which is 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB, respectively.

The screen is a 2-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) panel with QVGA resolution (240 pixels by 320 pixels). It's orientated in portrait form rather than the landscape form used on the iPod, but videos can be viewed with the device either held vertically or horizontally, said Sony.

Audio playback in a number of flavors of Sony's ATRAC compression is possible, and Sony supplies software for converting Windows Media Audio, MP3 and WAV files to ATRAC. It's also possible to directly load MP3 files onto the Walkman, but battery life will be shorter. For video the Walkman plays back MPEG4 H.264/AVC encoded files.

Playback time on a fully-charged battery differs depending on the type of files. For audio its roughly 30 hours for ATRAC files encoded at 132Kbps while for video its seven hours for MPEG4 files encoded at 768Kbps. Video files at lower bit rates will take up less space in the memory but also make the Walkman work a little harder on the decoding, so the time drops to about six hours and 30 minutes for a 384Kbps file, according to Sony's figures.

The Walkman measures 44 millimeters wide by 88mm high and is 9mm thick. It weighs 53 grams.

The NW-A805 is listed on Sony's online store for €180 ($237), the NW-A806 for €230 and the NW-A808 for €300. In comparison Apple's 30GB iPod costs €289 in Germany. The two products are difficult to compare on price alone, however, because the iPod has a larger screen and is also bulkier and heavier than the new Sony Walkman.

Sony historians will note that the new product is not actually Sony's first Walkman to support video. That recognition goes to the GV-8 "Video Walkman" that was put on sale in August 1998 and played back Video 8 cassettes from camcorders. It cost ¥118,200 (approximately $820 using the historical exchange rate).