Lasse Penttinen
4 Jan 2003 12:37
Sony has announced a very innovative portable combo device.The beauty of the concept is that the same device provides both recording and playback.
December 2002 | Sony's new MPD-AP20U looks a lot like a DiscMan, and quite a bit like some recent laptop-market CD recorders, but its powers transcend such one-trick ponies. Combining CD recording and DVD-Video playback as a portable computer drive and—after a quick costume change in any handy phone booth—battery-powered MP3/Audio CD playback as a standalone CD player, this dual-identity drive "blurs the line between computer peripherals and CE devices," according to Sony IT Products marketing manager Robert DeMoulin.
The drive also illustrates Sony's current CD-R strategy, in that it stays out of the speed race (eschewing showy 48X specs for a comparably modest 24X), and emphasizes other value-adding attributes like portability, a Memory Stick slot, DVD-ROM playback, and standalone use as CD-Audio player with trendy MP3 capability. The drive also boasts 10X CD-RW recording, 24X CD read speed, 8X DVD-ROM reading, and an 8MB buffer to support data transfer in the most perilous of recording conditions. (Sony's BurnProof-equivalent buffer underrun-protection technology, Power-Burn, helps in this respect as well.) The Memory Stick slot (now a staple of Sony CD and DVD recorders) enables users to transfer content to CD-R from digital cameras or other devices that support the portable storage format, and also allows them to play back MP3 files stored on Memory Stick when the drive is in standalone mode.
Emedialive.com