Sony NWZ-A810 & NWZ-S610/S510 Series WALKMAN Digital Media Players

Sony today announced the availability of two new Series of digital media players in Europe – the WALKMAN A Series and S Series. The NWZ-A810 & NWZ-S610/S510 Series will support an open platform and include support for Windows Media technology, providing greater choice for downloading and managing music, video and photo collections.

The players support security-enhanced Microsoft Windows Media Audio (WMA), as well as non-secure AAC and MP3 music formats, plus JPEG files for photos, in addition to the AVC (H.264/AVC) Baseline Profile and MPEG-4 video codecs. Users can download movie trailers, music videos, podcasts and clips from a variety of website destinations. As long as the videos are compressed in the appropriate codec, resolution and size they will work with the new WALKMAN players.

With these new WALKMAN players, Sony has widened its digital music environment to support Windows Media technology. The company will be moving towards a more open system that gives customers flexibility in their music software approach. As a result, Sony will be phasing out the CONNECTTM Music Service based on Sony’s ATRAC audio format in Europe. Specific timing will vary by region depending on market demand, but will not be before March 2008.