Sony launched its first hard disk media player, the video-only Vaio Pocket, last year and a couple more have come along since then, but we’ve had to wait until now for the first audio and video player with a hard disk from the company.
Unusually for a Sony product, the HMP-A1 supports MP3 audio and not Sony’s favoured ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding for MiniDisc) format. The MPEG2 and MPEG4 video formats are supported directly and other media formats can be played once converted by software bundled with the player.
The 3.5in LCD screen, which dominates the front of the device, has a 320 pixel by 240 pixel (QVGA) resolution. Along its right-hand side are a small number of navigation buttons and there is also an in-line remote control in the headphone cable.
The hard disk inside has a 29Gbyte capacity; data can be transferred between the device and a PC over a USB 2.0 connection. The device had a June launch Japan, but there are
no plans as yet to sell it overseas.
26/07/04
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