Sony Officially Discontinued HD-5!!

[carolo]

Yesterday-6th.October-chatting to a Sony salesman in their shop in Lincoln I was told that the HD-5 was now officially discontinued-and that a "new Sony mp3 to rival the i-pod would be introduced to catch the christmas market"

I,ve only had mine a month-the model only came out in April!

Bye,,bye HD5!!!!!!-it was short and sweet!!!!

 

[paulrwebster]

Cracking!

 

[shadowritten]

Like I said: the HDx series was something of a dry run for the future of Sony's DAPs. Now let's see if they can get their act together ... at last.

 

[ToxicUK]

Could Sony have "shot themselves in the foot" with the new NWA3000, if the NWHD5 only lasted a couple of months is there any guarentee the replacement will last any longer, maybe people will hold back buying for a few months just in case, if so, that would surely hit the xmas sales figures or is this unit aimed at NEW customers who havent a clue about the turmoils during the last 12 months if this is the case word eventually spreads and people dont buy Sony straight away so Sony will never become leaders

 

[shadowritten]

Could Sony have "shot themselves in the foot" with the new NWA3000, if the NWHD5 only lasted a couple of months is there any guarentee the replacement will last any longer, maybe people will hold back buying for a few months just in case, if so, that would surely hit the xmas sales figures or is this unit aimed at NEW customers who havent a clue about the turmoils during the last 12 months if this is the case word eventually spreads and people dont buy Sony straight away so Sony will never become leaders

I think the new Walkmans are definitely aimed at newbies. But I agree it's a very risky strategy. One of two things will happen:

1) Sony will 'settle' into this new range, develop its strengths, make better products in future and regain the top spot ...

2) ... or, they'll keep releasing new products, leaving once-loyal customers behind, lose significant market share, and finally abandon portable audio altogether.

Let's face it, 2) is pretty unlikely. This is Sony: inventors of portable audio!!

 

[syenite]

i cant believe it...
my 30 gig hd5 will be arriving in the post on monday

maybe it will become an 'old school' collectors item???

 

[David Mackenzie]

Hehe, I'll always love my HD5. Summer 2005 wouldn't have been the same without it and I'm sure I'll use it for a good few years yet. I was delighted when I heard the sound quality, previously I thought I'd expected too much from portable audio but the HD5 proved me wrong. What a shame it had such a short life - let's hope it goes down in history as a totally cracking MP3 player (SORRY, joke already done to death, I know!)

 

[KiNeL]

Can I be the only one who really doesn't care ?

I like my HD5, warts and all. It well suits my needs and I hope to be keeping it for a good while.

There will always be a new product round the corner, especially so in such a dynamic and competative market sector as DAP's but, as I've said somewhere else here recently, I believe, for a while at least, most changes will be in matters of style rather in quantum leaps in functionality.

Me, I'll try to hang on for the fag packet size 200gb mobile phone multimedia PVR with GPS and sat nav and 14 day replaceable battery but in the interim my HD5 will suffice very nicely thank you!

 

[IanPM]

Its a shame to be honest. Its not going to bother me, I've got one, and I'm glad I have. I really and truly love it. Sure, its got some utterly terrible parts to it. It really needs far better on-the-fly playlisting before it can compete with the iPod. The new players will hopefully have a higher quality outer shell too, something that as time goes on, I am thinking is really lacking on the HD5.

Still, I'm thrilled to own an HD5. I do really think it is a great MP3 player. I also think its smaller than the new players Sony are releasing. But hey, they need something that will appeal to the kids!

 

[syenite]

yeah, im so suprised the new models will be bigger (and not just a couple of mm). in anticipation of my hd5 arriving. does SS support podcasting? my housemate has SS3.0 and i had a play with it but to no avail.

 

[Cloysterpeteuk]

I wouldn't expect SS to support podcasting as they won't make no money from it, I would say that podcatching is one element of itunes that is done naffly, tried it for a month now and it just pisses me off with a few annoying little niggles.

I use ipodder which is by far the best and easiest to use podcatcher, I would go with that for you HD5.

 

[carolo]

I use Total Recorder and the BBC player listen again feature to create my own free podcasts for downloading to and subsequent listening on my HD-5
Its dead easy-and the results are excellent.
The original recordings are made in .WAV (hi quality) mode-and the converted by Sonic Stage to the ATRAC3plus format at 132 bitrate.
Superb!

 

[joora]

well, i'm happy to be an owner of this little gadget, yet i just wanted support for the new bitrates and the new connect software before sony throws it in the garbage bin... ah well, we can always hope one talented owner of a hd5 will be able to modify it's firmware and share his results with us...

i just hope that the replacement battery will be available for purchase for some time... i see myself using this thing for more than 2 years...