Sony ads HD to their LocationFree Line

So it looks like Sony has stepped up and added HD to their LocationFree devices. We had reported on their LocationFree line up earlier and we had thought they had a leg up on the competition due to the fact that they shipped all of the computers with the software built in just waiting for a LocationFree server to be added.

Similar to Apple's idea of giving the user a complete experience from purchase to playing , the Sony LocationFree system seems similar. You can now buy music from Sony, load it onto a Sony computer and play it on a Sony music streamer. They are really making a big push to get a piece of the connected homes pie.

So anyway, the HD version isn't really HD, but an approximation of it. From the gizmodo article:

First, the HD signal is not your source signal but an MPEG4 compressed product. Sony claims the picture has somewhere near 96% fidelity, which is still pretty good in our book. Second, the transmitter doesn't have HDMI input. The receiving unit supports the format, but apparently Sony can't deal with transcoding and transmitting the HDMI data—or finds the prospect too expensive.

So while its not all bad there are definitely some warts. While we won't be able to play with this since it will only be released in Japan we are still looking into getting one of the standard ones to see how they perform and stack up to the rest of the devices we have tested.

via gizmodo

Read More in: News | Video Streaming

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Posted by David Ficocello at September 12, 2007 9:44 PM