First Preview of the Sony Pocket Vaio

The Guardian has the first preview of Sony's upcoming harddrive-based MP3 player, the VGF-AP1. Not content to merely ape the iPod, Sony has put its own unique design spin on the device. How usable it will be in the hands of consumers remains to be seen though.

However, looks and interface aside, it is Sony's Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology that could become a make or a, much more likely, break feature. Apparently, the VGF-AP1 will only play music in Sony's ATRAC DRM format. Any other supported format, such as MP3 or WMA, would be converted to ATRAC when it is loaded onto the device. At the very least this would increase the time it takes to load music onto the player. Also, the conversion would likely degrade the quality of the original music since the compressed music must be recompressed into the new format.