Brand New Sony B100 MP3 Killed ATRAC and SonicStage!?!

It's Sony time again! After seeing this, the crowd went numb. The company's European branch almost secretly unveiled its B100 Network Walkman music player for the summer collection of 2007. The company's latest B100 series seems to deserve the particular notice.

According to ATRACLife, the new series of players confirms the rumors that it is going to be launched without the SonicStage file transfer application that is the personal mark of all previous Sony players. Not only that, but apparently Sony gave up the ATRAC format, which is known as the proprietary codec and competitor to the MP3, WMA and AAC file formats, and the AAC, that iTunes is going to be marketed without the DRM. The main reason behind that seems to be the company's plan of compressing the music into some universal formats such as the popular MP3 and WMA.

So, all the listeners will be able to load up the player simply by dropping songs into it through the standard computer browser that also allows transferring data when there's enough space.

Just like the previous E010 player, the B100 plugs directly into a PC through the usual Usb connector. Not to mention it comes with a lot of features that that are often forgotten by the manufacturers, such as a portable size, a three-line LCD, the optional FM tuning and a trendy and useful voice recorder. So, when being caught up in a traffic jam, you can either listen to some news or record some voice memo for your shrink.

As for the B100 player's battery life, it is rated at almost 12 hours, enough to listen to all your favorite music while being on the go. If you're wondering about the pricing and availability details, the fellows from Electronista announced that the shipments to Europe begin in August with 1GB and 2 GB models. There is no word about the price tag yet, though it seems that the included FM radio as well as the available capacity storage is going to be important when deciding the price.