The Play Station, the Trinitron technology used in most professional CRT monitors until recently, and the VAIO line of products, that includes notebooks, desktop systems, subnotebooks, as well as an audio player that uses a hard disk for storage, called VAIO POCKET player - what do these things have in common? "Sony" is the answer, and today I just found out that they just admitted the iPod's reign over the portable media players market, releasing their first product for Apple's player...

Since all the iPod accessory producers are making really nice cash these days, due to the amazing popularity of these players, Sony decided to leave all the pride and prejudice aside and join in. Their first audio system for the iPod is a compact unit for all dockable iPods that features an S-Master amplifier and an external subwoofer.

The Sony iPod Audio Docking Station CPF-IP001 is priced at 249.99$ and it can "turn your iPod music player into a full-blown stereo system", according to Sony. As most similar products, all you have to do is plug in your player and press the "Play" button to stream all the tracks available on your iPod. Having a compact size, Sony's first docking station is very easy to move from one room to another, and the included remote places you in control of everything, from song selection to sound volume level.

The audio power output of the main unit is 2X5W, while the subwoofer is rated at 15W, for a total harmonic distortion (THD) of 10% at 1KHz and 100Hz, respectively. If you think that the iPod is not enough, you can use the additional line input to connect a second audio source. Unfortunately, the only color combination available at this time is the one you can notice in the picture here, with silver speakers and black subwoofer, but let's hope they will add some more in the near future.