Oh, you're a silicon player freak. Listening to MP3 music from morning to next morning, downloading free and/or paid tunes from left to right. But, don't you feel, sometimes, a bit too tedious to stuff your ears with earplugs? Also, don't you feel it tiresome moving your music from PC down to the player?

For this kind of download fatigue, Sony has a really nice remedy for you. It had just been displayed at the 2007 international CES in Las Vegas, and attracted some acute attention. Wi-Fi Audio VGF-WA1.

Sony Wi-Fi Audio VGF-WA1 "Wireless Speaker" An audio version of Sony Location-Free TV.

VGF-WA1 is a media player with a built-in IEEE 802.11b/g wireless interface, possessing no massive silicon memory or harddisk itself, but a mere 128MB of RAM. In this sense, Sony's advertisement subtitle, "Wireless Speaker", sounds pretty appropriate.

This clever speaker (actually, two of them, both 8cm in diameter) gets music from a distant server (PC, NAS, etc.) through Wi-Fi. It can be operated by rechargeable battery (for 4 hours). Therefore you can carry it around anywhere, as far as the Wi-Fi radio wave reaches. Playable music formats are: ATRAC3, ATRAC3plus, WAVE, MP3, AAC and WMA.

All right, let's start. If your home LAN has an 802.11b/g access point, things are straightforward. You can go straight into the PC which acts as the music server. No wireless environment? No problem. Insert the tiny USB Wi-Fi adapter that comes with VGF-WA1 package into your PC. The connection will be established in no time.

Music files stored in the server PC are shown on the touch panel of VGF-WA1. Choose with your finger tip. Or with the remote controller. The touch panel is rather smallish with no colors. That's a kind of flaw... oh, c'mon, this is not a video/movie player! On the other hand, if VGF-WA1 had a decent LCD display, it could work as a beautiful Wi-Fi media player, too. Maybe Sony would be thinking down that path already.

VGF-WA1 can work as a simple amplifier, too. Connect your silicon player with a cable to AUX audio input. You can blast the world. An audio output jack, too, is provided. A USB jack exists, but it works only for the setting of a VGF-WA1 wireless envionment.

Included in the package are: IEEE 802.11b/g USB adapter for PC Infrared remote controller unit USB cable for setting up

Price: 34,800 yen (US$290). Will come to market in mid-February. Presently available at Sony VAIO online store.

 

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