Sony Electronics announced on Tuesday the addition of a 2GB Memory Stick Pro card (“about US$700”) to its line-up of storage options compatible with the company’s digital cameras and other mobile devices. The entire line of Memory Stick Pro and Pro Duo media will also receive higher read/write speeds, up to 10MB per second, later this year. They’ll be identifiable by their red color and the addition of the words “High Speed.” The 256MB ($100), 512MB ($170) and 1GB ($350) Memory Stick Pro media, as well as the 256MB ($105) and 512MB ($175) Memory Stick Pro Duo, will be available in High Speed in October, with the 1GB ($350) Memory Stick Pro Duo and new 2GB Memory Stick Pro cards shipping in November. At the same time, Sony will also recast its original line of Memory Stick Pro and Pro Duo media in black casing and drop the prices to $80 and $150 for the 256MB and 512MB Pro sticks, respectively, and $85 and $155 for the 256MB and 512MB Pro Duo sticks, respectively.
I’m especially looking forward to the 1GB Pro Duo for my T1, the movie mode eats up even a 512MB card in no time. Since the MS Pro slot on my TR and S don’t support high-speed transfer, the newer sticks won’t help out too much, but the lower prices on the old ones will.
The lower prices are good. I do hope they don’t go through that whole “oh, the new cards don’t work in our current cameras…go buy the DSC-T2 to use the 1GB PRO DUO card”.
that would definitely suck.. hopefully i don’t ever have to get a 9-in-1 memory stick pcmcia that supports ms, ms pro, ms pro duo, ms high speed, ms high speed duo, ms ultra speed II, etc..
[quote author=“linc”]that would definitely suck.. hopefully i don’t ever have to get a 9-in-1 memory stick pcmcia that supports ms, ms pro, ms high speed, ms ultra speed II, etc..
Hm..isn’t sony notorious for introducing multiple proprietary formats? MiniDisc, MS, MS Duo, MS MagicGate, etc, and don’t forget their infamous ATRAC3 BS….
My mem. card reader already supports four of Sony’s ‘interchangeable’ formats…
[quote author=“linc”]that would definitely suck.. hopefully i don’t ever have to get a 9-in-1 memory stick pcmcia that supports ms, ms pro, ms pro duo, ms high speed, ms high speed duo, ms ultra speed II, etc..
I doubt the new cards change anything in the interface. The change is in the internal read/write speed. Sandisk has had these out for some time:
Regarding the DSC-T1. I remember the spec saying “tested to 512MB”, which gives me some comfort. I don’t see them cutting the throat of a product so early in it’s cycle. Idealy we’ll be safe up to 2GB, then, again, Sony can be stupid.
Technically, it’s not BS as the audio quality is pretty good when compared to contemporary codecs. Additionally, with good supporting chipsets, the battery usage was very low and optimized. What was BS was the fact that they made it proprietary and didn’t open it up. :wink:
like everyone else, i hope these will be somewhat backwards compatible with the current memory stick pro. as far as the t1 and other cameras go, with canon’s release of its new line of digital cameras, which include a small, compact 7+ megapixel model, i wouldn’t be surprised if sony has a new line and replaces the t1, v1, w1 by the holidays. the 2gb memory stick would best be used with these cameras and other cameras with more megapixels.
[quote author=“TruthSeeker”]Ahh…the evolution of flash. Sony doesn’t seem to want to make this easy. Shame.
I don’t think it’s all that bad or much different than anything else in the computer industry. We’re constantly pushing the limits of speed and memory capacity. In a few years you’ll shake your head when you see a TR going for $200.
Prior to the TR the only memory stick I owned came with my DV camera and I think I accidentally recorded on it a couple of times.
Given that Sony felt the need for a proprietary memory format, its evolution appears logical. Original MS, Faster MS, MS Pro (faster w/magicgate), MS Pro High Speed.
Then there’s the MS Duo (small form-factor with both MS and high-speed buss), MS Pro Duo (faster), MS Pro Duo High Speed.
Perhaps one of you long-time MS users can tell me. Aren’t they all pretty much backward compatable unless the memory exceeds the capability of the device?
Isn’t magicgate pretty much incidental except when using it for copyrighted content with a magicgate enabled port?
ms pro media can be used with ms pro compatible devices only. compatibility with this media can be implemented in products in some categories through firmware or software upgrades
It was a rhetorical statement, would you feel better if I say several rather than few? Contemplating your link, I’d suggest that one might get to the $200 mark faster comparing to used rather than refurbished with updated O/S, software and accessories.
