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Sony TransferJet devices coming soon

Published on 9th February 2010 by Gareth Halfacree

Sony's induction-based high-speed short-range TransferJet technology will be hitting Western shores soon - but does it solve a problem?

Sony has announced that the first products to use its TransferJet short-range wireless technology could hit the market as soon as this spring.

As reported over on Physorg.com, the tech giant has had the short-range technology in the works since 2008 when it was demonstrated at that year's Consumer Electronic Show - but so far has yet to implement it in a product for Western markets, despite having made the transceiver available to third parties back in November.

However, TransferJet is available in the Vaio F series of laptops and the TX7 and HX5V digital cameras in Japan - and the company has announced that it'll be coming to Western shores soon.

For those making the plunge and buying both the Vaio F laptop and a compatible camera, the advantage is thus: rather than using a USB cable to suck images off the camera, the TransferJet technology allows wireless communication between the two devices at speeds of up to 375Mb/s - albeit at a rather restricted range of just 3cm.

With the ultimate aim being to replace cables altogether for file transfers between cameras, smartphones, and PDAs and their respective desk- or lap-bound brethren, it's a technology that holds promise - but only if Sony can encourage third-party manufacturers to adopt it in their devices and laptops as well.

While the initial plan is for peripheral devices to support TransferJet for connection to a host machine, Sony is also hoping to get support for the technology in smartphone handsets and portable music players - and envisions a future where purchasing an album at a bricks-and-mortar shop is as simple as waving your device at the short-range transmitter. Again, the only way Sony will convince shops to implement the technology is if it can find its way into the majority of portable devices - much as WiFi and Bluetooth have done previously.

Are you looking forward to a near-field, wire-free future - or simply struggling to see the practical applications of a short-range battery-sapping wireless technology? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

23 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

eddtox 9th February 2010, 14:39

Hmm, I suppose this + passive rfid for unique ID + wireless power plate = pretty decent sealed-unit wireless hard drives. Might be quite nice, if they get the built-in security right. Last thing you want is for someone to spoof your transferjet MAC and start buying things in brick&mortar shops with it.

l3v1ck 9th February 2010, 14:58

Propriety junk. So you have to buy Sony this and Sony that to get things to work. No thanks. I'll stick with standardised stuff that works with everything else on the market.

proxess 9th February 2010, 14:58

So it's IR with higher speeds and smaller distances?

DST 9th February 2010, 15:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by l3v1ck
Propriety junk. So you have to buy Sony this and Sony that to get things to work. No thanks. I'll stick with standardised stuff that works with everything else on the market.

Quite right. Another thing with Sony is that they often leaving their own proprietary standards behind - thus effectively pushing them into oblivion. MicroMV cassettes or Hi-MD disks anyone?

LaM3a 9th February 2010, 15:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by l3v1ck
Propriety junk. So you have to buy Sony this and Sony that to get things to work. No thanks. I'll stick with standardised stuff that works with everything else on the market.

"The TransferJet Consortium was established in July 2008 to advance and promote the TransferJet Format, by developing the technical specifications and compliance testing procedures as well as creating a market for TransferJet-compliant, interoperable products. As of August 2009, the Consortium is led by nineteen Promoter member companies, consisting of: Canon, Casio, Eastman Kodak, Hitachi Ltd, JVC-Kenwood Holdings, KDDI, NEC, Nikon, NTT docomo, Olympus, Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung, Seiko Epson, Sharp, SoftBank Mobile, Sony, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba. Since May 2009, the Consortium is accepting applications for Adopter membership."
Very prorietary indeed :-)

scawp 9th February 2010, 15:48

If we combine this and http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2010/02/08/supercapacitor-promises-end-to-batteries/1

Then we will soon have oyster cards that can make phone calls and take photos. Be afraid people.

PureSilver 9th February 2010, 15:55

What exactly is wrong with cables anyway? This wireless stuff just seems so massively wasteful - I even got round to wiring large bits of the house with CAT5 back in the day rather than run wifi. And it's all well and good if you're updating your phone contacts but what if you've got a weekend's worth of RAW images? This is a solution without a problem...

yougotkicked 9th February 2010, 16:18

honestly, everyone here is a genuine tech junkie. we all know the value of wires, wireless tech just cant compete. wires give a lot higher transfer speeds, and we are the type of people who use them. but for the general public, whose only contact with large file transfers is loading up a new ipod, i think this will be rather appealing. imagine combining this with one of the wireless battery charging stations, charge your phone and sync all your data just by putting it on your desk. i feel like this is one technology that may really catch on.

DST 9th February 2010, 16:21

Let's talk numbers, shall we? To enable "camera-to-PC" transfer of photos the following is required:

TransferJet Memory Stick (MSJ-X8G) - $99.99
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10151&catalogId=10551&langId=-1&productId=8198552921666079536

TransferJet Station (TJS-1) - $149.99
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10151&catalogId=10551&langId=-1&productId=8198552921666079681

So the question is - would you rather use cable or spend almost $250?

Eggy 9th February 2010, 16:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaM3a
Quote:
Originally Posted by l3v1ck
Propriety junk. So you have to buy Sony this and Sony that to get things to work. No thanks. I'll stick with standardised stuff that works with everything else on the market.

"The TransferJet Consortium was established in July 2008 to advance and promote the TransferJet Format, by developing the technical specifications and compliance testing procedures as well as creating a market for TransferJet-compliant, interoperable products. As of August 2009, the Consortium is led by nineteen Promoter member companies, consisting of: Canon, Casio, Eastman Kodak, Hitachi Ltd, JVC-Kenwood Holdings, KDDI, NEC, Nikon, NTT docomo, Olympus, Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung, Seiko Epson, Sharp, SoftBank Mobile, Sony, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba. Since May 2009, the Consortium is accepting applications for Adopter membership."
Very prorietary indeed :-)

Haha, the silence is deafening.

llamafur 9th February 2010, 16:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by DST

Quite right. Another thing with Sony is that they often leaving their own proprietary standards behind - thus effectively pushing them into oblivion. MicroMV cassettes or Hi-MD disks anyone?

I think the Betamax tape is another good example of Sonys fail boat items.

LaM3a 9th February 2010, 16:57

Remember the beginning of all new technologies, such as CD, DVD, HDD, SSD ... They were all very expensive, like this one :-)

l3v1ck 9th February 2010, 17:02

And how many of those partners are implementing it? Not many, so it's as good as propriety. Like many failed "standards" in the past, I expect this to fail to take off.

Jenny_Y8S 9th February 2010, 17:05

I'm split about this...

The bad...

3cm? So you've got to have it in a docking cradle to get it to work? And how is that docking cradle attached? Hmmm it would appear to be USB.
So if you're going to have a usb cable reaching on to your desk, why not just leave the silly cradle off and plug in the bloody cable!

The good...

I remember bluetooth coming out and everyone saying how amazing it was going to be, but the 1st & 2nd gen products were all pants. Two years after release I remember reading a big PCPro feature on why bluetooth had so much potential but was basically rubbish.

And look at it now, so who knows what cool things we'll see using the tech.

But 3cm... that's still a bit short!

Dave Lister 9th February 2010, 18:02

If the sony name were removed from it, it may stand a better chance. I think people are losing patience with sony nowadays. The psp was the last straw for me. They totaly ruined the psp with there stupid security updates to stop people running homwbrew.

LaM3a 9th February 2010, 18:09

Just imagine passing a USB flash drive in front of your television to watch the video in, that's nice I think.

greigaitken 9th February 2010, 20:44

your inlaws are showing off their new telly and you have flash drive in pocket and "do you want to watch Ruined Daughters?" pops up

ssj12 9th February 2010, 21:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Lister
If the sony name were removed from it, it may stand a better chance. I think people are losing patience with sony nowadays. The psp was the last straw for me. They totaly ruined the psp with there stupid security updates to stop people running homwbrew.

and Nintendo didnt screw homebrew? seriously leave the PSP out of this.

Redbeaver 9th February 2010, 21:48

Wireless technology will win.... eventually.

Why? Because it's the future.

And it sells.

DarkLord7854 10th February 2010, 05:03

I'd much rather see this be used with internal circuit boards by splitting them up into much smaller chunks by eliminating their ridiculous circuit routes and stuff, though I think that's a different technology that's being worked on.. hmm

Da_Rude_Baboon 10th February 2010, 09:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by llamafur
Quote:
Originally Posted by DST

Quite right. Another thing with Sony is that they often leaving their own proprietary standards behind - thus effectively pushing them into oblivion. MicroMV cassettes or Hi-MD disks anyone?
I think the Betamax tape is another good example of Sonys fail boat items.

Betamax became AVID the video industry standard in video editing so although it didnt catch on in the consumer market it was not a complete failure.

Saivert 10th February 2010, 18:37

Just like S-VHS didn't catch on in the consumer market because people apparently loved the Half-PAL/Half-NTSC resolution of VHS instead of getting the full picture quality when taping their favorite shows.

Sometimes people don't got a clue. Or things are just too expensive to catch on.

eddtox 11th February 2010, 12:32

I have one acronim for you: UMD! They could have made the psp awesome, if only they stuck some sort of hard-drive/ssd etc in there. Instead, they gave us the UMD. And then, to rub salt into the wound they retired it and now the only way to get games for their new psp is through their proprietary PSN.
Sony have come up with some great ideas in the past, but somehow they always seem to cripple them in one way or another.