March 15, 2001 (TOKYO) -- Sony Marketing (Japan) Inc. announced a personal digital assistant (PDA) device that can play music as well as video content such as recorded television programs.

Sony's PEG-N700C is a new model of the CLIE series of PDA products. It is compatible with the Magic Gate Memory Stick.

The product, to be released on April 7, will have a thin-film transistor color display with a resolution of 320 x 320 pixels. On March 21, Sony Marketing will start accepting orders in advance at Sony Style.com Japan Inc.'s Web site . The price will be open, but the retail price is estimated at about 50,000 yen. (119.97 yen = US$1)

The mobile terminal will be the smallest and lightest among PDAs equipped with a TFT color display. It measures 71mm wide by 118.5mm deep by 16.8mm thick, and weighs about 160g, including lithium-ion polymer rechargeable batteries, according to a Sony Marketing spokesman.

The model will have more applications for jog dial and it can even scroll applications that are incompatible with jog dial. It has a back button to display the previous screen. Users can record musical data and motion pictures on a Magic Gate Memory Stick and replay such data on the main body of the new CLIE.

Also, the PEG-N700C can play music. Users will first need to install the accessory software called OpenMG Jukebox, and they will then record musical data on a Magic Gate Memory Stick from a personal computer and play such data on Audio Player Ver.1.0, software loaded on a PEG-N700C. Musical data will be in ATRAC3 format. By using OpenMG Jukebox software, musical data in such formats as WAVE and MP3 can also be converted to ATRAC3.

Another major feature of the PDA is its ability to replay recorded TV programs by connecting to a VAIO personal computer. Users can record TV programs in the gMovie format on a VAIO PC equipped with Giga Pocket, software to record and replay TV programs. They will be able to Hot Sync or record the TV programs on a Memory Stick, and replay them with gMovie Ver.1.2, software to replay motion pictures loaded on the CLIE. With a 128MB Memory Stick, it can replay about 60 minutes to 160 minutes of color motion pictures.

It has a 33MHz Dragonball VZ central processing unit, 8MB of main memory, and is preinstalled with the Japanese version of Palm OS ver.3.5. Also, it has a universal serial bus, an infrared port conforming to the IrDA protocol for interface, and built-in lithium-ion polymer rechargeable batteries. The batteries can last about 15 days between recharging, when the PDA is in normal use.