CES 2008: Sony Rolly MP3 player thingy arriving soon

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Before a slightly bemused crowd, Sony gave a demonstration of its latest music playing whatnot, the Rolly. It’s not even particularly new as we’d caught wind of it here, here and here before. However, this is the first time we’ve seen it in the flesh and we’ve even got some tech deets.

The player, which Sony is describing as “a sophisticated piece of entertainment technology” and we’re calling a dancing egg comes with 2GB of internal Flash memory. It is equipped with stereo Bluetooth so that you can stream your tunes across to it and watch it wriggle happily about, flapping its peculiar wingy bits at gawping onlookers. We spotted about four different coloured models but there could have been more lurking in the large crowd.

I couldn’t see if the 3.5mm headphone jack has made it through to the CES models to determine whether it will also be any use as an actual MP3 player. Certainly it provided a momentary distraction from the hustle and bustle of the show floor, its robotic movement were pretty precise and sophisticated and it must pack a fairly healthy set of speakers as we could hear it clearly above the noise. But it’s really just a gimmick – the modern equivalent of those creepy somersaulting dogs that rove wild across the floor in Hamleys. It was hilarious watching the Sony rep trying desperately to catch one and shut it off when someone wanted to take a photo of it though.

Availability is only marked down as 2008, so we can’t give you a firm release date yet.

Here’s a short video of it in action.

Sony

CES 2008 Special
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