Over the years, Sony has demonstrated its commitment to coming up with new and ridiculous proprietary things alongside industry-defining products like the original Walkman and PlayStation. Many of these have seen widespread success, like Blu-Ray, or made sense for the time, like the ATRAC audio codec that made the MiniDisc viable; some of Sony’s worst ideas involved hardware connectors.
So let’s take a look at some of the company’s biggest crimes against cables, ports, and connectors.
8AV Multi
Sony’s AV Multi first made an appearance in the PlayStation console, where it was used to carry an analog signal from the console to a TV. Sony reprised the connector for analog video transport purposes in the PS2 and PS3. It was a proprietary output that was limited to games consoles (withlimited evidenceof a few Japanese TVs also using it).
But Sony is hardly alone in this, with almost all consoles of the time taking the same approach. Microsoft used a similar trick with the Xbox 360, as did Nintendo with the Wii U, which still supported analog output on release in 2012. The AV Multi was a perfectly acceptable connector for the time, particularly considering it could carry Composite, S-Video, RGB, and Component signals.
7Sony Ericsson CST-15
The CST-15 is the connector that appeared on the Sony Ericsson feature phones that were popular in the early 2000s, right through to the dawn of the smartphone era. I can confidently say that these chargers were absolutely rotten, but I’m happy to give Sony a pass considering the state of the market at the time. Every company of the era was using some horrendous proprietary charger of some sort, since this was long beforeUSB chargingwas standardized between brands.
Even so, if you ever had a Sony Ericsson that used one of these chargers, you’ll undoubtedly remember how flimsy they were. Not only was the cable itself rigid, plasticky, and prone to fraying, but the connector routinely failed to withstand the rigors of daily use. As a result, I had to replace multiple Sony Ericsson mobiles because they simply refused to charge.
6Sony 10-Pin Camcorder A/V Cable
Getting an analog signal from a camcorder to a TV or a VCR to watch back or capture your home videos commonly required the use of an RCA to carry composite video over the yellow connector, and separate left and right audio channels over white and red cables. Having three separate ports on a camcorder takes up too much space, so many manufacturers used a breakout cable to handle this.
While camcorder manufacturers like JVC were happy to stick with the commonly used 3.5mm connector typically employed for headphones and audio, Sony had other ideas. The Sony 10-pin Camcorder A/V Cable was born to take analog video and sound to a TV or capture device. The strange thing is that this connector was still used until recently, withthe “newest” camcordersadvertised on Sony’s website (like theAX43A 4K Handycam) advertising its use. It’s worth noting that all of these cameras appear to have been discontinued, and that the cable is sold separately.
5Digital Media Port (DMP)
Sony started putting the Digital Media Port (DMP, or DMPort) on its audio-visual receivers in early 2007, with a line of accessories following very shortly after. This early line of add-ons was comprised of the TM-BT1 Bluetooth adapter, a TDM-IP1 iPod Dock, the TDN-NW1 Network Walkman cradle, and the rather pricey TDM-NC1 Wi-Fi adapter for streaming audio from a PC (which cost $200 at the time).
Engadgetponderedwhether or not DMP would be “anything more than a glorified USB port,” and in retrospect, that seems like an apt description. It makes sense that you wouldn’t be able to plug just any Bluetooth or Wi-Fi adapter into your pricey Sony receiver, so DMP was likely seen as a method of matching compatible products with one another using one more proprietary connector.
4WMC-NW20MU
In use around the mid to late 2000s, the WMC-NW20MU connector was used to charge and connect Sony Network Walkman models with catchy names like the NWZ-S636F, S703F, and—who could forget—the S718FBNC. You’d need to plug one of these in fairly frequently to keep your MP3 player juiced up and to transfer new music. This is especially true considering many of these players used flash memory with capacities of a few gigabytes or less. On the other end of the cable was a standard fat USB-A connector, while the WMC connector itself was much thinner (I bet it wobbled around in no time).
This wasn’t exactly unique for the time, particularly given the popularity of Apple’s iPod, which used an equally thin and flimsy connector (which eventually tainted even the iPhone and iPad). Still, at least Apple’s product line was popular. I had an iRiver hard drive MP3 player at the time (purchased even earlier in 2005), which used a Mini USB connector. I saw this only to demonstrate that a more “universal” option was available to companies, if they wanted it.
3PS Vita Charging Cable
The PS Vita was released in 2011 as a follow-up to the PlayStation Portable (PSP), with subsequent revisions. Perhaps Sony’s most puzzling choice, outside offailing to adequately support the console with enough first-party titles, was the decision to use a proprietary charging cable. Instead, you’d need to charge your handheld with a surprisingly chunky-yet-shallow cable, which would also act as a two-in-one for USB file transfers so you could move media like pictures and music in the days before cloud-everything.
It must be said that Sony wasn’t alone here, with Nintendo continuing to use its own similar connectors right up until the release of the Nintendo Switch. That said, there’s no excuse for either company to have been doing this in the early 2010s, a time when the (admittedly terrible) Micro USB standard had well and truly established itself. Being limited to a single charger would have been a hassle since you’d have to carry it with you rather than rely on the cables you might already have at your destination.
Sony eventually “fixed” the problem by dropping the proprietary connector in the PS Vita Slim model in favor of the aforementioned cursed Micro USB connector.
Wondering why the PSP doesn’t appear here? Sony opted for a standard DC barrel charger for its previous generation of handhelds. These were common in other devices at the time, including laptops and some MP3 players, plus they’re not strictly proprietary since they were often available (and still are) with a variable power brick and a bag of various connectors.
2Home Theater in a Box (HTiB) Speaker Connectors
I’m not afraid to admit that I’d never heard of Sony’s “Home Theatre in a Box” initiative until very recently, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. These systems do exactly what they say on the box: provide everything you need to build a surround-sound system in a one-size-fits-all package. The idea here is to eliminate the guesswork of matching a receiver with satellite speakers and a subwoofer, but somewhere along the way, Sony seems to have panicked and designed yet another proprietary connector.
These aren’t your grandad’s speaker connectors, and are instead designed to work with only the included speakers. There areold Reddit threadswith users puzzling over their existence, where commenters ponder whether one could “use alligator clips and normal speaker wire on each pin” or “open it up and solder in some standard plugs.”
Itseemslike you’re able to just cut the connector off and use standard speaker wire instead, but the internet’s overwhelming opinion is that these systems aren’t worth bothering with. A better use of your time might be figuring outwhether you really need an AV receiver at all in this modern age.
1Memory Stick
Memory Stick was Sony’s attempt at creating its own removable flash memory format, having first appeared in 1998. You might be thinking that Memory Stick is technically “media” and perhaps doesn’t belong in an article about proprietary ports, but considering that many Sony laptops and other products were adorned with Memory Stick ports, I’m choosing to include them here. I don’t often get paid to rant about something this bad, so I’m shooting my shot.
The idea of a proprietary removable storage medium is pretty heinous, but it was Sony’s position in the market as a company that made a broad range of products (many of which were pretty good) that let the company get away with it for so long. Back in the day, if you wanted to add more memory to your Sony Ericsson feature phone or PlayStation Portable, you’d need to buy the relevant Memory Stick expansion. There simply wasn’t an alternative but to give Sony more money.
But it gets worse, since these slots also appeared on WEGA and Bravia TVs, VAIO laptops and desktop PCs, and Walkman-branded audio players. The technology was licensed out to the likes of Epson for printers and Alpine for in-car entertainment. Worse still, if you wanted to use some of Sony’s best products at the time (like Cyber-Shot digital cameras and Handycam camcorders), you’d need to pay Memory Stick prices in order to do so.
The pricing strategy was perhaps the most egregious aspect, since Sony controlled both sides of the equation. The Sony tax you’d pay on Memory Stick products compared to more open standards like Secure Digital (SD Cards) and CompactFlash was incredibly off-putting. I had several Sony Ericsson smartphones that accepted Memory Stick storage, and I never upgraded once.
Thankfully, Sony has chilled out on the proprietary formats of late, with its cameras now using advanced SD card formats and PlayStation controllers fully embracing USB charging methods. It seems like the format wars are over, for now at least.
