Sony Reader
The Sony Reader (ソニー・リーダー) was a line of e-book readers manufactured by Sony. The first model was the PRS-500 released in September 2006 and was related to the earlier Sony Librie, the first commercial E Ink e-reader in 2004 using an electronic paper display developed by E Ink Corporation.[1] The last model was the PRS-T3, after which Sony announced it would no longer release a new consumer e-reader.[2]
Developer
Sony sold e-books for the Reader from the Sony eBook Library in the US, UK, Japan, Germany, Austria, Canada, France, Italy, and Spain. The Reader also could display Adobe PDFs, ePub format, RSS newsfeeds, JPEGs, and Sony's proprietary BBeB ("BroadBand eBook") format. Some Readers could play MP3 and unencrypted AAC audio files. Compatibility with Adobe digital rights management (DRM) protected PDF and ePub files allowed Sony Reader owners to borrow ebooks from lending libraries in many countries.[3] The DRM rules of the Reader allowed any purchased e-book to be read on up to six devices, at least one of which must be a personal computer running Windows or Mac OS X. Although the owner could not share purchased eBooks on others' devices and accounts, the ability to register five Readers to a single account and share books accordingly was a possible workaround.
Formats supported[edit]
DRM-free Text: BBeB Book (LRF), TXT, RTF, EPUB (PRS-T1: EPUB, PDF, TXT only). Typefaces in PDF files formatted for 216 × 280 mm (8.5 × 11 inch) pages may be too small to read comfortably. Such files can be reformatted for the Reader screen size with Adobe Acrobat Professional, but not by Adobe Reader software. The Reader does support Microsoft Word DOC format. The 'CONNECT Reader' application uses Word to convert the .DOC files to RTF before sending them to the Reader.
DRM-protected Text: BBeB Book (LRX); ePub.
Audio: MP3 and DRM-free AAC (except on the PRS-T2, PRS-300 & PRS-350)
Image: JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP (Loading an animated GIF will freeze the Reader)
RSS: Limited to 20 featured blogs such as Engadget and Wired, no ability to add others and no auto-update (as of 2006-12-01)
The Reader supported TXT and RTF documents with Latin character set only. Other character sets (such as Cyrillic, for example) are not displayed correctly, but Cyrillic patches are available for Russian (and Bulgarian) users. Sony Customer Support have confirmed that units sold in the US only work with Latin characters (as of 2007-03-02).
On August 13, 2009, Sony announced that by the end of 2009, it would only sell EPUB books from the Sony Reader Store, and would have dropped its proprietary DRM entirely in favor of Adobe's CS4 server side copy protection.[19]
Official software[edit]
MS Windows[edit]
Sony Reader came bundled with Sony's proprietary software called Sony Reader Library (or formerly eBook Library and Sony Connect). It requires MS Windows XP or higher (MS Windows Vista or 7), an 800 MHz processor, 128 MB of RAM, and 20 MB of hard disk space. This software does not work on the 64-bit versions of MS Windows XP. 64-bit MS Windows Vista and 7 is supported since Sony eBook Library version 2.5 for all but the 500 models.[20]
In February 2014 Sony Reader announced that they were transferring content to the Kobo Store. In March 2014 the Sony Reader store was closed and account holders received an email with a link that enabled them to transfer their library to Kobo. Most titles transferred; however, some were not able to be transferred even though the titles were sold on Kobo; the transfer period ended in May.[21]
Linux and other OS[edit]
Sony eBook Library was not officially supported on Linux-based systems or other operating systems, although when the device is connected it grants access to its internal flash memory and any memory card slots as though they were USB Mass Storage devices (on all models except PRS-500s that have not received the free EPUB upgrade from Sony), allowing the user to transfer files directly. See the Third party tools section below for a third-party software utility that provides comprehensive support for MS Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux. Note if the device is locked, using the optional 4 digit pin it will not mount via USB, the lock option needs to be disabled in order to mount the device.
Third party tools[edit]
Several third-party tools exist for the Sony Reader. For example, the PRS Browser for Apple Mac OS X from Docudesk allows Apple Macintosh users to manage content on the Sony Reader. Users can also use the free software library and utility called Calibre to communicate with the Reader and manage their digital library. Calibre can convert many ebook formats as well as collate multiple HTML pages into a single ebook file with an automatically generated table of contents. Calibre can also manage RSS subscriptions, including scheduled pushes of newsfeeds to the reader. It has both a command line and graphical interface, and is available for MS Windows, Apple Mac OS X and Linux. Calibre notably does not offer MS Windows 64-bit support for the PRS-500 model either.
Specialized on notes, annotations, bookmarks and other input by the user, noteworks allows for listing, exporting and other handling of this data, extracted from the device.[23]
In addition, Adobe Digital Editions can deliver DRM-locked PDF and ePub documents to the PRS-350, PRS-505 and PRS-700. The software is officially available for Windows and Mac OS. It can be run on Linux using Wine. After activating the reader on an officially supported platform, DRM-locked media can be downloaded and transferred to the reader on Linux as well.[24]
Alternative firmware[edit]
PRS+[edit]
PRS+ project seamlessly integrates into Sony UI and adds support for folder browsing, dictionary, key binding, book history, custom epub styles, games (Sudoku, Chess, Mahjong, etc.), localization (Catalan, German, Czech, English, French, Georgian, Russian, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese) and has built in fb2 to EPUB converter.[25]
Sales[edit]
In December 2008, Sony disclosed that it had sold 300,000 units of its Reader Digital Book globally since the device launched in October 2006.[28] According to an IDC study from March 2011, sales for all e-book readers worldwide grew to 12.8 million in 2010; 800,000 of those were Sony Readers.[29]