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I'm replying on behalf of flight passengers, long-distance car- and bus-riders, cottage vacationers, and campers. In all of these (and more) situations, power may absolutely be available (with the exception of the last one), but it's a blinking inconvenience. It's not until you have an MP3 player that gets 40+ hours of battery life that you realize just how nice it is to have devices with ludicrously long running times.

Long battery life: you should try it some time. You know you want to.

      --- Mr. DOS

At the risk of being modded down for plugging non-Apple products...

Last year I researched audio players with an FM radio and high battery life. The winner was a rather surprising entry from Korea. I ordered Cowon's iAudio U5 for $64 off Amazon (price moves around a bit). No video though and no camera, but given the form factor of the nano, the video screen gives very little satisfaction.

Device plays back Mp3, Wma, and a choice of Ogg and Flac or WM10DRM.

The FM Radio picks up all the local stations. And if your low-power College or Indie station is not detected automatically, open the text file containing the station list and add it in there. The device is detected as external memory by Linux distributions--no fancy software required and it can double up as a small memory stick.

And this is just one of excellent products NOT sold by Apple.

Cheers.

At the risk of being modded down for plugging non-Apple products...

Last year I researched audio players with an FM radio and high battery life. The winner was a rather surprising entry from Korea. I ordered Cowon's iAudio U5 for $64 off Amazon (price moves around a bit). No video though and no camera, but given the form factor of the nano, the video screen gives very little satisfaction.

Device plays back Mp3, Wma, and a choice of Ogg and Flac or WM10DRM.

The FM Radio picks up all the local stations. And if your low-power College or Indie station is not detected automatically, open the text file containing the station list and add it in there. The device is detected as external memory by Linux distributions--no fancy software required and it can double up as a small memory stick.

And this is just one of excellent products NOT sold by Apple.

Cheers.

This may be a bit off-topic, but I got a Cowon S9 (the first commercially available full color OLED device) at release, and man, OLEDs are gorgeous. The refresh rate is nearly instantaneous, the contrast ratio is essentialy infninate, and has half the power drain of a comaprable LED. I can't wait to get one for my main PC monitor.

I can see where someone would want to have a working prototype of one of the first devices with an OLED display, it's probably headed to a museum somewhere.

Now, 5 years later I have a large collection of ogg files that are essentially useless. No one in the mainstream uses ogg, despite the superiority and price.

Weird. I started out the same, but I'm still ripping to Vorbis ogg. When I first started, I easily found the Cowon D2, which supported ogg. When I bought my Android G1, hey! Guess what? The native media player supported ogg, too. A quick Google search turns up this page, which lists no fewer than 59 flash based portable media players that will play oggs, and 38 hard-drive based portable media players that do, too. There are 5 smartphone platforms that support it (some of those through third-party apps for the phones). The last two DVD players I've bought have come with support for ... what? Playing oggs off data CDs.

There are many mainstream companies that support ogg. Some don't. "No one," however, is simply incorrect.

--- SER

My AppleTV, PS3, BlackBerry, DVD player and iPod will all play MPEG-4. None of them will play MKV. Can you give a few examples of popular hardware devices that'll play MKV?

Well, considering that all of those you list have a stake in closed architectures, I'm not too surprised. Neither Apple nor Sony has ever shown much interest in supporting open standards. Have you yet discovered that your PS3 also won't play all flavors of DivX/XviD even in the AVI container?

While some DVD players support DivX and often won't cough with XviD, the manufacturers did so to enable you to play the now-defunct DivX discs. I took back a Sony DVD player and replaced it with a Panny because the Sony had no DivX support and wouldn't play my XviD-encoded programs. Sony wants everyone to conform to the .mp4 container that they prefer.

In answer to your question, how about a COWON A3 for starters? It even supports 720p/H.264 Matroska files (I have a lot of those). Or maybe some of these devices?

If you buy products that are designed to close off your options, then you can't really complain when you find your choices are more limited. While it's possible to argue that hardware manufacturers have been slow to support Matroska because of its small market share, I think it's even more plausible that manufacturers prefer to support formats that give them more control. Not to mention that large manufacturers are much more comfortable dealing with something like the MPEG LA than with an open format like Matroska. They probably have a hard time getting their heads around supporting something that doesn't required licensing fees. (Like in the case of Linux, business types usually think "free" = "inferior".)

Here you go: http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/

You can play files in the Matroska container on any platform that mplayer supports

Which of those platforms might be a set-top box or portable player sold in stores in North America?

As for AVI, how well does it support multiple video tracks? Multiple audio tracks?

AVI supports up to 256 audio streams and apparently even multiple video streams.

Soft subtitles?

A lone AVI file may not support subtitles, but the players do.

Chapters?

Pinocchio_01.avi, Pinocchio_02.avi, Pinocchio_03.avi... add all to playlist.

you can play Matroska files on the popular Popcorn Hour set-top box

Where can I buy one in North America?

and on the COWON A3

Where can I buy one with cash?

I, too, laughed out loud at the Matroska => Windows disinformation, along with the "AVI is not flawed" posting above. Then there's the "no one supports Matroska in hardware" meme.

1) You can play files in the Matroska container on any platform that mplayer supports, and that's quite a few. But like the poster above me, maybe I was hallucinating when I watched those files on my Fedora box. The xine engine also supports Matroska. Have a file in the Matroska container with H.264 encoding, soft subtitles, and multiple audio tracks that you want to watch in Windows? Just install the CCCP. VLC isn't a bad alternative either, though it's just now catching up to mplayer with support for ASS subtitles.

2) As for AVI, how well does it support multiple video tracks? Multiple audio tracks? Soft subtitles? Chapters? You may not care about features like these, but I assure you there are many people who do.

3) As for hardware devices, aside from the support for cell phones/PDAs already mentioned, you can play Matroska files on the popular Popcorn Hour set-top box and on the COWON A3 portable media player.

I suppose it's naive to think that any open format like Matroska can possibly compete against ones that come from Redmond and its partners in big media. A couple of years ago I might have agreed with that statement, but the arrival of hardware-based Matroska players tells me the format might stand a chance. Revulsion at DRM might play a role here, too.

We all know how badly competing against closed platforms from Redmond turned out for Linux.

Well I know of a least one line of media players that supports Ogg (and FLAC, Matroska, etc.), and I haven't heard of their being sued for it. Perhaps it's because they're a Korean company, but I'd be surprised if that's the only reason. Why isn't the chipset manufacturer being sued?

The Cowon iAudio 7 is compact, rugged, has superb audio quality and outstanding battery life. It has excellent tone controls and supports Ogg and FLAC encoding as well as MP3 and WMA. It has an FM radio and can record. You should get better earphones to go with it and for travel, you can't beat a noise isolating type. The Shure SLC2 is a good match for it. These have near audiophile sound quality and sound isolation as good as the big, expensive noise canceling types. This combination is vastly superior to any iPod model and you can get much more substantial discounts. http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/7/ http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Products/PersonalMonitorSystems/us_pro_earphones_content Happy Landings, Mike

Hey, Cowon isn't a "no-name asian" company. In fact, their players are one of the best out there (a number of CNet and other user reviews will confirm this). I personally owned iAudio U3 a while ago, and in the time that I had it, I had absolutely no complaint whatsoever. Great audio quality, good access as general USB mass storage device with folder structure (none of that MSC crap), and, of course, Ogg support. I almost took that support for granted, until I lost that small player and had to buy a cheap-o replacement from Sansa (something I regret to this day) ... and realized that Sansa didn't have Ogg support and I had to convert all my Ogg media.

The only potential downside for Cowon is ... well, I heard that their customer support (or lack of one) sucks. Not that it's much of a problem, given the quality of their products.

The Cowon A2, from their http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/cowon/a2/ website:

Most Powerful Sound Effects Recognized Worldwide
Enjoy COWON's powerful sound effects.
BBE: Sound effects that provide the clearest music.
Mach3Bass: A bass booster that enhances super low-end bass.
MP Enhance: Sound effects that compensate for lost parts of digital sound.
3D Surround: Three-dimensional surround sound effect.

OS
- Microsoft Windows 98/98se/ME/2000/XP (NT not supported)
- MAC OS 10.X (data transfer only)
- Linux kernel v2.2 or higher (data transfer only)

It also supports .ogg

Since this is an Ask article... I use an iAudio X5 (http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_X5_fea ture.php). The mother company is Korean, so the website and docs can be a bit funny with the English at times, but otherwise it's a great product. Rockbox (http://www.rockbox.org/) is a safe firmware replacement, and it also, well, rocks. In either firmware, the device is a simple mass storage device (with no funny business other than an obnoxious adapter necessary for USB), and KDE ([insert dig on Gnome]) picks it up immediately.

Since this is an Ask article... I use an iAudio X5 (http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_X5_fea ture.php). The mother company is Korean, so the website and docs can be a bit funny with the English at times, but otherwise it's a great product. Rockbox (http://www.rockbox.org/) is a safe firmware replacement, and it also, well, rocks. In either firmware, the device is a simple mass storage device (with no funny business other than an obnoxious adapter necessary for USB), and KDE ([insert dig on Gnome]) picks it up immediately.

Cowon made an iPod with those features, but they called it the Cowon iAUDIO X5. It does drag and drop, has no DRM, plays MP3, OGG, FLAC, WAV, etc, you can even reflash the player with the RockBox firmware. It just doesn't have the iPod look, or play Apple DRM (which you don't seem to care about anyway). http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/x5/

There is also Cowon's iAudio U3 which plays both Vorbis and FLAC. I bought one a few months ago and I love it.

I also recommend FLAC, that is what I am ripping all of my CDs to. When you can get a 500gig HDD for under $140,it is worth every cent and more to do what you are doing. I have an Ubuntu system set up for network storage so I can play my FLACs with my two Cowon iAudio (Highly Recommended) portable media players(support FLAC natively), streamed to my stereo through the Xbox media center( XBMC , streamed to my computer, my daughters computer, or transcoded for other players. In my opinion FLAC is 100% the way to go.

If you're looking for a portable video/audio player with a long battery life and more space (30GB) then check the Cowon A2

They support FLAC and OGG. Basically don't do DRM. And mount as removable storage instead of requiring bullshit applications. Works with all OS that support removable USB storage.

iAudiophile.net fan site
Cowon's US site

I recommend the iAudio X5L. 35 hour batter life. 30gb storage.

http://cowonamerica.com/

Except that portable media players that support Ogg are exceedingly rare. iRiver used to, but no more. I was recently in a Microcenter a few months ago, and not one of fifty different media players supported Ogg Vorbis (let alone Ogg Theora). I'm too much of an old fart to understand the obsession with playing videos on tiny one or two inch screens, but I understand it's the current rage. If you want to download an EU broadcast in Ogg Theora directly to your portable player, you're out of luck. Hence my suggestion to use multiple formats.

p.s. In terms of audio players, Cowon/a? supports Ogg Vorbis. They're hard to find in stores, but you can buy them online. I requested and got an iAudio6 for Christmas. Works out of the box with Ogg Vorbis and any OS.

When I started looking at DAPs, not being locked into proprietary software was one of my primary concerns. I ended up buying an iAudio M3 (which was their current model at the time) and I couldn't be happier with it. That model has been supplanted by a newer line (the X5 line), which as far as I know is an improvement in every way.

The unit operates as a standard USB 2.0 mass storage device, just a big ol blank hard drive, and I haven't had a problem connecting it to anything (Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD). Drag and drop whatever you want onto it, music or data, wherever you want. The only downside is that you do NOT get an ID3 tag based database of music, you navigate your music by the folder structure you've created on the unit. For me, that's no problem, but I could see that being an issue for others. Other notable features include a GREAT remote w/ display (I'm a big fan of being able to change tracks/playlists without having to whip out my expensive DAP wherever I may be), an "L" series with extended battery life (14-odd hours for the standard units, 30+ for the "L" units), and pretty competitive pricing.

This sounds like a totally shameless product plug (and I suppose it is in a way), but I've been exceedingly happy with this company's hardware and they're a bit underreported in mainstream tech media. Here's a link to the X5 product page, please note that it comes on 20, 30 and 60GB versions.

http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/x5/

Plays many differnt formats such as .ogg, .mp3, .avi (limited and can convert to its own format for better), .wav, .wma (non-DRMed, but its supposed to be getting that as well).

Does radio and recording as well.

Has timers and alarms for auto-shutoff and on. Can schedule recordings.

Nice battery life, I think it says 14hrs, but I get about 13 hours in real use.

http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/x5/

Available from cowan, check out the specs

Available from cowan, check out the specs

A whole new batch of devices and stores support FLAC: for portables there are the iAUDIO T2 and iAUDIO F2, TrekStor's Vibez, the Onda VX737, and the AP3000 from Green Apple. For the home stereo, Slim Devices' Transporter and Ziova's CS510 and CS505. For music in FLAC format check out digital-tunes for electronic and underground, or FestivaLink.net for live shows.

Bluedot's BMP-1430 portable supports FLAC.

AudioReQuest's new S.Series music servers support FLAC.

Cowon's A2 now supports FLAC with the latest firmware, and Olive's new Opus both plays and records to FLAC.

The new Iwod G10 portable supports FLAC.

Want some FLAC with your Volvo? Volvo's Digital Jukebox, developed with PhatNoise, is fully integrated with the car's audio system and available for the S60, V70, XC70, and S80. PhatNoise's PhatBox in 2002 was the first device to support FLAC natively and has gained a loyal following.

A whole new batch of devices and stores support FLAC: for portables there are the iAUDIO T2 and iAUDIO F2, TrekStor's Vibez, the Onda VX737, and the AP3000 from Green Apple. For the home stereo, Slim Devices' Transporter and Ziova's CS510 and CS505. For music in FLAC format check out digital-tunes for electronic and underground, or FestivaLink.net for live shows.

Bluedot's BMP-1430 portable supports FLAC.

AudioReQuest's new S.Series music servers support FLAC.

Cowon's A2 now supports FLAC with the latest firmware, and Olive's new Opus both plays and records to FLAC.

The new Iwod G10 portable supports FLAC.

Want some FLAC with your Volvo? Volvo's Digital Jukebox, developed with PhatNoise, is fully integrated with the car's audio system and available for the S60, V70, XC70, and S80. PhatNoise's PhatBox in 2002 was the first device to support FLAC natively and has gained a loyal following.

A whole new batch of devices and stores support FLAC: for portables there are the iAUDIO T2 and iAUDIO F2, TrekStor's Vibez, the Onda VX737, and the AP3000 from Green Apple. For the home stereo, Slim Devices' Transporter and Ziova's CS510 and CS505. For music in FLAC format check out digital-tunes for electronic and underground, or FestivaLink.net for live shows.

Bluedot's BMP-1430 portable supports FLAC.

AudioReQuest's new S.Series music servers support FLAC.

Cowon's A2 now supports FLAC with the latest firmware, and Olive's new Opus both plays and records to FLAC.

The new Iwod G10 portable supports FLAC.

Want some FLAC with your Volvo? Volvo's Digital Jukebox, developed with PhatNoise, is fully integrated with the car's audio system and available for the S60, V70, XC70, and S80. PhatNoise's PhatBox in 2002 was the first device to support FLAC natively and has gained a loyal following.

Take a look at the iAudio M5 or M3. I have an older iAudio and just got us some newer flash-based ones at work (for digital voice and line-in recording). They sound excellent and support a lot of formats. They're not as easy to navigate as an iPod, but they do a lot more. Unfortunately, the M5 doesn't do FM, which the other ones do. I'm looking to pair one of the FM-capable ones up with a nice pair of multimedia speakers (like the Swans I have at my home desk) and do away with my old CD/cassette/FM radio box at work. Then I can listen on the way in to work through headphones, plug in, listen at work, pull the plug and home I go. Kind of like a laptop for audio. Here's the official links: http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/m5/ and http://www.jetaudio.com/products/iaudio/m3/. You might want to check out the iAudiophile fan site: http://www.iaudiophile.net/. Have fun and watch out for tinnitus.

You might be interested in some products by this company.

NOTE: I have never used any of these products, but I do know that some of them support Ogg, and they should work
with any OS that supports USB.

The one Ives design I really like is the stalk iMac. Putting the display on a stalk allows the user to optimize its place — good ergonomics, minimized footprint, yada yada. Except it now seems obvious that the stalk iMac, like all of Ives creations, was about branding. All iMac models are identifiable by the fact that they're a single unit. In the early iMacs they just crammed the system hardware into the monitor box. In the recent iMacs, the system hardware has gotten small enough so they just have to make the panel a little thicker. But in between, there was a time when they wanted to do an LCD iMac, but the system hardware was still to big for a "where's the computer" model. Solution: two boxes, but connect them with a stalk.

I see that in all the IVE designs. They're cool looking and they create a strong identity. Good branding. Nothing wrong with that — except there's more to good products than good branding. At least that's what I think. The industry obviously Thinks Different.

I recently bought an iAudio U2. Ugly little thing, but I like it a lot better than the 5 or so other MP3 players I've owned over the years. It just comes closer to my ideal feature set than any competing product. If products were more about good, easy-to-use features and less about "branding" and "style", I'd spend a lot more money on them. But I guess I'm just not a typical consumer.

You, my son, are in the wrong place if you think that no one here has ever heard of ogg vorbis. And, btw, there are lots of media players out there that support ogg vorbis, iRiver, samsung, cowan. Check out this baby.

Don't know about you, but $399.00 for the http://onlinestore.cowonamerica.com/index.asp?Page Action=VIEWCATS&Category=6060 Gig iAudio X5 looks a lot like $399.00 for the http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/wo/1.RSLID?mco=CC4D3CBB&nclm=iPod60 Gig iPod

Maybe where you live the prices are different or they do math wrong.

(I hate doing this, seriously)

Why do I care if it supports FLAC? Apple provides a compressor and decompressor for ALAC, and you can freely convert between lossless formats without fear.

Better audio output? Prove it.

I don't need a simple hard drive interface, it'd be tougher for it to be simpler than iTunes, and I already like Apple's menu organizational structure (the one they paid Creative $100M for), so I don't feel the need to rearrange my menus by rearranging my files.

What does the Cowon do with USB host? Hard-drive based iPods have USB host. But the only thing Apple uses it for is to suck pictures off your digital camera over USB. Does Cowon do something cooler with it? I have to imagine there are cooler things that Apple doesn't bother with.

The Cowon X5 is rated at 14 hours. The 30G Apple 5G ipod is rated at 14 hours. The 60G Apple 5G iPod is rated at 20 hours. There's an X5L which has much longer battery life, but it's a lot thicker, being 50% thicker than the 60G 5g iPod, and that doesn't even include the screen which appears to protrude another 2mm.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Cowon_iAudio_X5_20GB/4505- 6490_7-31383684.html

Now to some more subjective comments.

Is the better screen quality you are referring to the 262,144 colors? With a good dither scheme in place, you'll never see the difference between 65,536 colors and 262,144. And without a good dither scheme, both will look poor on color and greyscale ramps. I just don't see this as an issue personally. What will be easy to notice is that the screen on the 5G iPod is 320x240 and the screen on the Cowon X5 is 160x128. The iPod has almost 4x the pixels. I thought watching video was annoying staring at a 320x240 screen, 160x128 would really be annoying.

It doesn't appear the X5 charges off of USB like the 5G iPod does it? I guess that's what the dock is for. This would annoy me highly on the go, as I use my laptop as a charger and AC adapter for my iPod when I go on vacation. It wouldn't be as bothersome in regular use as once you go through the slight extra trouble of hooking up the dock, it works fine from then on as long as you can get home to it each night.

The X5 looks pretty stylish. However, I think I'd be a tad embarassed when people saw my device said "color sound" on it. That can be solved by keeping it in my pocket though. One thing that can't be solved is that I am left handed and the Cowon is inherently right handed with the placement of that tiny joystick.

The display remote is simultaneously pretty fancy and also large enough that I'd probaly never use it. It's about 1/4 the size of the main unit. That means I'd never clip it to my shirt, and if I'm going to bring it in and out of my pocket, I might as well bring the whole thing in and out. A college student who keeps his player in his backpack would probably feel differently though. Oh, I see it costs extra. That's fine, since I wouldn't use it, I wouldn't buy it. No harm, no foul.

It does not appear to be an inherently tougher build. It might be more scratch resistant on the front though, I can't tell from the pics.

It's nice Cowon sells things like a port breakout at very reasonable prices. A lot cheaper than iPod accessories.

http://onlinestore.cowonamerica.com/index.asp?Page Action=VIEWPROD&ProdID=48

I think your advantage list falls short of what it promises. This doesn't look like a bad player though.

Both iriver and my personal current favourite iaudio produce very good players, it's just that the masses waggle along and buy shit like ''Sony'' (because of brand) or ''Noname'' (because of price)

Yeah definitely save the money on the iPods, the iAudios are much better anyway. I suggest the U3 if you want a good flash-based Vorbis-player.

This is my number 1 priority for an MP3 player actually. No one could ever work out why the hell I used carry around a god-aweful looking Rio Karma, while they used their trendy ipods.

... you ugl-eh!

Seriously though, those photos are terrible quality.
Although I do like the idea of a relatively large screen, I feel it is a total knock-off of the iPod. Not that I like the iPod or anything, as I am a proud owner of the amazing iAUDIO X5 -- a little bulky, but plays everything[OGG, FLAC, etc.], and mounts as a USB Mass Storage Device on any OS, and not a DRM-infested steaming heap of s**t.

I haven't jumped into the rockbox pool yet, but I've been watching it for a long time.. I'm almost ready to take the plunge.

Check out Cowon first

Yeah, I'd like flac support too, but in reality no other player I'd want (not that I want to change players) supports it either

Dunno if you'd want one, but I feel obliged to point you to Cowon to check them out

Cowon makes great players that look reasonably pretty (iPod looks better though in my eyes), support all kinds of codecs (ogg, flac, asf, mp3, wma, ...), can encode mp3 over the mic, the built-in FM radio, or line-in, play MPEG4 video, and run linux.

No-brainer, really

And mass storage, and FM, and voice recording...

Definitely a feature packed device the size of a pack of gum.

Check out the iAudio U3:

http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/u3/

  + MP3, WMA, ASF, WAV(Up to 48KHz Stereo), OGG and FLAC
  + Mass storage device, officially supports MacOS and Linux
  + Can record to wav or mp3 from built-in mic, line-in, or built-in FM tuner
  + New features via free firmware upgrades
  + Bunch of other neat little things...

Cowon makes excellent feature rich players that are very competitive with the iPod and play ogg Vorbis and FLAC.
http://www.cowonamerica.com/

They've also got a newer model geared toward video that looks pretty sweet, but it also seems to have lost the FLAC support and costs almost twice as much.

They've also got a newer model geared toward video that looks pretty sweet, but it also seems to have lost the FLAC support and costs almost twice as much.

I get the rave about the iPod. It is a cool device and the facts go for it. Lot's of other player's don't hold up and simply look like rushed to market. Even the sleek ones from Philips or Sony.

Yet I have a question to the ones using the iPod - especially those who've used another player before:

Is this a potential competitor? It's practically bloated with features most of which the iPod lacks. Controlls look a generation or two behind iPod and the video display is smaller but all the rest seems really cool. What do you say? Potential competitor to iPod (especially if one likes the features) or not?

Opinions and experiences please (que below). Thanks.

Lossless formats like FLAC will become popular long before people demand better quality mp3 sound.

I'm (im)patiently waiting for that day to come.

It pisses me off that I have to incrementally take about 1 hour of a time of music into my car (an audio CD) out of the 2200+ hours of CD+ quality flac soundfiles that I have.

Although, I might break down and get one of these but even then, I still have to walk the stupid thing upstairs instead of using my WAP from my driveway.

I can't figure out if technology progresses quickly or slowly. I always seem to be waiting...

I gave to my girl a samsung YPT7Z, tiny (about the size of a lighter) 1G flash, color screen, and she loves it, but the main reason: It can play Ogg/Vorbis files, wich is among the best audio quality for same size of files.

Right now, I think I'd choose an U3 (for it's SNR quality) and they state it works on linux:
http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/u3/

But there are aleredy lots of choices:
http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/PortablePlayers