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Cowon?

http://www.cowonglobal.com/

Just get a Cowon, seeing as they have better products than anyone else. Or a Sansa Clip+, I think that' still ultra recommended.

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.

But the video itself is 1080p. That means the hardware has to deal with the 1080p video and then resize it to whatever the display resolution is. And guess what? Hardware is better at doing that kind of transform than software.

I doubt any user of small portable multimedia devices does this. Few such devices have the processing power to resize video in real time (and therefore require that you do so yourself before storing the file on the gadget) and few users would want to waste the little available memory on a huge file that wouldn't be used anyway.

My Cowon D2 has a QVGA display (roughly equivalent to VHS) so I use iriverter to massage video files before getting them onboard, although Cowon provides some software that might (or not, it runs in Windows so I haven't tried it) be good at it. I have 4 Megs + up to 32 on that device. Why would I waste it on high definition video ? It can be connected to (composite) external displays but I've never used it that way and I doubt many people would consider it.

There's no linux compatible sticker on anything much.

Here's one that does have it (scroll down to the bottom of the page)
Cowon D2+

Bought the D2 (without the +) and I'm very happy with it.

Buy things that are aligned with your interests so that there will be more of them in the future, instead of trying of giving money to people who don't really seem to want it.

How can that be? iWhatever means Mac.

iRobot, iAudio, iRiver (now iriver). Seems as though no one can get it right, and AFAIK Apple didn't come up with the whole i prefix.

http://www.cowonglobal.com/

I tend to agree with you. I don't see any reason to go with an iPod when you could have an SD Card based player with a couple of 32 gb cards. I use the iaudio d2which has similar multimedia features to the touch, albeit with less fancy graphics and animations. There is no need for a music player, all you do is drag folders over onto the device, and its much easier to copy files off onto your friends computers.

The main reason I got it however is because it supports FLAC and OGG Vorbis files, one of the few players that does. Plus it has digital radio which is quite heavily used here in the UK.

The Cowon D2 does.

http://www.cowonglobal.com/product_wide/product_D2_spec.php

>It just sucks that the only player out there that has a decent interface doesn't play Ogg

My Cowon D2 plays Vorbis just fine, thank you very much. I have it loaded up on 80kbps vorbises (~400 songs per GB).

http://www.cowonglobal.com/

The iAudio D2 seems to support SDHC-cards.

http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_D2_feature.php

Alas, I thought the headline referred to the incredible Cowon D2 media player, lol!

Seems like Cowon (aka iAudio) has figured these problems out. Many of their players support Ogg and FLAC. I nag them from time to time to add Matroska to the list of formats their video players support.

There are already portable video players (or "video ipods") that can record television programs. My Cowon A2 even has timer recording so it can work like a DVR. If you have something that produces composite video (the familiar yellow RCA plug with its red and white audio counterparts), you can push the signal into the Cowon. I'm pretty sure Archos makes similar products, and maybe Creative does as well.

These devices all come with 16:9 screens these days as well. My Cowon plays Divx/Xvid at resolutions up to 720x576. I watched some episodes of the "Bartender" anime that I rescaled from 1280x720 to 704x396 while flying, and they look great. Now if the A2 would only support the Matroska and MP4 containers as well as the Windows ones (AVI, WMA), it would be ideal. At least it supports Ogg audio.

The Cowon D2 is at the top of list right now. It supports multiple audio formats, has an SDHC slot, plays back video, doesn't require bloatware to transfer music and video, runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Search YouTube for demonstration videos.

http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_D2_feat ure.php

I think a more likely outcome will be player manufacturers supporting WMA and other encumbered Microsoft formats. Sure there'll be manufacturers like Cowon http://www.cowonglobal.com/ that support Ogg, but their main concern in the longer run is having their players work with the various commercial music download services. At a minimum, that includes "Plays-for-Sure" and WMA.

I'd bet there are some inside Microsoft who aren't unhappy with this outcome. If all the MP3 manufacturers are suddenly at risk for extortion by Alcatel-Lucent, interest in other formats will only increase. I see Microsoft as a bigger beneficiary of that interest than the Ogg developers.

Take a look at products by the Korean manufacturer Cowon http://www.cowonglobal.com/. My A2 audio/video player supports Ogg, and a quick check of a couple of their audio players shows the same. Now if we could only get them to support Matroska....

The A2 is a really nice device by the way. Widescreen video, audio/video recording capability, works as a USB mass-storage device with Linux, 30 GB hard drive, all for a bit over $300 from Amazon. Bought this to replace a stolen Archos Gmini 400, which we also liked, but the A2 is definitely superior, especially its support for widescreen (704x396) formats.

Now if we could only get them to support Matroska....

Then you want a Cowon iAudio X5. http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_X5_feat ure.php

Cowon doesn't use SRS WoW, they do have an equalizer, two systems called BBE (tries to regenerate higher frequency harmonics that are lost) and Mach3Bass (tries to expand the bass) and theres an MP Enhance thing that I'd not use - they do help with low bitrate files but you don't have to take my word for it - you could take a fourier transform and see for yourself - as long as you've a set of cans thats decent you can hear the difference. Oh heres a link to the RMAA tests and the results are pretty damn good - note the tests here went even run with BBE or Mach3Bass.

I leave you to compare these results to other DAPs. Or you could just try listening to it and a few other players and decide which one sounds the best to you. I did before I bought my X5L. You are full of shit. Also I think the ergonomics are a personal issue - I've no problem with it. I like the feature set a whole lot more than the iPods.

I'm not claiming it doesn't have problems - the firmware isn't for everyone - if you really want iD3 Tag search try rockbox - theres a patch to the Rockbox bootloader that does allow you to dual boot firmwares. You lose video and get a shorter battery life (the x5l with rockbox still lasts longer than my labmates G5 iPod video) but gain doom. Whatever its problems though the audio quality is not one of them.

Then again maybe you are deaf.

Seconded, and I'll even toss in a bonus url

http://www.cowonglobal.com/

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.

I'm pretty sure most people buy ipod because it's what everyone they know has. The number of "think different" apple lusers out there with ipods is insignificant next to the number of non-mac users with one.

And if you guys want a bigger screen, better features, and the best sound you can get in a portable audio player, why not go for the Cowon iAudio A2? Though I don't think it plays h.264 right now, but maybe in a future firmware upgrade.

Pick one.

The Cowon iAudio 6 I bought 3 weeks ago is great. Supports OGG Vorbis and FLAC and was 289 for the 4 GB of space. That is on the steep side but I definately think it was worth it. I may regret it later though as I probably won't be able to come back home at Christmas.

the only other vendor I know besides Samsung that has tried to support ogg is iRiver, and only on a select few of their devices at that.

Try something by Cowon, who sell their devices under the iAudio name. All of them support anything you can throw at it, with no format being a second class citizen. Vorbis, Flac, Wav, Windows Media, MP3, it doesn't matter, it'll play.

I own an iAudio M5 myself, and it's a lovely little device. I am really interested in the Cowon A2 to replace it, a widescreen video capable multimedia player, running on a modified Linux kernel.