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Diva Player

There are several CF-based players on the market. Even discounting the RCA Lyras with their RIAA-happifying encryption, there's the Nex, the Diva, and the Moveman.

So Gateway is making a splash by offering the same thing I bought from www.mydivaplayer.com a year ago. Wow. I'm so Impressed...

You should check out the excellent and cheap MP3-player Diva, which has received very high marks from users at MP3.com.

It can be bought with different amount of built-in flash memory and has a CompactFlash Type 1 slot where you can put inexpensive CF-cards to expand the memory.

This player does not even require any driver installations under Win2000/XP and is said to work with Linux (according to Diva themselves, read the FAQ). The memory card shows up as a removable drive in Windows when you connect the USB cable and it's extremeley simple to download or upload MP3s from/to the player. Yes, you read me right, no security protocol so you can easily move music from one computer to another too.

I just bought one and I couldn't be happier. Best player I've tried so far and definately lots of bang-for-your-buck.

It's half the size of a deck of cards, it runs for about ten hours on one AA battery, and it acts as a USB removeable drive just like your $239 unit.

The only difference is the price. I got mine here for $70 plus $5 shipping.

Add a 256mb flash card from Pricewatch for $80 and that brings the total to a measly $150 for a 256 MB mp3 player with zero copy protection, tiny size, and great sound.

Another kind of flashdrive MP3 player is the MelloMP3 unit. It's a little bigger and uses 2xAA batteries, but i got one for $60 for my brother for christmas.

Possibly the most interesting thing here is the compatibility of CompactFlash and IDE. If you do the wiring right you can stick a CF card straight onto an IDE cable with no other translation and it will work. So my idea for everyone, stick a hard drive under the seat of your car with a small power supply, then just hook the MP3 player to the car stereo via a Line In jack, and presto, you have a 30GB Car MP3 player for less than $200, plus you can take it with you.

Anyways, I hope someone finds this useful.

Muerte

Take a look at Diva. Somewhere on their page it says it's "SDMI capable", but there aren't any handicaps in the current player. I think a lot of companies say they are "SDMI capable" when in reality, SDMI will only matter with SDMIv2. And that has a low chance of ever becoming reality, especially after the watermarking techniques it was to rely on were shown to be nearly worthless.

The Diva has three main advantages: It's cheap. I got a 128MB version for ~$130. It uses CF memory, which IMHO is about the most standard of the various flash formats. Most importanty, it's a generic USB mass storage device. I just plug it into my laptop and mount /dev/sda1. I can copy files in and out to my hearts content. It just ignores any file that doesn't end in .mp3. No drivers to install. No special software. No mess. No fuss.

The downsides are that it's rather cheaply made, and the display/controls are a little lacking. But hey, you get what you pay for. The 32MB version can be had for like $70 after rebate. For me, the security of knowing that I would have no driver issues at all outweighed the disadvantages. Oh, it has a voice recording mode too, for what it's worth. I got the MP3128VP, but it looks like they have a new "Music Pen" version coming out. It should work just as well in Linux. The Specs brag about "No drivers with Windows2000/ME" which means it should work fine in any OS with USB mass store drivers.

Check out MyDivaPlayer.com. They have a 128MB player that also supports CompactFlash for $135 shipped after discount. It is extremely small -- about 3"; fits in the palm of your hand. I haven't had any experience with it, but the few reviews I could find are raves. I plan to buy one for Christmas. The coolness factor of having a mini "Zip drive"/MP3 player/voice recorder for $135 is really what attracted me to this one. --Erica

I submitted this as an article as well, but I must have been slightly behind the other guy.

I have two major problems with this. First of all, yeah, it's tiny (the length of a credit card and less than an inch thick.) However, what happens when it gets dropped on the floor? For now, hard-drive based players are bulky for a reason -- tiny laptop drives are FRAGILE and need to be protected! The spindles won't hold up to much abuse, and MP3 players are subjected to a large amount of abuses on a daily basis, from being shoved in a backpack to being put in a pocket while the person is running. How well does the Apple player stack up?

Secondly, the Apple player is competing with many others on the market. Steve Jobs makes it sound like Apple is the only player in the arena, but in reality, there are several. Sure, Apple is the only one doing Firewire, and Firewire offers a faster transfer rate. But that's all for moot if my player pukes once I throw it in my bag.

If you're interested in finding a really tiny player, check out the Flash-memory based ones. Flash memory is getting a lot cheaper. MyDivaPlayer.com is offering a 128MB player that also accepts Flash memory for $135 after discount. Plus, these things are about half the size of the iPod. Flash memory players can be neat as well -- infinitely expandable storage, rewriteablity, and most players automatically plug-n-play as removable drives on Windows systems. Plus, you can do voice recording and cart around lots of other files as well, so the players double as mini Zip disks. :) Sure, hard-drive based players do this as well, and they have a much higher storage capacity -- but they are much more bulky and require careful care and feeding.