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The Pine D'Music is a much better player than the Philips, and it costs roughly the same price. The major thing is that it supports reading ID3 tags whereas the Philips Expanium does not. Also it supposedly has better sound quality.

Here is the only one that I know of, from Pine. It plays audio cds and mp3s. It looks pretty cool. I'm not sure if it's actually available now, as I haven't see it anywhere, but I know it's been around, at least in vaporware/hype form, for a while. Looks pretty cool. Someone post a followup if they know if/where these are available!

Mike

http://www.pineusa.com/d'music/sm200 c_spec.htm

Back in September, Pine announced their MP3/CD player (link). It seemed pretty cool at the time. I thouht it was a Slashdot story, in fact, that brought this to my attention. They listed a pretty reasonable price, too, $280, and you can pre-order it at Outpost.com.

I'd rather have a CD player that can play CDs with MP3s burned on them. 80 hours? I mean really, who needs 80 hours of music. 6 hours on 1 cd is plenty for me.. and it's pretty easy to carry more cds. I also don't know if I trust hard drive technology in portable format. Something that small, with a HD in it, I wonder how it stands up to a jog in the park. You can pre order CD MP3 players, only 2 I know of (i'm sure there are more), check out theMambo X and theD'Music. Each is not much more expensive than a regular CD player.

http://www.pineusa.com/mp3-cd.htm

Pine Technologies has just such a device scheduled for release in the next few weeks. Unfortunately manufacturing was delayed during the past holiday season. I believe it will have a suggested list price at about $150 (US).

More info from ZD-Net.

More info from ZD-Net.

> I need a vehicular MP3 CD player

Yep, there's one out there; it even plays regular CD's, too. Look at Pine's D'music SM-200C MP3 / CD Player and drool!

A co-worker is planning to buy one shortly after they're released (January, 2k)

Right now there are two major mp3 cd players which are "in the making." However, there are doubts about when their actual release date is, and if they will be actually materialize.

As someone else stated, Pine appears to be the most notable project as of now, though it has been delayed for quite a long time, and promises a release around February with a price of $200-300. However, I'm not sure whether it will actually ship by then.

Another option is Mambo X, which claims it will be released around December with a price of $179. It sounds great, but again I remain skeptical, as the site seems more intent on hip advertising than on actually going into detail about the specs of the player.

But basically, though mp3 cd players are the best option for portable mp3 listening, and are supposedly not too hard to make (decoder chip + lcd display?), you wont be seeing much around because of RIAA pressure (theyve sorta settled the other mp3 players, like the rio and the lyra, with their threats because now almost all mp3 players are being made SDMI compliant *shudder*.) Also, Sony, a big cd player manufacturer, won't go near it because they have a record company branch and because they are too busy pushing their minidisc crap. But hopefully this trend won't last, and we'll be able to see the big shot companies come out with quality mp3 cd players that don't just look like vaporware in the making.

Yeah, if only I had $800 to spend on a portable MP3 player...

Earth to Slashdot, come in Slashdot.

For my money ($200-$300) I'll pick up a portable CD MP3 player (I've only been waiting for one to be released for the past year and a half). The Pine SM-200C has a very yummy list of specs. According to this C|Net article it's supposed to come out this month.

Another player is Vertical Horizon's CP200. It's got fewer features but it's $100 cheaper. Unfortunatly the CP200 won't be released until "sometime before the end of first quarter next year".

Yeah, if only I had $800 to spend on a portable MP3 player...

Earth to Slashdot, come in Slashdot.

For my money ($200-$300) I'll pick up a portable CD MP3 player (I've only been waiting for one to be released for the past year and a half). The Pine SM-200C has a very yummy list of specs. According to this C|Net article it's supposed to come out this month.

Another player is Vertical Horizon's CP200. It's got fewer features but it's $100 cheaper. Unfortunatly the CP200 won't be released until "sometime before the end of first quarter next year".

Pine USA has one shipping soon for 300 bucks. I plan to get one.

Dunno about your first question, but there's a real audio decoder for windows here..Wish there was a linux or os/2 version, but not yet. I'm using it to convert the hours of slack to mp3s for easy in-car listening when pine's spiffy mp3 cd player is released..

I have been thinking about picking up an Empeg Car player to throw all my stuff onto, but it's still way too expensive. This new 4 gig drive player may be just what I need. And my main use will be car playing, so I can use the cigarette lighter adapter.

There are also some cool players that will use MP3-CDs that are supposed to be shown off at comdex. Check out http://www.pineusa.com/ and http://www.evhi.com/.

I personally think that such a device would be absolutely great. And there is one coming, Pine Technology USA is coming out with a device called the D'Music. It will read MP3s off burned CDs, Read Regular CDs, and I think I heard something about it having a FM Radio Tunner in it too. So there's the three best ways to get music, all in one device! And the best part....It's portable! They haven't really put much info on their page, but they do have a picture you can check out!

According or a press release on pine's site it last 8 hours on 4 AA's