80 Gig MP3 Player

An Anonymous Coward writes: "I don't know who has anywhere near enough MP3 music to need an 80G drive, but for those who want one Reality Media has just released the GIDI Digital Jukebox. The company is based out of Belgium and offers the unit in three different box styles including one for the dash ($715) and one for a systems rack ($795). The company will also sell you the guts alone to build your own player. The key is the company's Single Board Audio Computer (SBAC), which is a pre-programmed for digital music."

Comments

Why only mp3?

[Radnimax]

I love the idea of these players but what happens when a new audio format takes lead? I want a player that is upgradeable.

What they don't tell you

[CmdrTroll]

This is even better than it sounds. One of my buddies bought the do-it-yourself kit and he found that they send you full source code listings for the entire unit (under a "do not distribute" license of course), which allows you to erase and re-burn the firmware EEPROMs. Very handy. He has already experimented with recompiling them to change some of the prompts and things look encouraging.

It would be *very* nice if other manufacturers followed suit, but I'm not holding my breath... (It would also be nice if the sources were GPL, but I'm not complaining.)

-CT

God damned MP3 anti-pirate busybodies...

[aussersterne]

This pisses me off too. The anti-piracy busybodies where I work have been up my skirt a few times about my bringing MP3 files from home to listen to at work. They have no problem with music on the job -- they're just convinced that MP3 is a "pirate-only" format because there has been so god damn much news about Napster and pirates.

I personally archive any CD I buy IMMEDIATELY as a high quality (256kbps or -r3mix) MP3 because CDs are just too damn fragile. I've had to buy some CDs twice (and #$Y&^@ Tidal by Fiona Apple FOUR times) because they developed serious skips/scratches before I started encoding everything to MP3. And YES, I do share my MP3 files sometimes. More than once I've sent a song to a friend in e-mail with a subject like "HOLY SHIT, I just bought a CD and *kicks ass*, LISTEN TO THIS!"

And do you know what? I don't feel guilty about doing it.

These could be wonderful times -- we have the ability to reproduce information endlessly, so no information, be it music or paperwork or video or photos or whatever ever has to die or disappear -- and instead of preserving and sharing all this bounty of knowledge, we're even being prevented from perserving our OWN data for PERSONAL use by the likes of Microsoft, RIAA, SDMI, and all of those damned MP3 BUSYBODIES!

Yes, I need more MP3 space, my CD collection online is now up to 48 gigs and growing by two CDs a week! GIVE ME 80 GIGS OR GIVE ME DEATH!

Re:problem with large storage mp3 players

[ultrapenguin]

this is exactly what I was referring to.
Unless this unit (or at least the radio station version of it (rack mount)) comes with a external display + mouse + keyboard so that you can roll your own playlists for it, it's going to be rather difficult to use.
And no, I don't think ANYONE has that much time on their hands to sit in front of a one-line LCD display picking music for a playlist. 80gb of storage definitely requires a external monitor + keyboard to be able to make some sense out of all the music.

Or how about this, make it run Linux (maybe it does already?) then you can ssh into it, and make all playlists with vi! Then on the one-line display you only pick from say, 40 playlists instead of 40000 songs. All the playlists could be stored in a separate directory, as plain text (m3u or something), and LCD display can be switched between songs/playlists mode. Hopefully this kind of functionality is already present in this unit in one way or another.