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Where are the non-SDMI MP3 Players?
"So far I have narrowed my search to 3 choices. I want it to sound very good and be able to play music encoded at 128kb or higher.
The Rio Volt 250 is a CD based player so the SDMI thing doesn't really apply. The Creative Labs Nomad II" proudly displays this as a feature. The Samsung Yepp doesn't use SDMI, but something called SecuMax as stated in the Nomad II technical specs on Amazon. And this little tid bit on the Samsung Yepp homepage confirms that SecuMax is just like SDMI.
Now I'm not looking to download any illegal music from the Internet. I simply want to listen to my CD collection on the train to work or while working out. And there is freely downloadable music out there. If I were to download a song at work or a friend's house, put it in my MP3 player I then wouldn't be able to transfer it back to my PC at home to add to my collection. Where is 'fair use' when the artist is giving away their music for free? And I don't have the link, but what of the recent surges in so called 'secure' CD's that one can't rip into MP3's? Where is the 'fair use' there? Or are we supposed to purchase multiple copies of the same music in different formats?"
Anther point for the iPod.. No nasty copy-protection. :-)
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Go for the Ipod! Dirk
Memory is not a problem with handhelds. Get one that uses compact flash cards and you even can use a 1GB IBM Microdrive. I use an iPAQ with a microdrive as mp3 player and it works great. The only problem is the size and the battery.
Try the archos jukebox (http://www.archos.com )
A hard drive based solution, comes at 6GB-20GB flavors, works under Linux (I'm using it with the usb-storage module), and I got it for around £150 (british pounds).
Great for transfering data as well: Windows finds it as a normal drive, and I can mount it under linux (vfat).
Cheers,
Stefanos
might be a little more bulky, but you dont have to worry about a memeory chip going bad, and you can pack around 150 songs at a higher bitrate on a cd and know what you have in the player.
as for copying "back" to your collection, if its such a big deal to steal the music, borrow the CD and rip it yourself.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The Archos family of hard drive based MP3 players have nothing to do with SDMI or any copy control whatsoever.
They're cheap compared to the flashram devices and they are pretty high quality, I have heard
For the FireWire-equipped PeeCee (or Mac, obviously), you can not only carry your music collection (or at least a large percentage of it) around with you, but can transfer the files to any suitably equipped machine. The music files are in an invisible directory on the iPod, and are easy to find.
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
Burn your MP3 on CDs and play them in a Philips eXpanium...
10 hours of music in a Discman-like device.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
its what works
no sdmi
very simple and yet uses compact flash for better expandability then smartmedia
it just rocks
There are several MP3 CD players out there. Just burn a CD full of MP3s (800MB will get you quite a few MP3s)...a 4GB MP3 collection will all fit on 4 CDs, and they're very handy. Plus, you can still trade the CDs full of MP3s with friends and transfer them to other computers with no problem.
The original Rio PMP300 will let you take files out of it, as long as you don't use the software that came with it. If you use the *nix rio tool by the Snowblind Alliance, you can put any file in the rio, and take any file out of the rio, and use it as a generic storage device, albeit not a very good one because SmartMedia is expensive. The limitation on pulling stuff out of it is only in the rio desktop software.
C'mon people, we won't be taken seriously if we can't even learn the jargon.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Its old, so you probably can't buy it new, but the RIO 500 rocks. It uses SmartMedia, has no copy protection, and came with 64MB built in. The smartmedia cards are now pretty cheap, so its not too bad to buy lots of these tiny cards. It has pretty good battery life (a little less than 10 hours if you are actively - triggering the backlite - using it). It runs on a single AA, is rugged, and light. It has nice sound quality (the earphones that come with it suck though). I recommend one if you can find it.
"Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the most surely the one wasted." -Sebastian Roch Nicol
If your worried about SDMI, then the CD based ones ar the way to go. CD's fit an INCREDIBLE amount of music on it (most fit more then I would need for the six hour trip down to my parents house.......), they are reliable, cheap and best of all, if you decide to buy a regular CD on the road, just pop it in and your jamming. I plan on getting one soon. I know, they are not as sexy and small as the solid state ones, but you can't beat them right now. to get 650 megs of storage on a small mp3 player is impossible as well as expensive unless someone figures out a way to use or build cheaper chips.
Gorkman
It is a little bulky for carying around, but is great for use in the car and office.
I've never understood any good scenarios for copying from a portable player to a PC. It seems to me that if you managed to put a song which you own on the portable in the first place, then you have a copy _already_on_ your PC. If you want to move the song from PC to PC, a LAN or even a ZIP disk seems to be far more efficient than using the portable as the transfer mechanism.
Am I missing something obvious?
When you get to work, offload the CompactFlash card with a PCMCIA adaptor ($12) to your laptop or a USB adaptor ($25) to your desktop.
Oh, I should mention, the NexII sounds good too, but you want to dump the headphones they ship.
Let us not forget: Fair-use means that it is not illegal to make a back-up copy, or to timeshift, etc, if you can do it.
Fair-use is not a doctrine that states the owners must make it *easy* to copy, or even possible.
Now the DMCA makes it a little bit sticky inregards to being able to copy stuff for fair-use, but even pre-DMCA, there was no contract between seller and buyer that the seller would make it easy to copy.
http://www.apple.com/ipod/
--- "We also were guided by the unlikelihood that anyone would face supernatural evil armed only with technology."
What about the iPod? I'm not up on it's specs, but plug it into your firewire and it shows up as a hard drive right? (On Mac's anyway ;) And the firmware on the thing is upgradable, so maybe, just maybe, it will suppot ogg sometime in the future. Or somebody will hack ogg support for it.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
I've got a Goodmans one (came with a carkit too - my car is old and crap) it only cost £50, what maybe $75, although probably cheaper.
Only things are it doesn't do CD/RW discs, makes some "popping" noises now and again, but otherwise pretty much okay.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
There are lots of plans around the Web to build any kind of mp3 player you can wish. One of the sites that consolidates links to mp3 projects is here.
The AC adapter is nice, but I haven't really used it that much yet. The skip protection is just plain silly, I can swing it around and shake it and it doesn't care.
So, the bottom line in case it isn't obvious is that the Rio is the best solution for now.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
Am I missing something obvious?
The iPod holds 5GB of data, far more than a Zip or even Jaz/Orb disk. Plus you don't need to have that drive on the second machine(just need a FW port).
Also, the two machines are not always on a LAN. And 400Mbps is a fast transfer.
Just my 2 cents.
-Jason
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
I've just got a new Sony PEG-770C and it rocks - if you just use plain old blue memory sticks you can put what you like on them and trasfer up and down no probs (It helps if you have a Vaio with a memory stick slot, of course *8-) - really good battery life too!
I'm not sure about the white 'MagicGate' memory sticks - I think they have built-in protection?
Raist
The problem with the rat race is, even if you win, you're still a rat!
Jamp3
As long as you don't need it to work with XP (No Flames Please), then go with the Rio500.
They have Windows support (95-2000) that lets you load and erase music on the unit only, while the Linux drivers and apps let you copy music on and off the device. They come with 64 Megs already, and you can add a Smart Media card for more.
It's an older MP3 player, sure. Capacity is where you'll take the hit, but if you want to use it as you will, and assuming you're a Linux user, the Rio500 should do fine.
Another no-copy-protection alternative is Minidisc player/recorders -- I switched from an MP3 player about a year ago and I've been pretty happy. They have their drawbacks and can be slightly more expensive (mine was about $300), but the discs are much cheaper than memory cards and can hold a lot more music (up to 5 or 6 hours in the most extended format), and the audio quality is at least marginally better.
As far as I know, there is no security technology on the horizon for MD media. And with the USB-based "MD link" that's now included with most players, it's virtually as easy to record things off of a random friend's computer as it would be with an MP3 player.
The only big drawback is that they record in real time (so, for example, 40 minutes of music would take 40 minutes to record.) And recording from an MD onto your computer is a little bit more of a hassle. But other than that, I'd say they're worth checking out.
In a way you answered your own question by listing the Rio Volt CD player as an option. If you burn all your MP3s onto CD, this isn't an issue. Of course, if a machine doesn't have a CD burner on it you won't be able pull music off of it.
Before you buy a Volt, make sure you listen to one. I bought the cheapie SP90 version for my car. There is an audible chirp/hiss in the audio output. In the car, it's not a major issue, because the hiss is competing with road noise, wind noise and engine noise. But it's definitely not hi-fi enough for headphones or a home system.
According to a review I saw somewhere (I think it was CNet), the Volt 250 has this same problem, so caveat emptor.
The Apple iPod does not have any "anti-piracy" features built in. Specifically, it states something to the effect of "Piracy is a social issue, not a technological one" on the packaging. You can use it with Windows (via Mediafour's XPod) or Macs, and probably soon with Linux. If you use the iPod as a portable drive on a Mac, you can simply copy files back and forth at will. But if you use iTunes to sync, the MP3 files are invisible. Some information on this is available here, and here's a simple utility to access the invisible MP3 files.
Also, the iPod supports a variety of encodings. It should support up to 256Kbps (or is it 320Kbps?), variable bit rate, joint stereo or normal stereo, because that's what iTunes supports. The 1000 songs it advertises is for 160Kbps songs.
CD and HD based MP3 players just aren't up to an hour on a treadmill or two on the pavement. I still carry my ol' Rio 300 which stores about 30 minutes of music and several smartmedia cards to finish the trip. I'll probably upgrade to a Rio 500 when I get around to it, but the 300 still works for me.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Why would you ever want to copy music back from your player to your desktop unless you were stealing it from someone else's computer? I don't see this sdmi thing being a problem in real world applications...
iPAQ + PCMCIA sleeve + 25G IBM PCMCIA HD* + Cassette adapter = problem solved!
(*Don't remember the url, but some guy with a japanese sounding name has a free CE driver that should work for this)
-josh
josh at alumni dot southern dot NOSPAMedu
Here's a good reccomendation for you:
I love mine..got a Casio PZ-5000 about a month ago. Its an portable Audio CD + MP3 CD player , complete with digital shock absorbpion, car casette adapter, headphones, DC to AC converter for plugging into your car's lighter, two batteries and a normal wall-outlet AC adapter for $79.00
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I've had no trouble with my Samsung Yepp. AFAIK it needs windows software to transfer files, but it doesn't care a lick about what the files are or where they came from. My LAME encoded VBR files sound fantastic on it. Stuff obtained elsewhere on the Internet is fine too.
Considering it comes with 128MB out of the box, it's a good buy. I advise however ditching the headphones and the remote, and plugging a good pair of headphones directly into the unit. I only wish for a better design and a built-in rechargable battery with charging stand.
I have a RIO Volt, and it can play CD-RW's as well.
I would highly reccomend this system. Simply burn firmware upgrades to a CD-RW and the player will upgrade as soon as it sees the file on the CD. Pretty slick.
Audio quality is fine, although I dont thave the Volt-90 or whatever the cheapie model is (perhaps it has the problems)
All in all a great system. You can pack quite a bit of music on a 700M CDR. I will listed for hours, sometimes days on end before it loops back to the beginning.
You can copy mp3s back to a system with the latest firmware for the Nomad Jukebox.
Basically, "fair use" means you won't get in trouble for a little sharing, but it doesn't mean it'll be easy.
I would like to take a minute out to dispel a rumor that has been oozing around the Internet for quite sometime. This is a foul and insidious bit of gossip that's only used to provoke a negative reaction from people. Perhaps you've heard this rumor: That pubescent geek males have sex. Now, this thought is quite patently absurd. To begin with, pubescent geek males simply aren't handsome enough to get it. A PGM's mind is pre-programmed, if you will, to troll slashdot and download porn and little else. Chatting with a real live female is simply not in his genes. When put in front of a female, your typical PGM will stare at it before attempting to play quake III on it. Of course monkey's have been seen having sex, so it is theoretically possible that a PGM, guided by the all-powerful mind of a mature woman, might be able to kiss a female. Perhaps even with tongues. But lets enter the realm of imagination for a moment and we'll see why even if they had the mental control not to prematurely ejaculate, most little geeks still wouldn't get past first base. The reason for this is that most geeks simply lack the desire. All geeks find the greatest joy in life to be spent in the cellar installing mandrake, or in the shopping mall licking windows. While some geeks may dispute this, its a scientific fact that this is just a coy game some geeks play to attract a mate. Deep inside they all crave the glowing warmth that comes from overclocking an Athlon. So the next time you hear someone claiming to be a "geek" having sex, think twice. I am saddened to say this, but most likely it is nothing more than a wet dream. Remember what Egg Troll says: A geek couldn't get laid in a brothel with a 20 pound note tied around his cock. Thank you. [Ed. Note - It has since come to my attention that there have been reported sightings of geeks having sex. However, in all cases these geeks turned out to be train spotters. So if you should see a geek using the Internet, it will actually be a train spotter - a much superior race.]
The Handspring Visor (any model) and the optional MiniJam MP3 Player could provide a viable solution. It comes with a 64mb memory card that does not limit which way the music (or any other data) can be transfered.
~.Evanrude
I have the Rio 100, its great, its ugradable. It doesn't do ogg, but maybe it will some day. And its ability to handle subdirectories is better than any other cd based mp3 player I have seen, letting me keep everything really organized on my discs.
The soulplayer is a mp3 cd player, and its tiny. it's user upgradable (burn a cd w/ DMP-01.HEX, and it flashes itself). For $145, it's a steal of a buy. I've been very happy with it. The Rio Volt is the same product, with a different skin.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
In addition to the subject at hand--are there any recomendations for car-based mp3 head units?
The Empeg was quite nice--but expensive. Aiwa makes a unit that plays MP3's from
CD-R's, but I've heard horrors about it. Has anyone had experience with an mp3 head unit that
isn't rumoured to suck?
-Kris
Whether they call it SDMI or WKRP or CBYNL, only a watermarking scheme will keep you from ripping audio from your CD (or from your Kazaa buddy's CD) to the player - and no current watermarking scheme is secure, thus any device currently available should suit your needs.
Nonetheless, I'm going to boycott any CD with any sort of watermark (currently boycotting music is very easy, as very little is produced).
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Terrapin Mine handheld that is so heavily advertised on slashdot. It holds 10 gigs and runs on linux too.
Seriously, I don't know of any MP3 player that won't play all your ex-Napster or Gnutella/Audiogalaxy/etc. mp3s. My iPod, which I think is fabulous, plays everything I put on it, so long as it's mp3 (sorry no ogg or wma). And I for one am damn sure that I won't run any "up"grade that takes away that ability - and the vendors (except Microsoft) know that too, which is why you don't have anything to worry about.
But back up your tunes to CD-R anyway, in case of system crashes and other stuff - not just SDMI shenanigans.
sulli
RTFJ.
If "SDMI Compliant" means "can't copy from player to PC", then this is a 100% non-issue. Even the original Rio 300 (which I have) doesn't let you do this. Furthermore, I can't really think of a reason you'd *want* to. Why would I want to move only 64MB of mp3's over a slow-ass parallel port connection, when I can download all 6GB of my mp3's from home at 128Kbps? Or just burn some favorites to a CD and bring that to work?
The only way player-to-PC-copy would be really useful is if you had a hard-drive player, and I believe some of them (Archos Jukebox?) can do that.
OTOH, if "SDMI Compliant" means something else, then it might be a bigger problem. But if the thing plays standard MP3's, I don't see how there's much to worry about, as there's no way to "trust" an mp3, and thus no way to restrict the player, IF in fact it plays standard files.
I have a usb card reader that allows a SmartMedia to be used as a file system. I copy the files onto that card and slide the card into the nomad. I use the card reader for my camera as well. It's a great solution.
I have a Genica roopaq (originally neo 25)with a 20 gig hard drive plugged into the input on my cd player and it works great. I used a cell phone clip on the back, and mounted it on the dashboard. If you want the newer relative to the neo25/roopaq line you can go with the neo jukebox Which is basically a better version of the roopaq / neo 25. The best part is that under 2000 and XP i didn't even need to load drivers. I plugged it into the usb port and it recognized the scanlogic usb2ide controller and mounted it as an external usb hard drive. To copy songs, just drag and drop. With the latest scanlogic firmware i've read linux success stories for using this device with linux as well. (works with macos too, but if you have a mac, you probably have a ipod) The only complaint I have is that it took a little more than 2 hours to copy my 20 gigs of mp3s over usb.
Remember that you are unique, just like everybody else.
I agree with the parent that Archos seems to have the best MP3 devices at the moment. In particular, though, I would recommend staying away from their cheaper "Jukebox 6000" and "Studio 20" products, in favor of their "Jukebox Recorder" machine.
Highlights of this thing?
- Works great on any OS that supports USB storage devices; when attached, mounts like any other USB hard disk. Will store anything you put on there.
- Hackable; will take any 9.5mm 2.5" laptop hard disk. I replaced the stock 6 GB disk with a 20 GB mechanism without any problems.
- Unlike the cheaper models, the Recorder (which goes for around $300-$350 these days) does real-time MP3 recording from analog line-in, digital SPDIF, or an onboard mic!
- Digital in doubles as digital out when not recording.
- The Recorder has a MUCH, MUCH BETTER interface than the cheaper jukeboxes, with an 8-line screen that during playback shows ID3 info (or directory info if file is untagged), elapsed/remaining/total time, left and right VU meters, and labels for the three soft-button function keys.
- Also, the recorder has greatly superior sound compared to the cheaper jukeboxes, with base/treble/loudness/balance adjustments and plenty of volume.
And of course, no SDMI anywhere in sight. The iPod looks nicer, and firewire is cool, but with a 20 gig disk in mine, I've got 4x the capacity of an iPod in a package not much bigger, with digital i/o and real-time mp3 recording abilities. Oh yeah, 10-hour battery life, too, using standard replacable NiMH AA cells.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
The Rio Volt 250 is a CD based player so the SDMI thing doesn't really apply
nuff said...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
First is this one http://www.genica.com/MP3products/Mp3-roopaq.htm it's generic & uses a laptop HDD so it's gonna eat batteries. But since it says it can be used as a USB HDD I don't belive there'd be any SDMI problems. Second is the cheap one, though it sounds fine. I've got one & it's kinda clunky but for $35 & MMC memory who cares. BTW it says it only accepts sandisk MMC cards & they mean it. http://www.jamonline.com/products/jamp3_specs.asp Enjoy, also I got mine form www.compgeeks.com
I have last years model of the Emmerson Research MP3/CD player.
As far as i know, there is no protection on it whatseover.
I've got the Rio Volt. Got it back when it was new. Initially it was great. No worries about where the MP3's came from or anything, just encode, burn and listen. I've been using a VBR scheme from the beginning for all my personal mp3's and never had an issue with timing or playback.
The software upgrades have improved things considerably in usability and have introduced no downsides.
One of the best things about this player, is it's excessively long skip protection. 120 seconds claimed. The way it does this is it spins down the CD during playback. It has a large enough buffer to read in part of or the entire song. Once it has the data in RAM, the CD spins down. Now there is nothing to skip. It spins back up for the next bit of data and then spins down again. Works seemlessly. It'd be cool to see an in car CD player use this. The CD spin down also translates into very long battery lifes.
The use of CD media means I can fit as much as 12 CDs on one CD of mp3s.
Wonderful player.
Seriously, are moderators smoking crack nowadays or what? How MORE ON-TOPIC can this post get???
Nomad v1 mp3 player and a few 32mb flash memory cards. It holds a total of 64MB and is completely SDMI free. With the replacable memory cards, you can have different genres of music for driving/working out etc.
Additional features are an FM tuner and a voice recorder.
Here's the link.
And of course since they are a couple years old, you can pick them up cheap!
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.
/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 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
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.
http://www.frontierlabs.com
Fantastic little player from Hong Kong - uses CompactFlash, so you can just treat is as a removable drive. No SDMI crap.
The player itself is of good quality; it sounds great both on headphones and plugged into my car stereo. It includes an equalizer and a backlit display. Unfortunately, the OS itself is a bit spartan; there's no way to save the playlist through a power cycle, and the random play function resets itself on every powerup. I suspect these issues may be resolved with a newer version of Dadio, and for now I just randomize the playlist before loading it onto the player, as tracks are sorted in load order.
There are several interesting features of this player. The first is that it takes Iomega's 40MB Clik! (now Pocket Zip) disks, which run about $10 each retail. It acts as an ordinary USB mass storage device, which means you can copy any files to/from it without restriction, and also use it to exchange ordinary data files. (Unfortunately, as always with Win98, you can't just plug in the player and copy files; you have to install the drivers first, despite its being a perfectly generic USB disk drive. Completely plug-and-play in Linux, though.)
The 40MB size of the Clik! disks is a little annoying, but the ability to carry 5 or 6 of the disks around in the media wallet without significant expense makes up for that, and I'm able to store much more music (with the hassle of changing disks) than I was with my Rio 500 expanded to 128MB. Additionally (and this is the reason I bought the player), it will support Ogg Vorbis as soon as the format reaches 1.0. (There is a beta firmware that supports it now, but it won't play files encoded with >beta4.) Ogg Vorbis will let me easily degrade bitrates without re-encoding, and at 96kb/s .ogg I will be able to store quite a bit on 1 disk.
One interesting problem: When hooked to the line-in of my car CD player, there is an audible hiss if I have it simultaneously plugged into the charger. As soon as I disconnect it from the charger, it disappears. I don't know if I wired the stereo strangely or what, because it's not there with headphones. Weird.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
I moved from Ireland to the US and have to re-buy all the movies I bought because I can't play them on American VCRs. Is that fair?
This shows the real problem we are in for: the enemy controls the hardware. We can always make our own software solutions, but as long as making hardware requires large scale investments we can be sure that it will be under their control. Hardware MP3 players are not the only place where you can see this, another example are the new CDs which cannot be read correctly by CD-ROMs - making a CD drive that ignores the broken error correction codes would be completely possible, but as futile as laws like the DMCA are against us, as well they seem to work (if they are even necessary) against hardware makers.
This is why having hardware specific for each task, which is often discussed as something good, must be something we cannot allow to happen. Instead, we have to continue to ensure the existance of systems like PCs where things are done in software, which WE can control. We even have to look into moving more PC functionality into software, now that we have processors strong enough for it, as I worry that things like graphic accelerators and sound cards will be future platforms for entertainment industry UHT (User Hostile Technology). The more that is done in software, the more freedom is had by all.
In the short term, it might still be possible to find dedicated MP3 players that are not UHT (such as the burned CD ones), but in the longer term I think handhelds with strong general purpose CPUs running Linux (preferably decoding OGG of course) is the only real choice. In the longest term, there is a real risk (see for example the "SS"SCA), that general purpose programmable hardware will simply not be allowed, and we will have to hope that an illegal underground market for hardware that is not user hostile will appear...
My personal suggestion would be an iPaq running Linux, with a 1gig microdrive. I use the 3650 myself. Funny how there's no SDMI compliant software for Linux.
Check out the Neo Jukebox from IOMagic:
http://www.iomagic.com/products/neo-index.htm
20GB of storage, with no SDMI at all (at least, not on mine); plus, it connects like a plain old USB hard drive, so you can copy any stuff you want to and from it, not just MP3s. Better yet, the hard drive is easily swapped, and doing so doesn't void the warranty. Only drawback is that early models have been slightly flakey (mine had to go back for repairs), but they *seem* to be ironing out those issues.
Now if only they'd make one with a Firewire connection, like the iPod...
(Note to iPod fans: I love all the specs except for hard drive size; 20GB is my *minimum* acceptable size for a portable player.)
Good price on it here. Check out their other MP3 players too, some good deals.
The iPod file access utility sounds very useful - I just dl'd it. Everyone with iPod needs to read this.
sulli
RTFJ.
I've owned a Nomad Jukebox for almost a year. When I first bought it, the firmware would not allow you to copy files from the device to you computer. But as soon as the first firmware upgrade was release, it did away with this. It claims to have support for SDMI, but only on files the are encoded in particular formats with particular digital rights management software. Mp3s are safe.
In fact, the latest firmware upgrade now allows you to move any type of file onto the Nomad and back, so you can use it as a portable harddrive!
(Let's keep Creative Labs lack of SDMI enforcement just between us. We wouldn't want certain powerful industry lobby groups *cough-RIAA* to come down on them.)
I have been using a Jornada 540 series Pocket PC for a year now as an MP3 player, and recently upgraded to the 568.
I get 12 hours of battery life playing MP3's and you can purchace 512 megabyte CF cards for it. Makes an *awesome* player, and can do videos as well as all the PDA stuff.
A bit expensive, but a neat toy.
--
Ian
The units themselves are tiny (most of them are in the 80x16x75mm range) and weigh almost nothing (the Sharp MD-MT770 weighs 128g). The discs are infinitely re-recordable and cost about $1.50 each.
Depending on the level of compression you record at, shock protection can be up to 160 seconds. Most units have rechargeable batteries and can also use an extra AA for backup yielding incredible battery life -- the MT770 for example can play up to 49 hours on the highest compression level (35 on the regular SP mode).
One of the coolest advantages they have over mp3 players is that you can record concerts at virtually CD quality sound. Plug a microphone into the in-jack and you can bootleg with ease. Most of the latest recorders feature manually adjustable recording levels (while recording!), automatic 3/5/10 minute timestamping, audio syncing and optical line-in (which means you can optically record mp3s from a computer equipped with optical-out). Some of the Sony recorders (MZ-R700DPC for example) ship with external D/A converter that connects the MD's digital input with your computer's USB port, which makes recording all internet audio formats quite easy.
You can shuffle tracks around on a disc on the fly, delete them, insert new ones and of course there are the usual random/repeat play modes.
You can get an entry-level MDLP (2x/4x recording) player/recorder for around $215. Compared to paying $90 for each 256mb flashcard, they are really cost efficient.
I have a Sharp MD-MT77 which I am quite happy with. I make 5 hour playlists in xmms, plug the recorder into my soundcard's line-out and make mix MDs. 5 hours is a lot of space to work with -- and the quality is quite decent. At 2x (160 minutes), recordings sound virtually like CD quality.
Check out minidisc.org for more information, or minidisco.com for a run-down on most of the available models.
---
"Colors blind the eye
Desires wither the heart."
-- Lao Tsu, "Tao Te Ching"
So far as I know, the Nomad II lets you copy files as plain old MP3's. The driver software they provide for Mac won't let me copy things back from it, but that's no big deal.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Remember that the first portable MP3 player, the Diamond Rio PMP300, (first announced in September 1998) was entangled in nasty lawsuits, as covered in this slashdot article from 1998.
I daresay these nasty lawsuits contributed to Diamond's demise. None of the consumer electronics companies want to spend the cash battling the recording industry in court, so every one of them toe the line. I'm sure the recording industry has pounded the crap out of several small companies who've tried it -- and when Ogg Vorbis is finalized I'm sure the recording industry will try to pound the crap out of anyone making hardware Vorbis players as "Piracy Devices"
The closest thing I've seen is the Apple Ipod which lets you either store music for listening to, or store files for moving to another PC, but not to listen to the files marked for moving to another PC as far as I know ...
o/~ Join us now and share the software
The PJB is available with up to a 30 gig hard drive and connects via USB... I've got the 20 gig and it's great. Plus, linux support through the OpenPJB Sourceforge project that even includes an emacs mode.
jason
Although the initial advertising claimed otherwise, with the more recent firmwares (2.3.x, the one I have currently is 2.3.2) DO in fact support transferring data from the device back to the hard disk. There is a FAQ that has links to the various places which have software that can do this -- one of which is a SourceForge Project.
The PJB itself is a fairly nifty device (though the main website tends to get either broken out outdated from time to time -- and the pictures they have of the products are in some cases DEAD WRONG! The only colors that are really available as shown are the titanium with black buttons and the all black; the blue one is actually kind of an off teal with dark teal buttons) -- storage capacities range from 6GB to 30GB, making the high-end model the largest capacity wearable MP3 player that I know about.
There are Linux synchronization tools available, but they were all unfortunately in a more or less half-finished state the last time I checked, so I still rip under Linux and then boot back to Windows to transfer the MP3 files to the PJB. It also has the downside of being USB rather than firewire, so transferring large amounts of data can take a while. Battery life is around 10 hours with the rechargeable LI battery. Recharging can only be done in the main device though -- no external chargers are aviailable. It also makes a loud tone when the battery is getting low, and will make the tone again after a few seconds of playing if you stop and then start the device again, which can be somewhat disconcerting if you weren't expecting it, especially since it triggers when there's still an hour or two of life left in the device. It is documented in the manual, but was easy to overlook or forget.
The navigation buttons are fairly easy to use and simple to understand. I've had one problem with an mp3 that had a click in it that wasn't present when played on the PC, but it was an isolated case, and was one of my oldest rips, so it might be a genuine glitch in the encoding.
Well, this turned into more of a full review than a comment on another device that can do two-way transfers, so I should probably shut up now. I will add a final note that I had problems when trying to reach the company directly or order directly from their website, so I ended up buying from MP3FactoryDirect and quite satisfied with that.
If you have a non-SDMI player and it breaks and you send it in on warranty, you might get a replacement or repair with SDMI.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Just buy one of those nifty MP3 CD players (like the one mentioned in the article) and one of these for copying those songs from your friends computer and then copying them back to your computer. No protection at all since its just a really mini keychain USB hard drive.
i loved my original rio(32MB+dual 16MB flash chips). i got the original one almost 3 years ago. i just bought a refurb model from buy.com about a week ago for $60. great little device. i don't mind the small memory, i wanted to be sure it was fully linux compadible(and it is), didn't require anything special in the system to use it with(i.e. USB or some 3rd party driver), was solid state(less chance of damage due to shock), could fit in a shirt pocket..rio fits all that. and its cheap. my other rio works just fine, except i dropped it a couple years ago and damaged the battery seal so if im not careful the battery can pop out. thats the main reason i got the refurb one.
SDMI is about water-marking, and MP3 players (and memory sticks, etc.) refusing to do certain things with SDMI-watermarked music.
The reason that it's difficult to find MP3 players that will cat mp3 > hd[a-z] is the court case between Rio (one of the first MP3 player manufacturers) and the RIAA.
The RIAA alleged that because the Rio allowed you to copy music from PC to PC via the flash, it was guilty of contributory copyright infringement (or something).
Rio (IIRC) either lost the case, or settled out of court to not allow player > HD shifting of mp3s. Most of the other manufacturers took this as a warning sign, and now they don't allow player>HD copying either.
If you're interested in an HD-based player, this "Personal MP3 Jukebox" comes in 10, 20 and (I think) 30 gig models, <gloat>they have fantastic sound, open API's, easter-eggs(minesweeper :-) in the firmware and I haven't had any problems with mine</gloat>, other than the fact that it looks like it was made in Russia.
I think the firmware supports uploading of MP3's, but it's only actually implimented in un-official software (pjbExploder, I think), which is functional enough - in windows.
Your choice, monkey :-)
I purchased the Archos Jukebox from Think Geek. Cool looking gadget; but it didn't turn on. I got an "I2C Error" from the get-go.
So, I went down to Best Buy and picked up another one. This one turned on and worked fine; I could transfer files over, and it was a pleasure to use. The sound was a bit muddy, but not too bad.
But, any time I pushed a specific button, the entire machine shut down. There was a "soft spot" around the button that, when *very* slight pressure was applied, caused the logic end to shut down, and the hard drive to spin up. Obviously, there was some sort of short happening. Within the day, the machine would not turn on, and the hard drive would not spin down.
I reluctantly purchased a Nomad Jukebox (6G instead of 20G-- damn!). There are some libraries for Linux. And, you *can* transfer tracks back from the unit. However, there is a flag that may be set to "play-only." This is true for all the pre-loaded music (most of which is not very good). However, all the music I uploaded to the device can be downloaded back to my computer. Granted, I have only transferred music I've ripped from my own CDs.
In addition, the Nomad Jukebox has *excellent* sound. I'm not sure I could deal with an Archos now that I've heard what it *can* sound like.
I have to defend Rio and Creative and all the other "SDMI-Ready" manufacturers. They watched as both Napster and mp3.com got smacked down hard. They can't afford to go against the music industry. I can't blame them for caving. I wish they had the brass balls to stand up to the schoolyard bully, but it ain't gonna happen soon.
Anyway, that's my take, from a practical and philosophical standpoint.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I have the Rio Volt and am semi-happy with it.
Two main problems;
1) The thing is a battery hog. I dont know what they claim but you wont get more than a couple hours per pair of AA's.
2) The anti-skip sucks. Really, really sucks. I can make it skip by putting it in my leg pocket (cargo pants) and walking. So dont plan to do any jogging with it or anything.
Other than that, the sound quality is good. The controls are simple but effective. You upgrade the firmware by burning the upgrade software onto a blank CD and then play that CD - so it's pretty easy to upgrade and Linux friendly.
I just bought a MiniDisc player instead of an MP3 player and I couldn't be happier. I could go on and on about how it is superior to every MP3 player I looked at, but there's plenty of info out there already. The best part is that I don't have to worry about how much memory it has, the discs are only $2 and hold 150 minutes of music with compression, 75 without.
There is a small company called Microboss that makes a wide range of MP3 players, generally quite cheap and without any copy protection junk.
. htm if you are interested.
Check out http://www.microboss.de/mp3/mp3_english/default_e
Philips also has the Expanium which can read ISO/Joliet/UDF discs and play MP3 and AAC. Using UDF (DirectCD) you can drag and drop files onto the CD and not have to burn an entire CD at once without closing the session and such.
here is a line-up of the products including the new tiny 8cm player which plays 8cm discs which you can create in any CDR/CDRW drive.
some have remote controls and come with car adapters and such and some have text displays and others just numbers. it's a full line-up of decent CD Players and the best part is that AAC is supported for much higher quality smaller file size files.
http://www.pjrc.com/tech/mp3/
Links to site on building your own custom built in hardware player. Check out the links to the other sites too.
music pirating unless it the tune is public domain
Althought the price has fortunately come down on the Minijam, support is less than stellar for new operating systems. In fact, Innogear originally said they had no plans to support WinXP or Mac OS X. Looking at their FAQ I see they now say they're "exploring" XP and OS X support for "early 2002".
Given that Innogear still hasn't implemented the originally promised functionality to read e-books and other files directly from the Minijam's memory, I'm skeptical that they'll get around to it that soon.
Plus, the Minijam uses MMC cards with a proprietary format, so you wouldn't be able to pop your MMC card into any old desktop adapter and pull your MP3's off that way (or put new ones on).
Early Visor adopters may remember Innogear as the company that boldly announced the SixPack module early on, which was supposedly going to provide six features like a 56kmodem, 8 megs of flash memory, vibrating alarm, voice recorder, etc. They claimed it would cost $199 and that it would be available Q1 2000.
After pushing that release date back for the better part of a year, they announced the cancellation of the project. I've never bought any Innogear products, as much as I'd like an MP3 player for my Visor, because I don't trust the company to provide me with adequate support for the damn thing.
The SoundsGood MP3 player springboard seemed to be well received, but it has been discontued and didn't use external memory.
You'll find all kinds of consumer opinion about the Minijam at this site.
-Andy
P.S. You might want to check out the Sony Clie PEG-N760c for PDA/MP3 Capability. Sony seems poised to kick Handspring's ass.
Archos Jukebox all the way!
http://www.archos.com
Unfortunately the best answer to what to use in the car is the Rio Car: http://store.sonicblue.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry10?S P=10024&PN=16&V1=39400&xid=25971&DSP=&CUR=840&PGRP =0&CACHE_ID=0.
I say unfortunately because it is no longer being made, though you can still buy it.
For those unfamiliar with its history, it was formerly known as the Empeg.
It is quite possible the best and coolest mp3 player there ever was or will be. And yes, you can use it in the home, car, friend's stereo, wherever you can hook up to 12vdc or house current.
"Actually, I enjoyed this in the same vague, horrible way I enjoyed the A-Team" P. Opus
I bought a Rio Volt SP 100 not long ago and I love it. Here's the pros and cons as far as I can see:
Pros:
Plays several media types
Plays songs off of several file system types
Understands folders, subfolders and playlists
Several nice options (repeat 1, repeat all, repeat directory, etc.)
Fairly cheap (~$150 at Radio Shack)
Decent battery life
Flashable ROM for updates
Backlit display (can be turned off)
Easy navigation of files
Cons:
Skip protection leaves a bit to be desired
Annoying dancing people at the bottom of the display
Only plays mp3s with a bitrate up to 128 (I believe)
I've been pretty happy with it overall. Cheap, works well, no anti-piracy stuff (though it comes with the software, it's not necessary). The fact that it also plays cds is convenient as well.
I have another mp3 player that is put out by Sony, but had no real luck with it. The anti-piracy protection was annoying, custom format of music, small capacity, short life on expensive battery. About the only good thing about it was it was so small (about the size of a business card).
"All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
- Alexandar Woolcot
check out easybuy2000.com, they've got some really cool cd-based mp3 players for $100. I got mine for $70 and couldn't be happier with it.
I've got a JazzPiper MVR64P. The capacity is better than average and it's SDMI-free.
64MB Built-in,
Takes up-to 32MB SmartMedia cards,
Plays MP3/WAV,
No SDMI,
Crappy FM Radio,
Voice Recording,
Useless phone book thingy,
Parallel interface,
Dunno about non-win support,
Looks nicer than most 1st gen players.
I've seen it go under the name of MPIO-SV64. MP3Players.co.uk have a nice selection to look at.
-TheCrunch
My life is one big siesta in which I'm dreaming I wished my life was one big siesta.
...
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Most of the portable CD and MP3-CD players I've seen recently read ahead almost a full minute. Mine works just fine if I carry it or leave it in my pocket, even while I'm jogging. If I work out at the gym, there's usually a notch or caddy on whatever aparatus I'm using that keeps me from even having to carry my own audio player while I exercise.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I had one of the old rio players. would hold like 8 songs. got it for $50. Someone stole it out of my car, which actually i found funny. piece of crap.
Something to consider is that each iPod device has a unique identifier that's linked to the music database on it's "home" Macintosh.
My speculation is that this may be used in the future in some sort of a system where you can purchase music and have it linked to a specific device... of course, as others have pointed out in other replies, Steve Jobs has said that piracy is a "social issue", not a technoligical issue.
It is technically impossible to use the iPod to steal music: it just copies, and copying is not theft.
It is only a matter of time before people begin reverse engineering these things. They probably all use standard ARM, MIPS and DSP processors. Open source versions will be available. As for the DMCA - fuck it with a pointed stick - it's bad law, overreaching and oppressive. Documents and code can be spread so quickly that the idea of stopping it is ludicrous. The reverse engineers at greatest risk are those who want credit for their work - so be humble for the moment.
On a slightly divergent note, I saw that the Jim Carrey Grinch movie has made ~$143 million in the six days since its consumer release. Now I ask you, where is all of this piracy that the MPAA has been crying crocodile tears about? Just wait until Harry Potter is out on disc.
Edigital's MXP100 player, which uses an IBM Microdrive and also boasts a voice recognition system to navigate through your MP3s. Looks like a nifty little unit. Though the IBM microdrive cards store less than an Ipod or some of the larger jukeboxes, I assume you can buy extras and plug them in and remove them from the unit as necessary.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sneak into your brother's room and quickly download to his Mac, a gig of gay porn. Ain't FireWire great?
Then tell mom that your brother has some nasty stuff on his computer.
photosMy Photostream
It not always being "easy" to make fair use of things wasn't a great situation, but it was tolerable.
The DMCA makes any fair use that isn't "easy" illegal, which makes the whole situation much worse.
It is worse to the point of being intolerable - what good is fair use if it is illegal to make use of it if the copyright owner doesn't want you to - fair use is NOT a check on copyright owner's power if the copyright owner can make it illegal to exercise it - thus the balance between copyright and the First Amendment is GONE and the current law is unconstitutional.
Judge Kaplan disregarded fair use protection clauses and exemptions written directly into the DMCA itself and found against the defendants (they were ordered to pay the court for the "privilege" of being persecuted by the court).
So don't expect the Constitution to save you.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I recommend very much the following article from John Gilmore (EFF, inventer of the alt hierarchy): "What's Wrong With Copy Protection".
http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.htmlThe article is well written and he makes some good and interesting points. Worth a read IMHO.
I had the Aiwa CDC-MP3, and it skipped horribly. I had it replaced and reinstalled three times, but nothing they did could make the unit(s) stop skipping. The lack of an in-song resume was a down point, too. (so when you get back into your car it picks up where you left off instead of at the beginning of the song-- nasty for those 60 minute tracks!)
I returned it altogether and replaced it with a Kenwood KDC MP-8017. Same basic specs and price as the Aiwa, with a less cheesy display and the ability to resume in the middle of an mp3. Additionally, although the Aiwa sounded fine to me at the time, the Kenwood definitely has a much more accurate sound.
Missing from both is the ability to do random play across a whole disc. They only do random within a directory.
A friend of mine raves about his nomad (although bemoans a lack of belt clips). I was pondering getting one, but I have to ask: why should I buy one that has SDMI anything at all? I certainly don't want my music restricted. I really don't even want people to thinkthe players that are compliant are widespread, because I want mp3s, not some funky SDMI-encoded file.
It's available for sale at the following sites:
Innogear.com
MP3 Factory Direct
DGN Depot
---- "It is never too late to give up our prejudices." --Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862)
the AVC Soul *IS* the RioVolt. The RioVolt also supports the .m3u files as well as CD-RWs. I believe they may be on slightly different firmware upgrade paths, but they are essentially the same. (Except for the $20 in price)
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Hi!
I got Nomad II 0MB. It is very nice but one thing:
the files you transfer to it and from it are different. In other words - it corrupts your files.
Not always, not all but often enough to
be frustrating.
Kubus
Tom likes mp3zzzzzz and goatsezzzzz and mp3zzz la la la tom mod me down biotch tom tom tom
I've been using a NEX II for over a year now. It doesn't use SDMI. It can use CF I or II type cards which means it can use a IBM microdrive. I use a 192MB CF I card. I like my music to sound good so I rip my tracks at 192kbps which gives me about 3 hours of play time, plenty for my purposes. One of these days I'll get a 1 gig microdrive so I can have the 10 hours or whatever it works out too.
Do any of these players read Ogg Vorvis music files?
UNIX/Linux Consulting
What We Really need is a blank device. A simple small mp3player sized device, that is built to be hacked! A build it yourself MP3 player. And if it had a Crusoe processor it would really rock. but for now I will just wait for the Yopy to come out next month.
I got an Iomega HipZip as a gift last spring, and I haven't had any problems sharing between my macs at home and my win2k at work.
It uses 40MB PocketZip disks, which can be a little limiting, but the media is cheaper by the MB, and it allows you to swap disks with other users easily.
I tried. I have firewire drives on my linux box. The iPod does not work as a disk `out of the box'. When the driver goes to read the `config' page it gets back garbage. Maybe there is a special command to flip the device into disk mode, maybe there is a bug in my linux 1394 stack, but it sure doesn't mount as a disk.
If I were smarter about OS X, I would figure out how to trace 1394 packets and just reverse engineer what happens on the Mac, then make that happen on Linux.
(i really need to get a slashdot account...so lazy & so surly! anyways...)
I actually have 3 different MP3 players:
1. Varoman- very small unit, uses smartmedia cards plus 32MB internal. Had no end of troubles getting to run on my PC or laptop...crappy cheap connector too. My roommate has sort of ended up with it...works on his PC. Kind of a cheap clunky unit, but it does work and it's cheap. (heh got this free with PC purchase)
2. Citizen CD Player- sorry no model number...a discman with MP3/CD-R/CD-RW features. Again it works but it's a tad on the non-user-friendly side. But being able to burn onto CD-RW is definitely awesome. It can handle folders- comes with an AC adaptor even, now only if it had a remote (it's on my home stereo) (got this one at a liquidators for CAD $80...suckers probably weren't paying attention to what it was!)
3. Jensen MP3510 Car Stereo- well after getting the citizen I wanted a similar solution for my car real bad (only CD deck in car...I know, boo hoo, but it meant I couldn't use citizen & tape adapter). Well this thing I got for just under $300 CDN...after tax (15%) and adaptors to make it fit in my 2001 Focus, it was almost exactly $400 CDN installed. It's not too shabby, with remote (what's the deal with remotes in car stereos?) and removable faceplate- lots of blinking lights lol. Supports folders (the root of the CD being folder 1) and can handle up to 255 songs (should be enough) per CD. Can read CD-R and CD-RW (which is very very handy...I just keep my CD content file saved and I can alter it and reburn)...it even sports an AUX input (1/8" jack) just in case- though what else I would hook into the stereo is beyond me! Anyways it works great, maybe a bit too high tech looking (read: slightly tacky)- but CDs full of MP3s in the car...very nice indeed!!
Short summary: problems with the Archos but it was nice, like the NEO but not as a walking-around player (using it in the car), the iPod is simply the best MP3 player yet created, by a long, long way (assuming you have a Mac).
Longer version:
I have used all three, and currently own the NEO Jukebox and an iPod (as primarily a Mac user, obviously, although I use Windows PCs at work, usually). None of them are SDMI-impaired.
Archos:
I bought the Archos (6 gig) originally (this summer), and loved the size and form factor (although it was surprisingly heavy). However, the HD frizzed out several times and finally I had to return it after I got sick of the reformat/reload/repeat cycle. If they've fixed some of those problems it probably would be good (and the recorder seems nice). Support was questionable at best - I eventually got responses, but they couldn't do anything about my messed up drive.
NEO Jukebox:
After that I bought the 20 gig NEO Jukebox, and was generally extremely happy with it. It's a little large (about the size of a portable CD player, although thinner than most), but surprisingly light, and the bells and whistles are nice - it comes with a remote control and a nice interface, and replacing the HD is almost as easy as replacing the batteries on any walkman. I actually use it for work a lot to transfer files via USB, since it mounts very easily as a USB hard drive. It pretty much never skips, and looks cool with a nice blue backlight.
The only problems I had with it have been:
1) Slowwwwww transfer rates via USB (transferring even 5 gigs takes around 4 hours, let alone filling the thing - my ripped CD collection is about 2/3 done and is approaching 15 gigs).
2) Lousy battery life - I usually get 4.5 hours max, which means that if I listen to it on el to my current contract, I run out of power by lunchtime.
3) Pain to transport and recharge. During the summer when I was commuting weekly to Texas for a contract, I had to take the large charger every time, which was annoying. It's heavy and bulky. And on a day-by-day basis, there's just no way.
4) Problems mounting in OS X. This may be better in 10.1.1 - I haven't tried it yet.
Support was middling - no response ever when I emailed them, some moderate responsiveness when I phoned.
iPod:
When I first saw the price tag on the iPod, I thought they were n-v-t-s nuts. Then I actually went in and actually looked at one, and I realized I had to have one, and that I can't believe that it is so damn cheap. Salient points:
1) Firewire. This thing loads fully in about 5 minutes. I just say what I want each morning, take a shower, grab it and go after it syncs up.
2) Size. It is *tiny*. Literally the size of a deck of cards. And light. I throw it in my coat pocket on my way to work and forget it's there.
3) Design. The interface is fantastic - even better than the quite good NEO interface. It looks and feels incredible. I don't know anyone (even Mac haters) who hasn't immediately asked "where can I get one?" about three seconds after holding it in their hands.
4) Portability. If you travel at all, this thing blows away every other MP3 player. It's not even close. You need exactly one small cable to recharge and sync, and the iPod itself is so small that it basically is a non-issue.
5) Battery life. This is a big one - I have used the iPod all day for most of the last couple of weeks, and have never even gotten as low as a half charge. It says 10 hours, but I would guess it's more like 15 at normal use.
I have basically nothing negative to say about the iPod.
Basically my plan is to use an FM transmitter to use the NEO in my car, which should be perfect. I'll load it with my whole CD collection overnight about once a month, and otherwise just leave it there.
So there it is. Hope that's of use to someone.
Defend Microsoft from Competition Act ?
Disney-Microsoft Corruption Arrangement ?
Please enlighten me :-)
Though Apple, with their new "we make solutions" attitude, probably won't care for it much, there is a commercial app that allows you to use the iPod on Windows: XPod (great names, eh?)
http://www.mediafour.com/products/xpod/
You can already use it as a hard drive with a Firewire port using some software they have for download. The "iTunes-ish" support will have to come later.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
while it's true that iPod works as an external harddrive for any firewire equiped computer, the file system used is HFS+, which is not supported by windows or linux. There's a project on sourceforge to add HFS+ support for linux, but it's still in pre-alpha stage.
So the only solution is to buy some third party software that lets you read HFS+ under windows.
[quote] just hop to the "Terminal" and do a "cp -R /Volumes/[iPod Name]/Music/* ~/Music" [/quote]
This is funny. If macs had command interfaces back in 1984, the world might be a much different place today. I would've bought one instead of my Atari ST. Sure, the ST was a wannabe, but the lack of anything like SuperDOS or gulaam on the Mac is a primary reason why I eventually bought an XT instead of a mac.
I thought the official party line was that CLIs were "evil", like two-button mice...
When they use "theft" and "copyright infringement" correctly, maybe I'll use another word like they want.
I just bought a player with DVD, CD, CD-R/W, CD-R, and MP3 built in myself. I'm sure this means I'll probably not be able to use the "anti-pirate" CDs, but I'm looking forward to returning those for a cash refund (or else I phone Visa and have them deny the charges).
Cost was about $99 in a Post-Thanksgiving sale at the Bon Marche. Can't remember the manufacturer - think it was Korean.
My impression is you need to ask what kind of player you mean. Do you mean a hand-portable? For that, if you have an iMac, try the iPod. Do you mean a home player? These are commodities now - just get a DVD/CD/MP3 player - cheap enough. Do you mean a car player? Think these price around $150 now.
It's all part of the marketing cycle - best time to buy new tech is three years after introduction - price curve flattens around then. And that's the point that we're at now.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I think the Kodak mc3 is really underappreciated.
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/digital/cameras/mc3/
mp3 player with a digital camera thrown in. Still quite small and light.
Transferring music in or out is a matter of plugging the CompactFlash card into an $8 PCMCIA card adapter (or a $25 USB CompactFlash card reader). I bought the version that comes with a 16MB CompactFlash card (way too small, of course), and replaced it with a 256MB card. The smaller card (and the bigger one, too, when you're not using it for music) is great for your other digital camera. This is a nice, fairly OS-independent way to deal with transfers, as long as your OS can understand an MS-DOS filesystem.
It also comes with a USB connection, but I've never used it.
The mc3 plays CBR and VBR mp3's, and has upgradeable firmware. I found an internet retailer with "nerds" in their name selling it (and its separate case) rather cheaply.
Check out the NEXII at http://www.frontierlabs.com Nice and small little unit with support for 1gig IBM microdrive.. The base unit is $99 (less any CF cards or microdrive). I use it under linux, Mac and Windows.. just through the CF card in my box and copy over the songs..
While its more a of no frills player although it does read ID3 tags. Emerson makes a personal CD player that also plays MP3 CDs as well. 12+ hours of play time for 2-AA batteries (longer w/ NiMH)
Check your local Wal-Mart or other electronics store. The price is around $60 which is a lot cheaper than some other alternatives.
I just bought a Iomega HipZip for $99 on Amazon. It is a USB player with removable cartridges that can play MP3 files and Windows Media files. It was simple to copy my files over, I plugged it into my computer and dragged my playlist and my MP3 files over. It uses the Dadio OS which is based on Red Hat's eCos kernel OS. The device allow new codecs and firmware upgrades as they become available.
I have an iomega HipZip. If you're not familiar with it, it uses 40 meg mini zip disks. Works just like any other zip drive except that it also functions as an MP3 player. It has its draw backs (the GUI isn't the best) but it has no digital righht managment that I have come across. Also, the disks are about $10 each in bulk and the tak up almost no space. I've always had good luck with iomega. Just my $.02.
While your point is valid, I think that the right to make a copy for your own usage is an important part of our system and society. E.g. some companies would profit if all libraries were closed, but the society would certainly not.
The intention of copyright was to protect the rights of the author, not of the publisher. Unfortunately this has changed and today the author gets only a very small percentage of the total monoey and the copyright is the instrument of the mega-corps to protect their money. Copyright is nothing were the society profits from it just helps a minority to get richer and richer.
I think we made terrible mistakes in the past and it is time to change copyright back to something were the society and not few profit from. Copyright should guarantee the author a fair part of the income, but finaly his work should become a part of public domain. Copyright should be something the society profits from (by giving the author an incentive) and should not be perverted to be used against us (the society).
I totaly agree here with John Gilmore in many many points he a lot others he made in his article:
http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.htmlAnd of course, no SDMI anywhere in sight.
Have you upgraded to the latest firmware (1.21d) listed on their page, yet? I'd be curious as to what, exactly, "Serial Copyright Management System", and how it affects the usefulness of this device.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
mp3.com reviews a large selection of mp3 players, many of which are not SDMI.
Any combo hard-drive/mp3 player like the neo jukebox, the archos or the nomad jukebox can't be SDMI compliant.
They cant be paired up side by side with MP3 players on technical specs, because they aren't MP3 players.
BUT when you go deep into the purpose for these gadgets, you can do the right type of comparison, and i feel the MD comes out on top.
We replaced the robust and reliable cassette walkman with the CD walkman because it sounded better, and you could pick and shuffle tracks.
But because we had to abandon skip free playback, and home made mixes, we felt torn.
What we really wanted was a hybrid. Keep all the best features of both, and you've got a happy camper.
And that is precisely all that MD players are!
I've had one for a while now, and I have tons of home made disks to choose from and make new one's all the time (about 1$ ea). The model I have has built in AM/FM radio, and with compression can store 300mins on the default 74min disks) so I'm never out of tunes. It's lighter and smaller than an IPod, and so battey efficien, it's not even funy (it recharges in less than an hour anyway)
Obviously IT IS NOT PERFECT!! If I wanted to improve on the near perfection of such device, I'd make the transfer/creation process be faster, rather than the curren't "real-time" way. You have to realize that comming from cassette making this is not considered a flaw. Along with data input, and editing from your computer would be nice too. Although labels on the disk itself is all I really need.
In essence you have the best of cassette/CD walkman all rolled into one: Robust, skip-free, compact, cheap media, HiFi, instant song access.
So for portable music, this IS the best next solid step. Gadget freaks might disagree, but these guys read novels on a Palm - because they can!
I have one of these Aiwa MP3 CD players in my Ford Ranger truck. I've had it for close to 4 months now - and I like it a lot for the relatively low price.
I agree that it has some issues with skipping, but I've found it's only really bad about it when you use re-recordable CDRW discs in it. (It's cool that it can read those at all, really, since most players don't.)
The lack of in-song resume on MP3s is a little annoying, but not a "show stopper" by any means. (It does resume in the middle of songs if you're playing standard music CDs.)
I really think the biggest factor in how much a car CD player skips is in the installation. I had a friend with a Sony CD/receiver that always skipped in his car. One day, he got fed up and shoved a couple pieces of foam packing material around the unit. Problem solved!
Its called MiniDisc and its a very mature and developed alternative.
Media for mp3 players is expensive unless you get the optical kind. Media for minidisc is cheap. You can record stuff, batteries last long and the players are as small as mp3 players for the most part. If you get one of the newer sony's you can compress your music further and fit 5 hours on a minidisc. I'm not sure if this is advisable as i've not heard it.
I love my minidisc player as i can't stand listening to the same songs over and over again.
I have the Archos 6000. How are you getting 10 hours of battery life? Are you using the standard MH batteries that come with unit? I only get 4 hours? What brand of MH batteries are you using?
I have had my Rio500 for a while too, and I use RioFXP (found here and all over the net) instead of the bundled software that came with it. You can upload and download songs to/from the Rio500. You can also do any kind of binary file, which makes it a nice file transport mechanism, provided the file is 64MB. Just don't try to play one of them. :-)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I saw this at Thinkgeek. It is a Linux-running 10 Gig HD with USBs, Ethernet, PCMCIA, etc... I don't think it records, but it sounds really cool anyway. Here's the manufacturer's link.
First off, have you seen the memory on Handhelds?
have also seen what memory availbe to handhelds?
I have a Ipaq, 32 MB or memory, then you can add a 512 MB CF card. then you have no probs, and if that is not enough you can get a IBM Microdrive 2GB to add to the Ipaq, now granted there is costs to this as well, but if really needed, you could also use the handheld to download the mp3 directly, would even need to transfer from the comp to the handheld.
personally, I am happy with my Handheld as a MP3 player, mainly cause it's an all in one unit, hell I can even rip my DVD's into divX and watch them on my handheld.
Raz.
iPod. Enough said.
The Neo 2200 features a 20GB USB hard drive with a multi-line display that's easier to use than the Archos. I was considering either the Archos 20G model or the similarly priced Neo 2200 because both are MP3 Players that also double as USB hard drives for data storage. The Neo is larger in size, and a little more cumbersome as a result. On the other hand, they've placed the hard-drive under an easy to open panel so upgrading to 30+GB drives later is easy. Upgrading the Archos yourself involves voiding the warranty.
I've been using the Neo for over a month now, and it's working great for me.
Anyone have any experiance/knowledge of a good car mp3 player? I had an unexpected run in this summer and to make a long story short my cars cd player got trashed as it was thrown into a stream (a long with me). So I am looking to replace this with an mp3 player. What are some good ones for the car?
How do you take a picture of the best moment of your life?
You can read HFS+ files, on winblows, use macopener2000 by dataviz.
http://www.dataviz.com/
Most (or all) MiniDisc devices use SCMS, which prevents you from making digital copies of music (you can still make lower-quality analog copies). Even if you record something through the microphone (or analog input), it's marked as copyrighted, and you can't do anything about it even if you are the copyright holder. It's not as bad as SDMI, but it's the reason I won't be buying any MiniDisc players.
I have installed 1.21d. SCMS is the bozo-bit-based copy protection scheme used by consumer digital audio recorders (DATs and CD burners, mainly; it's mandated by the Audio Home Recording Act for any digital audio recorder, and this thing qualifies). SCMS has very little practical effect on this device for 2 reasons:
- One, the SCMS system allows one digital copy from an original copyrighted digital source (e.g. a CD), which is all you really need in most cases. It just won't let you record digitally from a digital copy made with an SCMS device (e.g. it would block recording from a CDR copy of an original CD, if the CDR copy was made with a consumer standalone audio CD burner).
- Two, disabling SCMS on the Archos Jukebox Recorder is trivial, and doesn't require messing with hardware or firmware. When recording, set the "Artist Name" string to HFSCMSOFF. That's it. Re-enable with HFSCMSON, or just by resetting the device.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
I'm not sure if you're looking for a solid state, hard drive or CD based player but I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.
I have a Frontier Labs NexII. It's a solid state player that uses CF cards but can use the IBM microdrive. I love it. Excelent player, cheap ($99 USD) and you just fire it in your usb port and it shows up as a drive. No software, no restrictions, no hassles. Excelent player IMHO.
www.frontierlabs.com
RioVolt makes the best MP3 players -- they're rated the highest and their CD-MP3 players allow you to get more memory for your buck to store MP3's on. The CD-MP3 players bypass "digital rights management" and basically allow you memory for as many songs as you want -- all you need do is buy another CD-R or CD-RW. I personally use one CD-RW as a temporary storage place for songs I currently like; then I put the complete compilation of an artists songs on one CD-R or maybe two CD-R's. I have all the songs by Madonna on one CD-R, all the songs from Lords of Acid on one CD-R, and all the songs of Beethoven...well, that takes a few more CD-R's -- but you certainly can put all of his most notable works on one CD-R. Lets compare prices and options. Prices for MP3 players were taken from the parent-company's website, prices for one CD-R/RW were calculated from prices from 50 and 25 packs, respectively, from Amazon.com.
Item [Price]
Latest RioVolt [$180]
Nomad Jukebox(20GB) [$350]
1 CD-R (700MB) [$0.40]
1 CD-RW (650MB) [$0.80]
So, it costs you $350 for 20GB of music-memory from Nomad. Lets see how much you'd have to spend for 20GB if you used RioVolt:
Assuming 20GB of CD-RW's:
$180 + (20GB*1024MB/GB / 650MB) * $0.80 = $205.21.
Assumng 20GB of CD-R's:
$180 + (20GB*1024MB/GB / 700MB) * $0.40 = $191.70
Thus, you save from $145 to $158 dollars by choosing RioVolt over Nomad. Its a no-brainer, regarding which product you should buy. Yes, Nomad allows you to alter the contents of your collection...so does RioVolt, if you use CD-RW's: and you'll still save 145 bucks.
Put another way, if you wanted to spend $350 dollars for an MP3-playing device and the memory/CD's to store MP3's on, you get:
(a) 20GB of storage space from Nomad
(b) 134GB to 290GB of storage space using RioVolt and 213CD-RW's or 425CD-R's, respectively.
This is not a practical comparison -- as few people want to carry around 425CD-R's, though some of the larger CD-booklets would let you do such. This is simply cost-analysis.
Lets go back to the analysis of how much you save by using RioVolt and an according # of CD-RW's to get to 20GB. If you use RioVolt and 32CD-RW's to get 20GB of memory, you save 145 dollars. But lets be a bit more accurate -- you can't carry around 32CD-RW's in your pocket: you need a CD-folder. A Steel CD case capable of holding 60CD's, costs 20 dollars. So you actually only save 125 dollars by choosing RioVolt and buying CD-RW's to get to 20GB. Now, would you rather walk around with one Nomad Jukebox, or with one RioVolt, one steel 60CD case, and 125 extra dollars in your pocket? Your choice.
P.S.: 125 dollars is enough to buy you one GeForce2 MX for your laptop.
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social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Panasonic just release a fine CD MP3 player.
Check out the Casio BE-300 which you can get for less than $200. Pop in a 128MB flash card or 1GB IBM microdrive and you've got a great mp3 player.
:)
And soon it will play my PocketNES Nintendo emulator
I thought with the whole SDMI/DMCA thing people would have been outraged and voted with their feet.
Apparently the music industry has us by the proverbials so to speak more so than I imagined.
As an advocate of "I bought the records in the 80's and they're fubar" I believe that I should
be able to download what I had... ok and some more... CD's are overpriced... and be able to
listen to it on whatever I choose whenever I choose as many times as I choose.
Apparently not!
I've had my Nomad Jukebox for over a year now I tihnk. I had upgraded it to a 30 gig HD a month after I got it. 6 gigs doesn't really hold all that much. *grin* Just last week I put in a new 48 gig HD (30 doesn't hold all that much either). With the latest Creative software and firmware, I'm able to transfer any type of file to and from the Jukebox. If you have older software and firmware, just rename everything to .mp3. Transfers are fairly speedy, not as fast as FireWire with an iPOD, that's a given. I would recommend the Nomad Jukebox to just about anyone wanting a good mp3 player. It can be easily upgraded (tutorials on the Net)and the sound is very good.
Alive Contains A Lie
I wish I could send it back.
What sucks about it?
It has NO anti-skip memory. Ok, my car doesn't have the best shocks but it should not skip as often as it does. It even skips with MP3s! You'd expect the software could have been written to store a few seconds in memory before playing, but no, it just skips, and skips bad.
It skips when it gets hot. After about 2 hours on the road in the winter, it just plain overheats. Ok, the placement of the stereo in the dash isn't ideal, it sits in front of the winshield vents and above the front vents. I've installed a 3" cooling fan (powered by the auto antenna lead) to draw off heat, but it still overheats. It's a little better riding with the faceplate flipped down, that allows air to pass through the CD slot and also reduces the heat from the faceplate. Even with the fan, I need to turn it off to let it cool or drive without heat. It's rated to operate up to 40C and I know that it doesn't get more than 30C in the dash. So it just plain sucks. How often do I make 3+ hour trips? Every weekend snowboarding if I can, and it really sucks not having tunes while driving through upstate NY and VT.
Lately having problems reading CDRs. The unit is telling me it's a laser focus issue and needs service. Fantastic. It's barely over a year old now.
Right now, I'm using the line-in to play MP3s off my laptop. I'm probably gonna pull the CDCMP3 and replace it with a cheap stereo with a line-in, one less likely to get stolen. I wouldn't mind the CDCMP3 being stolen, it'd give me a reason to replace it with something that works. However, I don't want to have to replace a broken window as well.
Really, the way to go is to buy a cheaper stereo with a line in and use a laptop or other MP3 unit (I also use my Rio 300 for shorter trips). Yeah, it's not as easy to control or as cool, but it's cheaper and there's less chance of it getting stolen. I bought it when it first came out, before any of the reviews, and I now seriously regret not having waited for those reviews.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Does this mean that my (outdated) Diamond RIO 3 is now worth more because I CAN copy cdrom music to it?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
One is the ability to play special encrypted files under carefully controlled circumstances, in addition to being able to play standard, open MP3 files. If that's the case, what does it matter if your player happens to be SDMI compliant? You can just ignore the SDMI features and use it is a normal MP3 player. The only drawback might be you have to pay a little more for the useless SDMI circuitry.
The second phase of SDMI, however, as I understood it, would require the player to look for watermarks, possibly preventing you from playing normal MP3s which have the watermarks embedded in them. Of course, you want to avoid such players like the plague!
Does anyone know what current SDMI-compliant MP3 players do? Do they look at watermarks yet?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I bought an iPod 2 weeks ago and I love it. The only down side is it only works on Mac platforms. As this is what I have mainly at home I have no problems with it. The one nice thing I found is that it also doubles as a hard drive. With some developer tools you can view the "hidden" iPod_control folder. It contains all the music and other info folders that you aren't supposed to see
A friend created a short real basic script to show this folder. It works like a champ. The one quirk we found was that under os 10.x you need to run the script before you open the iPod as the hard disk. Once run, you have access to everything. You can exchange your music as you see fit.
I would never say MiniDisc is bad. Its brilliant.
But wait 'till you come across Sony's (yes, the guys who invented the MiniDisc) NEW CD protection scheme: Besides being not standards compliant in a number of ways, those CDs all have their CopyBit set - and there you are with your grand MiniDisc(tm) recorder, equipped with a now totally useless digital input (unless you decide to spend another ridiculously high amount of bucks on a copy bit stripper).
I wonder how all those hordes of people feel like, who have been tricked into buying this crap by Sony's "digital copy" campaign.
Man I am so glad I havent bought any Sony product for years (since I heard about what their interpretation of artists freedom is).
I would never say MiniDisc is bad. Its brilliant.
Fionn
I followed the development of rioutil for a while and last I checked, the author had determined a way to allow downloading the tracks on a rio by sending a "dummy" track that had the same name etc and pointed to the same data, but was altered in some subtle way that made it invisible to the player yet downloadable. Now, I have never actually tried to download, but I think it was theoretically possible.
Uh oh, Fair Use rears its ugly head! Actually, it's pretty funny (I think) that the people who put up the greatest fuss about home copying of broadcasts are the ones who are reaping the greatest benefits! When VCRs first became a consumer commodity, the television and movie studios were aghast at the potential for lost revenues and maybe even going out of business. Obviously that didn't happen, but it did take a US Supreme Court ruling to clarify the issue.
Unfortunately, like a lot of legal issues, it has become muddied in interpretation by laymen (even me!) There is no "right" to fair use. And no company is required to make sure that the media that they provide is copyable. I can't copy my Titanica DVD to a VCR because of the Macrovision copy protection. The manufacturer of the DVD wasn't obligated to provide a mechanism for me to copy it just in case I couldn't watch it on my DVD player.
I'm not saying that SDMI is a good thing, though. I think that it's just further evidence that the recording industry is unable to adapt to take advantage of new technologies and new ways of doing business. They're no different than the television industry 25 years ago, except that their customers are a little more savvy and have more resources available to them.
I guess, after all of this flailing about, what I'm really saying is that if you want to make a case for copying songs, free or not, you'd better not use fair use as a platform. Fair use merely gives you a legal defense for making copies for your personal use of media that you already hold a license to, but it doesn't mean that licensor has to make the media copyable.
-h-
http://www.mydivaplayer.com/HTML/products.html
Compact-Flash slot (type 1), small, long battery life, acts as a USB hard drive under Win2K and OS-X, comes with 64MB onboard for $99
Robert
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
If Linux supported HFS+, it should be possible for it to talk to an iPod. AFAIK, Linux only supports the older HFS. (I'm no expert on Macs, having only a Quadra 610, but I'm guessing that the difference between HFS+ and HFS is a bit more than the difference between FAT16 and FAT32.)
Here's a more general FireWire storage question. I remember reading something about the intelligent nature of FireWire devices; for instance, you're supposed to be able to hook a DV camcorder directly into a hard drive and dump video from tape to disk. What filesystem would be put on the drive to enable it to work in this manner...or is this a capability that isn't implemented in actual devices?
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
After hours of research and humming and hawing I finally purchased the iOmega HipZip. The HipZip has excellent sound and is very easy to use. The iOmega uses 40 Mb minidiscs which can be written and rewritten until they wear out. The advantage is that with the Memory (Flash) Cap on other players, you can spend $10 a disc and still have excellent usability without forking out hundreds of dollars. Another great feature is that you can also store data and documents on these discs and upload to other computers. At retail $179 CAD its the best buy for the money.
This is not accurate. Runnning Debian/PPC with kernel 2.4.13-ben0 on my G4 Powerbook, the sbp2 driver is able to identify the iPod as a Firewire disk. Make sure you've got the CONFIG_MAC_PARTITION kenel option enabled -- the iPod uses the MacOS partitioning scheme.
/dev/scsi/host1/bus0/target0/lun0: [mac] p1 p2 p3
See iPod on Linux or ipodhacks.com
ieee1394: NodeMgr: hotplug policy returned 0xfffffffe
ieee1394: Device added: node 0:1023, GUID 0000000002002f0d
ieee1394: sbp2: Driver forced to serialize I/O (serialize_io = 1)
ieee1394: sbp2: Node 0:1023: Max speed [S400] - Max payload [0x09/2048]
scsi1 : IEEE-1394 SBP-2 protocol driver
Vendor: Model: Rev:
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 03
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
SCSI device sda: 9780750 512-byte hdwr sectors (5008 MB)
What? they don't sell players without SDMI anymore? that's just too bad, seeing as in a few months (SSSCA) your country will be full of electronics that doesn't come without SDMI :)
In the future all devices will include IP protection systems - PCs, phones, MP3 players, washing machines, satellites, planes. All of which will have been cracked years before, but will still have to be implemented because its the law. Hopefully, one day, one of your satellites or planes, will contain so much of this useless circuitry, that the weight of the redundant components will make it fall out of the sky and hit congress. ooops, that was an inappropriately timed comment directed at Americans...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Well, I'm no attorney, but from what I've read about fari use, I'll try to explain it. As a disclaimer, I in no way support the current intellectual ownership system; I am simply pointing out how to use some of the crooked rules of that system to empower one's self.
Someone earlier implied that the only actions covered under fair use were "editorial and educational" actions. These are indeed covered, but are not the only actions covered. Fair use is basically any use of a copyrighted work/software that does not deprive the "owner" of his priviledges regarding the work/software (no, "copyrights" are not rights; the rights are listed in the Amendments to the constitution; I don't see the right to enslave information as one of those rights).
Lets take a simple example. Lets say that I purchase a book which is copyrighted. Lets say I transcribe this entire book word for word exactly and put it online as a website. I password-protect the website so that no-one can access it but myself and I tell no one the password. This is clearly fair use. In no way has the owner of the book been prevented from making a profit off of his work. I am simply doing this so that I can read that book from any location I so desire.
Lets modify that example. Lets say that I do as I did in the previous paragraph, except this time I also give the password(to view the site, not modify it) to other people who have bought the book and tell them to keep the password confidential. Again, clearly fair use by the same criteria.
Of course, in such a case, one could say that anyt individual I gave the password to could post it online and give it to the world, thus allowing anyone to view the book. This is true. However, if such happened, I would be at no fault; I cannot control the actions of other individuals. In such a case, the individuals who dispersed the password would be at fault(in the eyes of our current flawed idea-ownership system). They and they alone would be liable, while I would bear no liability. I could not have possibly controlled their actions, and I was only offering them access to a fair-use service which I had access to myself.
This is also a very simple scenario by which intellectual ownership could be undermined, and could be taken as a model for fighting against intellectual ownership. It is hard, if not impossible, to determine who let such a password leak. Someone I gave the password to could post it from a public computer, on a Yahoo! Club, newsgroup, message board, etc, leaving no trace. Once the password is known by others, and they use it, they can read the book; surely, many will copy the text and republish it on other web pages. Such will continue in a chain reaction.
Of course, as soon as I'm aware that people have obtained unauthorized access to the book, I may be legally obligated to change the password and re-inform all of my fair-use "customers" of the password change. However, by that time, it would already be too late. The entire book would have been copied by individuals and posted on other websites -- ideally, based in nations that disregard intellectual property laws. The information would spread around the world, and control of it by courts would be impossible.
This is much like the DeCSS decision. Did the court's ruling really have any significant impact on the dissemination of DeCSS? No, it did not. Even executable compilations of the code were available.
In the modern world, information moves at the speed of electrons, which is relatively near the speed of light. In the future, with fiber-optics, information will move at the speed of light. Courts and law-enforcement move about as fast as old people ****. There is no way for any court to control the dissemination of information post-publication.
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social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I ran into the same situation some time ago. Tho, I was interested as a portable MP3 player, as well as a portable mass storage solution. Some of the retail MP3 players double as mass storage devices but still didn't quite fit the bill.
And then I found the PJRC High Capacity MP3 Player! You get full control, well, because you have to build it. It has IDE connectors for both standard and laptop hard drives, can be run off AA bateries or +12 DC (from car), has a headphone jack and RCA jacks, and a RS232 serial port for shell access to the firmware (upgradable). It has a LCD attatchment, but as you may read from the site the firware for it is still in devel (allthough it looks to work quite well). Honestly, I haven't ordered mine yet because I'm waiting for a break from work to have time to play. In the mean time, I'll just keep looking at the pictures.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
First the disclaimer - I'm lead programmer on this project so I'm biased. It isn't complete yet, but it will be available 'Real Soon Now'. We have beta units that we are testing right now and I am writing software as quickly as possible.
The SM2496 is a general purpose DSP module for the Handspring Visor that uses a 160MHz TI DSP, 96kHz 24bit codec and has an MMC slot for MP3 storage. We use DOS formatted MMCs so transferring files using a MMC reader is fast and easy. With stereo inputs and outputs it can Play and Record stereo MP3 files at 128kbps.
The module could also be used as a Game soundcard for Visor games, HAM radio modem (I have 1200bps and 9600bps G3RUH running), or any other audio application that a creative DSP programmer can come up with.
Development modules with a Software Development Kit and JTAG interface for use with TI compatible JTAG pods will be availble soon (sooner than the consumer MP3 version). Any TI DSP programmers want to port Ogg Vorbis to the unit?
Brian Lane brian@shinemicro.com
Shine Micro
Remember Lexington Green!
""I'm in the market for an MP3 player. I've been looking at various models and they all seem to be SDMI ready or compliant."
My solution may seem a bit high priced, and it is if all you want is an MP3 player, but you *do* read Slashdot right?
I picked up an iPaq 3835 last week, and the benefits are many. It not only treats MP3 files like any other file, which lets you copy back and forth all day, but it comes with Pocket Word and Excel, Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, and a widely available list of third party software. Linux will be here for it soon as well, if history is any indicator.
From an MP3 perspective though, the best benefit by far is the port for a Sandisk (et. Al.) Multimedia Card. These babys store 16,32 or 64 Megabytes and aren't much bigger than a postage stamp! You can hot swap these non-volatile gems, and while the 32 Megabytes packpacks for the rio 600/800 are huge and cost $100.00 a pop, the 32 Meg. Multimedia cards are going for $60.00. If you have a need to be truly portable for long periods of time, you will want to buy a number of add on memory cards whichever system you get. This means it is actually cheaper and *much* more convenient to go with the iPaq here if you buy enough multimedia cards. And unlike the Rios, it's FLASH, so there is no need for a battery in each one, making the weight issue favour the iPaq by a factor of more than 1000. The initial cash outlay is not for the weak at heart, of course (US ^00.00 for the iPaq), but if you have the bucks I am familiar with no better solution.
A few final notes
As I say, not for the faint of heart or financially strapped, but a must get if you don't fit these categories!!!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It distributes a utility called ResEdit that allows you to tamper with the metadata associated with Macintosh files, including the invisible bit!
Someone needs to tell the RIAA about this, fast. No matter how large the company, no one should be able to get away with distributing hacker piracy tools!
With all the rumors about what the the Xbox will do, I'm sure someone will come out with an MP3 player for it and you'll be able to copy to and from the Xbox:)
I believe that the iPod comes with a nice 20 minutes of skip protection, sure it not exactly like a disk-less player, but for a person like me, the iPod is the best available.
-- If it aint broke, fix it till it is. --
When I worked for an outsource company we did tech support for a product called Rio JaMP3. That had an mp3 player, and believe it was a simple USB storage device for transfering. I could be wrong, its been a while since Ive worked with them but thats how I remember it. The price is also real low on them. bottom of page
Here's another vote for the AVC Soul. I did a fair bit of checking, and finally picked it because it had the minimum features, and the price was good. I paid about C$170 (US$110) at a computer show.
The latest firmware ( 1.05s as noted above ) is truly slick. Tons of options, including the ability to set the rate of scan ff/rw within a track. Sounds pointless? Not at all...
I timeshift a lot of radio, because there's tons of interesting stuff on at times I can't sit around an listen. I use the DLink USB FM radio, and record to disk, with post conversion to MP3 using LAME. But a single two hour jazz show will run to 50 meg. I have 5 or 6 CDs each with a week of my fav show - 11 hours each, makes 3.5 gig right there. That was what caused me to discard the idea of a hard drive based player. The morning show I like but overlaps with sleep ends at 8 AM - by 8:05 the automatic conversion is done, and a 30 MB CR-RW write takes about 1 minute. Then I can grab the subway, where radio doesn't work.
Handily, the Soul has a Resume feature (restarts where you turned it off) but if you are trying to FF through a 2-hour track, you don't want to do it slowly!
Supposedly the Soul can also read DirectCD formatted CD-RW, but I've never tried it. Doing that would let me automate the CD-RW write, so I would just pick up the pre-recorded CD in the morning and go.
I've also owned a Jukebox for over a year now. As long as your software and firmware are reasonably up to date, you won't have problems transferring MP3s either direction. Where you run into problems is when you install the first version software from the original CD onto a computer... It will not let you transfer files from an already upgraded player to your PC until you upgrade the software also (from the website). Compatibility issues between the hardware and software I assume, and not related to copy protection. The only complaints I've had about the Jukebox are the physical size is a little big and 6 gigs aren't enough for me. And battery power, though I don't often use it without an AC adapter.
What you may be hearing from people is that all of the files that come with the Jukebox (classical music, audio books) are copy protected. That does not apply to files you put on it yourself.
Many moons ago I bought the Aiwa MP3CDC head unit for my car. Best $200 I ever spent. I can now copy mp3's directly to CD and play them in my car. Depending on quality and file size I can hold up to several hundred MP3's per CD. My car CD collection has been reduced to three CD's, clearing up the clutter and not having to worry about scratcihng them as I can just cut another copy and I'm good to go. It also has an input on the faceplate just in case you want to plug in a minidisc player or whatever. Will also support a MP3 CD changer if you feel the need. Nice little unit and a great solution for playing MP3's in the car.
In addition to MP3, the HipZip also supports WAV, Microsoft Windows Media Audio, Dolby AAC, and Voice Age Audible formats. And it's got the best sound quality I've ever heard -- the thing sounds even better than my SoundBlaster Live! 5.1.
Another cool thing about it is that it functions as a normal PocketZip drive as well, so if you want, you can use it as a portable storage device. And they're going for $99 now, which is a pretty sweet price considering I got mine last year for over $200.
here's a question for you about XP and serialized media - XP has this service running in the background that checks for the serial id's of mp3 players...can you disable this and still use your player? does the r500 even have one of these ids?
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
The specification also states that "any Content stored on the PD [portable device] shall be SDMI Protected Content."[4] I interpret this to mean that if unprotected content (i.e. mp3 files) are uploaded to an SDMI-compliant device, that device is required to place SDMI restrictions on that content before it is stored.
-k
[1] http://www.sdmi.org/download/port_device_spec_part 1.pdf
[2] "SDMI Portable Device Specification, Part 1", version 1, p14.
[3] ibid., p31.
[4] ibid., p14.
Of course we're supposed to pay for the same music in different formats, why do you think they keep changing them?
Several (maybe all) players can transport files other than MP3 and will happily allow you to download the other formats. If your player can transfer other files but not MP3 then a little hex editing to the software will fix that. I have modified the Samsung Yepp Explorer software for a friend (the Linux version has no limitations). Search the file for MP3 and replace it with anything (mp2, abc, 123, etc). Works for me
I Don't Work Here
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem& item=1301659298
With the latest software, (not what I got when I bought the thing a year ago) you can transfer data both directions. Of course, the software is windoze based, but I think you'll find that problem with most MP3 portables.
So does this mean you can connect the iPod to a Linux box, copy MP3's to it, and use it on the go, no Mac required?
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
even moreso because it's over double the maximum possible transfer rate using USB, and over three times what Archos itself claims as the sustained transfer rate for the device
hmm, I think that makes you a liar
How tricky is it to get at the drive in the Archos? Is it just a few screws, or a big hassle?
I'm asking because my laptop doesn't have USB, so I'd need to use the IDE interface if I wanted to access the Archos' drive while I was on the road.
I'm seriously considering purchasing an Archos Recordable, since I really want to make _stereo_ recordings of stuff, and none of my laptops have more than a mono mic input.
Got my iPOD last week, I think I am objective in the choice I made.
.iso fits in easy and *fast*!
I made the first ever mp3 player on mac (Vamp) a few years back just so I could make myself MiniDiscs with mp3s. I've been waiting for a device like the iPOD for a LONG time.
So the great points about the iPOD are known: 5Gb, large buffer, sync with iTune, super fast at copying etc.
The less known facts is that it works as a real hard drive, so if you want to copy *files* between work and home, you don't need to carry the laptop around. Heck, even
Now for the not-so-good sides:
1) There is a bug in the iPOD that makes it garble playback after some use. I've had that problem twice, it generates a nasty little noise in the right channel after some hours of use. To fix that, you need to restart the iPOD ('reset' but you keep all your data, 'reboot' is more appropriate) after that it's clean again.
2) If you want to listen to music with the iPOD while you recharge it with the firewire cable of your mac, you can't. It's hard drive OR mp3 player. It's too bad, since iTune eats CPU (like mad) while your iPOD sits there playing the unused hard-drive. I wish I could just tell the iPOD "Play dump, just sucks the voltage".
3) Lack of remote control is hard to bear; I had that Sony MiniDisc player for years, and you can find it hard to have to dig the iPOD from whatever place it is to change something. Thats even more annoying because the thing is *slick*; chromed metal slips!
4) No crossfade, No continuous play. There is no way to stick 2 files so they play as one, or to crossfade them. If you have live albums, it can be problematic.
5) With that size you need STATS. I want to know which files I *never* listened to, which ones I listen in wich order, and all that kind of crap. it's 1000 songs (or so) it takes DAYS to sort playlists!
6) 5GB is.... too small! I think 10Gb would fit my CD collection, with 5Gb I need to be selective.
Overall, I'm very happy with the thing still, it's definitly an incredible device.
I have a kenwood CD MP3 player in my car and it's excellent. I think i have the MP6090 (although it's snowing so i dont want to go out and check). The only downside is that it only supports an ISO filesystem so your directory names are limited to 31 characters, uppercase and no spaces. The filenames have the same restriction but the unit will display the id3 tag when it's actually playing a track.
It has never skipped on me, plays cds, cdrs, cdrw's and mp3 encoded cds too. It also has am/fm radio, clock, cd text, allows you to name radio stations (although i presume the european version supports rds). The interface is a little fiddly but once you are used to it - it's great.
You are getting more info from your iPod than I am or the guy at neuron.com. Notice his kernel messages show an unknown type device and sequential ascii letters in all the text fields. This is the same thing I get. You on the other hand have it actually recognized as a SCSI disk!
I'll have to play around some more. I suspect my ohci1394 is goofed. Maybe I'll put debian on an imac so I can trace through that and see what is different.
Nice to know there is progress to be made!
The Archos Jukebox is basically a USB hard drive that can play MP3 and WAV files you store on it. No copy protection, no data regulation. There's been a slashdot article on how to upgrade the 6 gig model to 20 gig (Although a 20 gig model is out now) it can record WAV files and I have a review of it on my web site www.matthewmiller.net.
:)
My review doesn't mention this, but it runs under kernel 2.4.x just fine.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
If you are looking at a Rio Volt, you might as well get the AVC Soulplayer. They are essentially the same core, except the Soulplayer was (at the time I bought mine) some $30 cheaper.
:-)
And for people who are anti-CD mp3 player...I've taken my Soulplayer off-roading up here on the logging trails in the upper Upper Penninsula here in Michigan. It didn't skip-not a once-on my numerous excursions (the truck, however, needed a new suspension)
So the only time it really might skip is when it is loading a new song when you skip ahead 10 songs. But with the upgradable firmware, AVC has done well to make this a non-issue.
Without much further ado, the link is http://www.soulplayer.com
I read a good chunk of the posts and it seems that the main advantage of the iPod besides no SDMI is its firewire interface... are there any other players using firewire, or any supporting USB 2.0? I'm looking into getting one of these for Christmas, but I want to make sure I invest wisely. :)
"Recta non toleranda futuaris nisi irrisus ridebis"
I own a Neo 25 portable MP3 player, produced and distributed by SSI America. It was rather expensive to get, but it has no copy protection mechanisms, and it doubles as a portable hard drive. It uses a 2.5 inch IDE laptop drive, which is replacable, and a rechargable lithium ion battery.
I love this unit. It has played MP3s for me 8 hours a day for the past year.
The Neo Jukebox is their latest Neo product, replacing the Neo 25. It looks even nicer than my unit. They also mape the Neo 35, a car MP3 player.
the neo25 is a regular old usb-drive with mp3 decode hardware and an lcd display on it.
you can copy TO and FROM it with zero issues. and recently, you can even use it with linux now that there's an update to the firmware (works with 2.4.latest kernel just fine!)
the computer-geeks (store) has them for sale for $122. I paid close to $300 just a year ago. the only downside of this unit is that its bad on batteries (li-ion only lasts 2 hrs or so). and don't use 5400rpm 2.5" notebook drives with this unit; there's not enough power to spin the drive up! stick with the slower 4200rpm notebook drives (30gig works well).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
These things are supposed to be able to play VCDs, CDs and MP3 CDs. I bought two DAV 310s, one for me, one for my brother. It just about plays CDs but tends to skip at the slightest touch, I have not been able to create a VCD that plays on it without jumping and jerking (and from my research, neither has anybody else) and it's pretty hopeless at MP3 as well, I had to try five or six different encoders before I found one that didn't produce horrendous artifacts (these artifacts didn't show up under other players either). Add to that that it crashes, powers down sometimes when you hit stop and sometimes just plain refuses to do anything, takes ages to read in the list of songs and has a very long gap between songs.
I have to say that this device was probably the worst value for money purchase I have *ever* made. I just can't say how much they suck.
Rich
"I bought Tommy on vinyl LP the week it came out. When I got a car with a tape deck, I bought it again on tape so I could listen to it in the car. Now that my vehicle has a CD player, I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for that music a third time! Long live piracy!" -- My father, as Underture.mp3 downloaded in the next room.
Fuck the RIAA, the DMCA, and their little dog too! Honest people occasionally make copies too.
Oh, and my other pet peeve: When I, a loyal fan, buy a CD when it comes out, only to discover that a month later, a "collector's edition" is released with 3 additional tracks, the industry must be out of their mind to think they'll take me to the bank for a second time! Helloooo, Gnutella! Gooooodbye, customer loyalty!
I just bought a Rio 800 as part of the Audible.com deal. It's working wonderfully and I'm very happy with my purchase but I did find the whole 'can't copy off the device' thing a bit of a pain for all the normal reasons. I'll admit I might use it to move music the SDMI is trying to stop me from moving. However, I cannot see how the SDMI can stop me from moving my own voice from the device! The Rio 800 has a built in voice recorder which I use to record conference proceedings and meetings with clients. While I can listen to them in my car or via headphones I can't download it to my computer (where I might want to email them to the other participants.)
This seems totally unfair. Does the SDMI really mean to prohibit me from this as well?
My Rio 500 allows me to transfer MP3s back to the PC... I just have to use a third-party transfer program instead of the one included with the Rio to do it. There are good ones on SourceForge and elsewhere, for Linux and Windows.
---
I'm not a real anonymous coward, I just play one on TV.
Does anyone else have a problem with the Rio corrupting your smartmedia cards?
I have a 64 meg card, but when I transfer my mp3s to it, they take half the space they should. Then when I try to play tracks off the card, it plays the first part of one track, then skips wildly through the rest.
Is this the fault of the card or the rio? I'd like some advice before I buy a new card.
1- Display
First of all it has an actual screen so that you can actually read the song names in ANY light and you can get more information about the songs instead of just the name. You can actually see multiple lines of your playlist at the same time! You get cool graphical display as well. Its a 320x320 16bit display! It rocks.
2- Media
It uses standard blue memory sticks. Works very nicely especially if you have other sony devices (like me). If you don't have other sony devices you will still love it. You simply put your clie in its cradle and start a program on the clie and suddenly you have a new drive letter in windows (I belive some one is working on linux software for it as well). You just copy your MP3s directly. It doesn't care about any security crap at all. You can copy ANYTHING onto the memory stick. Its a little portable hard disk. I have a 128 Meg stick in mine right now and I love it more than anything.
3- It does all that other PDA stuff as well
You get all the other cool palm stuff.
In my humble onion there is no other choice.
If you wanted a command line for a pre OS X Mac, you should have grabbed MPW. It provided a UNIX-y...
I use MPW to invoke DASM to assemble my Atari 2600 projects... it actually strikes me as more "VMS-y" then "UNIX-y", since it has that move the curser to where the command is writen and press enter (not return) kind of thing going. Of course, that could be because the only VMS app I ever had to use (on UVMVM, which I think UVM still uses) was a horrible calendar program called... shoot, I can't remember the name. It was horrible, though. Anyway, MPW isn't that horrible, but the mechanics of the user interface reminds me of that VMS program for some reason. Oh, and Mac mice have several buttons, it's just that all but one of them are actually on the keyboard.
OBiPod:
For those complaining about the price, I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that the bare hard drive used in the iPod would cost about $400 by itself (retail). It may not be big (in GB), but it is small (physically).
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
I was at Wal-Mart the other day and saw a Phillips portable CD player that claimed to play CD-RW and MP3 cd's. Anyone else seen this?
The first amendment gives freedom of speech. Thus, it trumps the vaguely worded copyright clause.
So, this would make copyright nominally unconstitutional. Oops!
How the courts repair this problem is by stating that copyright law must be as *weak* as possible, as least-restrictive as possible, for if it becomes one whit more restrictive than necessary, it immediately becomes unconstitutional because of the conflict with the first amendment.
`Fair use' is just a codification of SOME of the things that copyright cannot control. A guide enumerating some restrictions that cannot be claimed by any copyright holder. That does not preculde the many OTHER rights granted by the first amendment.
IE, 'fair use' is not a case of 'all thats not fair use is infringement', but rather, 'at least the things listed as fair use are legal'. The digital control industries want us to think of fair use as being the first definition, when its actually the second definition.
Try this page for an MP3 compare chart that is based on the iPod.
...shows at least two units that do not comply w/SDMI.
Yes, the iPod is one.
Ive got a tdk Mojo, and i love it. Being CD based, it wont fit in your shirt pocket, but SDMI will get ya otherwise.
Anybody know what filesystems do CD based MP3 players like the Rio Volt 250 support ? I have all my MP3 CD's burned with ISO9660 + Rockridge extensions, so can I read these CDs properly or at all with these players ?
Of course these can be read as standard ISO9660 CD`s, but you dont get the full filenames. Am I right ?
GeoKone.NET
I dislike Hard Drive devices because I am rather hard on my electronics and I can't see the HD surviving very long while I carry the damn thing everywhere. The cd based MP3 players also bother me because I would rather not have to burn off a new disc everytime I find something I like and download it. On Amazon you can still find the good-ole Rio Player http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NIMH/ qid%3D1002007984/sr%3D1-19/ref%3Dsr%5F1%5F7%5F19/1 07-8040907-5533359 which is fairly cheap compared to the other things you see out there and is expandable with Smart Media cards which are everywhere and also mount as a drive on your computer or laptop. This was Pre SDMI and is the only real solution for the economically challenged who want the quick fix.
-Never believe in the end of something great, send it to sub-committee for further study!!! - ME
I also love my Rio Volt, but it has a few problems... first, tiny little bumps that wouldn't faze a real Discman make the Rio go nuts. The Rio buffers most of the song, but if I'm driving and I hit a small bump at the beginning of a song, I have to lift it up in the air and wait several seconds.
Second, it takes a long time (2-3 blocks of driving) to load the track list on MP3 CDs. That's better than the Brand X MP3 CD player I had before, but still much slower than a RAM-based player.
Third, the cheapest Rio (the blue one) has no backlight, M3U support, AC adapter, or car adapter, and the firmware can't be upgraded.
But it's still worth getting the Rio instead of a RAM-based player, simply because a $1 CD-RW will hold 700 MB and the disc can be used in any computer, car MP3 CD player, or DVD/MP3 player.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
OS X and linux should read UFS just fine.
the difference between HFS & HFS+ is the number of disc blocks is greater in HFS+ so you can get smaller file spaces.
. Mankind evolved from apes, JonKatz is still a baboon.
What a surprise! An Apple end user product that SPECIFICALLY doesn't work with Linux! I never thought I'd see the day.
There are a ton of differences between HFS and HFS+. The disk block thing is just what was immediately obvious to end users back when HFS+ was introduced, because MacOS 8.1 didn't take advantage of the other features. Small list of new features: unicode filenames, longer filenames, unix style permissions, 64 bit file size, 32 bit block numbers, etc. I'm actually working on HFS+ support for linux, but it's not ready for users yet. (Check out the SourceForge project linux-hfsplus)
Stefanos is right, no silly copy protection on the Archos, you can upload ands Download all you want. Here is a review of that player that details the lack of SDMI security.
The headphones that come with it are quite small, and not that bad for small ones, but you'll get much better sound out of real headphones.(My current headphones are unfortunately much larger than the rio itself!) The worst thing about the headphones is that they almost seem *designed* to tangle... I've never pulled them out of my pocked and had them not be tied into some impossible knot.
The USB interface rocks (for win, at least).
Bundled software is crappy, but usable.
Yes, battery life is awesome.
I think your battery clip might have lost its spring... I had to bend mine out a little more recently. My RIO is totally shockproof; I drop it all the time.
If you enjoy live music, you can tape concerts (hey, there are bands which do allow taping, and mics small enough that they wont be noticed for bands that dont), and in addition to that, the actual compression of ATRAC is better (in compared to mp3). One of the music mags did a comparasent and said that the average comparable compression of ATRAC is about 290k in mp3 terms. I've got an Aiwa FM-75 and a Sony MZR-500, and a USB digital connector, and if I take it straight from disc, they sound better then the mp3s of 256k quality.
To top it off, many players are hackable for cute little features.
I recomend www.minidisc.org for more info.
Hey, I was in the same place, and i finally decided not to bother with anything that you couldnt put a cd in, so it came down to the rio volt, and it kicks ass, perhaps one of the best buys i have ever had.
The thing to note is that you should install the newest firmware immediately before doing anything else, as it fixes a lot of the problems.
I mean, buy a small 12 cd holder, and there you have 700 megs x 12 cds worth of mp3's, available to you whenever you want, what more could you really want?
i believe it plays up to 192kbs encoded mp3's too, and anything higher it just plays at 192.
I would highly recommend the Samsung Yepp. I purchased one a few weeks ago and it has been working nicely. It comes with 64 mb of built in ram, plus a SmartMedia expansion slot. In addition, it has an FM radio tuner. A good place to buy it is at CompUSA.
The dog got loose on my computer, and now there's XP all over the screen. -Paul www.ploeb.net
http://www.ssiamerica.com/
I have one of their car players installed in my car. Only done last week. No SDMI crap there! I also believe their portable units are very similar.
Go do some web surfing... hrmmm... you be suprised at what you will find outside the world of slashdot.
Does it go on forever?
I know I'm replying too late for anyone ever to see my post, but if you don't mind spending the cash, the Sony Clie 7x0 PDA series, which can be had for around $400 these days I think, offers mp3 playback with no copy protection. It can also play back SDMI compliant ATRACs, but of course no one uses that really.
Oh, and plus you get a free PDA thrown in with your mp3 player hehe.
There actually is an open-source MP3 player. It's not a shiny polished product like a Rio, but I can say with 100% confidence that is has absolutely no SDMI features, since I designed it!
Ok, mod me down for shameless self promotion now.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Just tested downloading from my new JazPiper, and it works fine.. no problems..
I'm going to do a scientific(R) test of my Rio Volt, where I time the length of the disc being spun down, and see when it spins it back up (it obviously wouldn't do it at 120 seconds, maybe 1/2 way through).
Approximately 1 minute. Yay.
I like that they update the firmware fairly often. You can download a small file off their website, burn it to a CD, put it in, turn it on, and it upgrades itself. Since I bought it, the most recent firmware adds a ton of features, and shortens the hit-play-button-to-music-playing time from, say, 20 seconds, to about ten, on the CD full of MP3s I have in there now.
It gets about the same battery life playing MP3s as CDs, maybe a little better, but not significantly. I don't care, I just use rechargeables. It plays 800mb CDs, CDRW, WMA, MP3, CD-audio, and possibly Ogg Vorbis in the future via a firmware upgrade. I've never had a problem with a disc not working here that worked anywhere else. It's cute, comes with a remote control that's almost useless because I can't get it to stay on my shirt pocket (stoopid weak spring), the battery compartment comes open a little too easily, the case it comes with is kinda weak--there's no little window so you can see what track is playing. The line-out minijack isn't wired right. It should output at a fixed level, but outputs based on the volume and EQ settings, and as such is no different than the headphone plugin. The LCD display is a little small--it shows two tracks at once, but only about 16 characters at a time, and it scrolls r-e-a-l-l-y slowly. If you hit the button for Next Track, it has to load it into memory from scratch, and is prone to skipping during that time if you're moving. I also wish it wouldn't turn off when you open the lid, since it takes so long to start back up afterwards.
I have no major complaints with my player, it's great for a lot of things, and it's cheap. If you're looking to get a portable MP3 CD player, this is the one to get.
Synergy is your friend
They can ban it, they probably could not get rid of it, but they could certainly ban it. Think drugs...
I have to admit, if you enjoy working on the treadmill or something else that's active, don't get the Rio Volt then. It works great when I do brisk walking on the treadmill. But, as soon as I start to run, the Rio Volt will get one good jolt, then start skipping like crazy. Once it starts, you have to pretty much get the thing to a perfect standstill before it can recover.
So, if you're really active, go for something like the Nike PSA. But, otherwise, definitely get a Rio Volt.
Oh, and get the new one (250, I think?) that has the FM player and the ability to use the remote with the built-in LCD.
I listen to a lot of episodes of Loveline(the radio show) that I download in MP3 format. They're 2 hours each, maybe 1.5 when you skip through the commercials and songs. They're encoded at 16kbps, and they come in at 15 megs/2 hours. The sound is acceptable for the talking, I can fit like 50 episodes (that's 100 hours) onto one CD, and they make cross-country trips so much easier!
Synergy is your friend
If you think the Jensen has great sound, you should probably have shopped around a little more before you bought it. Every Jensen I've ever heard sounds like someone is scraping a fork across the speakers. Jensen makes hands down some of the worst in-head amplifiers I've ever seen, and using their pre-outs with a power amp is almost as bad. Do youself and the rest of us a favor, don't recommend Jensen electronics to anyone...ever. If people stop buying crappy electronics, manufacturers will be forced to start making decent gear. If you want a solidly build in-dash cd/mp3 player that has low THD and a good feature set for a reasonable price, check out the alpine CDA 7878 http://www.alpine1.com. This is by no means the only good cd/mp3 player out there, check out Eclipse, Nakamichi, or McIntosh and see if any of their pieces play mp3's. (McIntosh only makes one head unit and I doubt it plays mp3's, but it's worth a shot)
People are the problem, stop procreation now!
What a surprise! An Apple end user product that SPECIFICALLY doesn't work with Linux! I never thought I'd see the day.
Oh, grow up. It's Linux's fault for not properly supporting a well-documented file system that's been deployed for over 3 years now.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Thank god someone's finally working on it. I've been itching to do it myself for several years now, but I've just never had the free time to go digging for the documentation and to roll up my sleeves and code it.
Good luck on it.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I've had a Diamond (now SonicBlue) Rio PMP500 for three years now and i love it! 64mb builtin with a 64mb capable smartcard slot on the back, not to mention the 48 hour battery life on 1 AA battery. Non-Diamond drivers for windows and linux let you upload and download music and files from the unit as well as upload your own fonts and startup animations to the device.
I owned one of Creative's Nomad Jukeboxes but I sold it two days after I bought it, sluggish controls and horrible battery life. I'm just glad I got it for $89 CDN (gotta love it when Futureshop fscks up and shifts a decimal space).
First off, I don't usually have XMMS pause between songs... Almost every MP3 I have has enough silence at the end and beginning to triger the marking of a track.
Secondly, I would just like to mention that you can always go back and manually set track marks in any place you choose. That leads to the mian reason I use MiniDiscs.... Ability to mark, crop, rearage, delete, and essentially change tracks in just abut any way a person could think of. Very nice.
I just hope some company has the foresight to develop an Audio MD-RW drive soon.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Really.. being able to copy music out of it? I couldn't care less really. I already *have* the music on the computer, from where I can copy it to my hearts content.
My beef is quality. I made the mistake of buying an Exonion mp3 discman..... what utter shit.
I mean, I had a listen in the store (to a cd). Sounded fine, great. Didn't think to check the mp3 playback.
They have some low and hipass filters on their mp3 decoding... I tried out some test tones encoded to mp3 at various bitrates. Even at 256.. there was tons of sound that literally was just not there.. dead silence where there should have been sound. I can't for the life of me figure out why they did this. For the record, the same mp3's on my computer sounded great.
So my biggest concern would be sound quality.
First... they use lossy compress. Not so bad in and of itself, but when yo go from mp3 to MD, you decompress/recompress using another compression method (Sony ATRAC I think). So you end up losing even more than you would with the mp3 alone.
Secondly, though many players have digital output, a digital to digital copy between MD players still involves decompress/recompress (The digital output is usually standard SPDIF).. and only expensive decks, I think, let you do actual raw digital copies of minidisc.
All in all, MD is great, except for the quality issues.
I wish Sony had released ( and marketed) a disc-drive for the computer based on MD. I know they existed.. but one compatable with the MD format would have made a huge difference.
Sure it vibrates and it can be noisy in the library (though not rivaling the sound of air conditioning) but Windows will treat as a removable drive with full read write abilities. Media is cheap too, $50 Cdn. for 2 40 MB disks. Gotta love it.
Large animal tranquilizer, you're my only friend.
Just a thought, but do you have a OHCI chip?
I had a PC Card Firewire card that wasn't OHCI. Took me a while to figure this out. Ditched the Lynx chipset card for a new one and I had no more issues.
* MD only attains the long play features by increasing the compression ratio that the ATRAC algorithm is processing the audio to, inheriently losing audio quailty. The actual capacity of MD discs has not changed from the original spec somewhere around 150MB eqiv.
* MD prohibits copies from being made from copies, using a original and copy permitted bit set on the disc. Incidentally no consumer recording hardware (to my knowledge) allows you to mess around with these settings, so your never gonna beable to make a second backup when your original disc goes missing.
* That great Digital I/O feature that MD people love because it allows them to maintain the audio quality bit for bit in transferring between MD devices and MD to Comp utilizes a uncompressed data stream, to maintain compatability (I assume) with other similarly equipped devices. Unfortunately this is where that ATRAC lossy algorithm shows a weakness because it is only preserved within the MD player, and must be decompressed and recompressed when transfered. This introduces inherient artifacts which depending on how picky the listener is, can be heard. (Yes, mp3 uses lossy compression as well and I am not arguing that it uses better technology that ATRAC (I refuse to go there) however, because mp3 device archetecture is such that only one compression decompression cycle is performed, the compression artifacts are less severe for they do not build up.
* MD Computer data drives arn't compatable with MD Audio disks. Very few computer audio recorders exist (to protect from illegal copying I assume). Sayonara to mastering a MD properly.
Now I admit that mp3 has many weaknesses in its current form as well, such as devices placing pauses in between tracks, and copyright protection being introduced. But the point is the medium itself (data storage of mp3's) lacks these inherient flaws introduced by the MD designers, which in the process of preventing some copying, prohibit free use. The flaws of mp3 players can be overcome by anyone willing to undertake the task.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
I believe P1394 (e.g. firewire, ilink) use SCSI commands on the bus. Each device has it own SCSI interface to convert btw the SCSI commands and its own hardware, therefore a device at one end doesn't really need to know what 'filesystem' a device on the other end is really using.
Woo! That did the trick perfectly. Even after tapping it a little, it doesn't reset anymore (well hitting it by the USB connection does, but that was in one specific spot, and it probly shouldn't be hit there anyways :P ). Thanks alot A.C.!
"My days are less enjoyable because of people." ~ Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
This is a very subjective discussion, and to make a flat statement that MP3's recorded onto MD don't make for a good solution, is selling the process a bit short.
I routinely play MP3's and record them onto MD, with excellent results. I rip at 192kbps, and the sound is never compromised. MP3 enhances what the human ear can decode, and MD removes what it cannot percieve. If your results are less than satisfactory, you might want to consider ripping at a higher rate. As for quality, it is very high, in my opinion. It's a poor man that blames his tools.
See the link above for a page that covers using iTunes to record onto MD.
It reads CD-R & CD-RW, only limitation is 255 songs, most of my CD's completely full take up about 200 songs (4-5 minutes each song)
RIO VOLT Player
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting someone else to do the work. --John G. Pollard
In the age of cheap cd players and burners what the hell is the point of having an mp3 player at all. I mean aren't you just spending a hell of a lot of money for no real good reasion.
No doubt this post will be followed up by a million people argueing bout endurance or portablity, but I feel that the fact remaines that mp3 players are simply vanity items for geeks.
http://www.minidisc.org/translations/sony_mzn1/
..
:-)
Before you jump at Minidisc, consider waiting to march 2002 - I know I do
The new models overcomes the last problem with the MD, recording time - and let's you transfer the mp3's directly from your computer to the MD unit - very handy
Just a thought.
ftp://Anonymous:Anonymous@ps2.dyns.cx/
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maybe try this one:. sh tml
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/electronics/5784
I wonder why an MP3-player manufacturer would implement SDMI in its products, since a non-SDMI model would sell more units.
Alex
I have one of these:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/electronics/5784
and it acts as a USB hard drive; Great.
...get the Compaq-designed Personal Jukebox. The price tag is high because the sound quality is the best on the market. And a new driver now allows you to copy files (any files) from the PJB back to your PC. With a choice of 6GB and 20GB drives, an intuitive interface, and OPEN SOURCE software, what more could a true geek want? ;-)
-- /. ID is lower than Bruce Perens'!
Barry de la Rosa,
public[at]bpdlr.org
My
The iPod uses HSF+ because it was designed to be used with macs. It's as simple as that - the iPod is the first in a series of devices which are all centred around the MacOS, aimed at selling more computers.
Go with MiniDisc. Even the portable MD players have optical in. There are soundcards available with optical I/O, which enables you to record onto MD digitally. (Lots of HiFi CD players have optical out now, so you can use that if your CD-ROM can't play a CD.)
If you want to record MD -> PC digitally, you'll need a MD player with digital out, but these are readily available (often with both optical and co-ax).
You can get a MD/Radio for your car. Some are expensive (eg: DM1500 or $750), but there are others (eg: the Kenwood for DM450). The disks are smaller than cassettes and aren't that expensive. I can get a pack of 5 74Min Sony disks for DM15 ($7.50).
BTW: I recently got the Sony CD/MD combo which will record CD->MD at 4x speed. Works very nicely. Tip for anyone in Germany: it was cheaper at www.thomann.de.
-- Steve
This is a good unit. I encode my MP3's with LAME (-r3mix -b112) VBR. The time goes wacky (it looks like you're speeding through the MP3) on the display, but what is actually played is accurate. Combine this with my Total Airhead and Etymotic ER4S cans -- it rocks!
There is supposed to be an upcoming firmware revision that will take this to 999. OTH, my Casio PZ-5000 has something like a 150 song limitation. I doubt I'll hit that as I use LAME VBR with -r3mix -b112.
cp -R /Volumes/[iPod Name]/iPod_Control/Music/* ~/Music
Sorry about that...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I wasn't insinuating that MD is not a good option.. I like MD...
I guess my point is that people seem to be using the fact that you can copy to/from the MD without restriction as a reason that it is 'better' than an SDMI player.
For something to stick tunes on to listen to, MD is great. So are many SDMI players.
Err.. also, where ar eyou getting this about mp3 'enhancing what the human ear can decode' and md 'removing what you can't hear'.
That sounds wrong to me.. do you have a url or something explaining it? The 'removing what you can't hear' I know is true.. but where's this enhancing?
But if you were to do serial copying to and from an MD player, you will continually degrade the quality of the music (unless you are doing pure raw digital copies, only possible with certain dual-disc players, a digital spdif cable won't suffice, as that involves decompress/recompress).
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But more to the point, who has played the cell-phone style hidden game on the iPod? With new hacking sites popping up all over, has anyone found a firmware update that gives them any more games yet? Or playback of even more media formats or other abilities? Of couse it will soon have Windows compatibility and people have been booting off their iPods since the beginning, but lately I've seen someone modifying it for use as a simple address book, people trying to get it to work under *BSD and Linux, and development of a new graphic EQ for it. Anyone else made cool hacks?
There are a lot CD based players for below US$ 100.
5 .h tml
I got the ID3 Superstar from Lik Sang.
http://www.lik-sang.com/?click=cat-122-link
I found it through MP3.com, here is the link:
http://hardware.mp3.com/hardware/individual/380
anti
This is a free country, see, there is just not market for these sort of devices! Bwhaahahahaa! Suck my Dick, I am King, the Right-Sized Bribe rules the world!
They can ban it, they probably could not get rid of it, but they could certainly ban it. Think drugs...
/. ... and while the US went down the tubes, the rest of the world would watch in utter disbelief. That's why I can't believe it could ever happen.
But computers are one of the key strategic sectors of the American economy. Drugs (though very popular) are not.
Banning drugs is a ridiculous idea, but it's no real threat to US power. Banning computers on the other hand would destroy the US economy. It's in the nature of computers to be "general purpose" - ban that and you're back to having dedicated word-processors, teletype machines for email, radios for music, magazines for things like
There are ways around getting older sony things while screwing sony at the same time.
You can get a used, 5-disc sony ES (the good stuff) cd changer now for not so much. Instead of giving sony your money for the cd player, just buy it from somebody else. That way sony is losing the money you would have spent on their cd player and you help out somebody else.
Secondly, if you feel strongly about sony, don't support their Super Audio CD effort. If the same holds true to their SACD effor as does their cd effort, please let Sound & Vision know, as they are feverishly watching this whole copy protection thing and are opposed to it.
As far as making a recording of a recording that you buy, it is perfectly legal per the Home Recording Act.
If you do tell Sound & Vision, please let me know what happens, as i will be very intereted.
Thanks.
-Mike