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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
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...
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.
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.
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.
Just my 2 cents.
-Jason
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
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.
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 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.
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
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 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...
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.
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.
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...
Good price on it here. Check out their other MP3 players too, some good deals.
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.)
They are porting over key software for communicating with the iPod over to the windows. So stop comlaining.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
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.
Yes, but then you have to buy a Mac. Clearly the readers of slashdot are past the hand-holding and don't need to pay a premium for colored plastic.
:) And actually, come to think of it, on a Mac it acts as a firewire hard drive, so I'm assuming that if you had a standard firewire hard disk driver coupled with the the Mac hfs file system driver that's already in Linux, you're probably already 90% of the way there.
It's firewire and uses a 5GB hard disk. Write a Linux driver for it.
Rather than complain "you have to buy a Mac" WRITE DRIVERS! This is the advantage of having an open source operating system to hack, folks.
My journal has hot
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Do any of these players read Ogg Vorvis music files?
UNIX/Linux Consulting
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.
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.
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.
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..
And 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
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.
That's what us Mac zealots want you to think. Its a part of our propaganda goals. Apple has had a historical problem of building enough machines to match demand so as a Mac zealot we really don't want too many converts so we don't have to fight for a Mac. Those "deficits" of the Mac platform are meant to drive the weak minded to Windows.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
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.
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.
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.
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.
----------
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
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
-jon
Remember Amalek.
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
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-
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.
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)
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Doesn't Mean Crap Anyway...)
Albuquerque PC
""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!
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.
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.
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
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!
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."
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.
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)
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
I was just pointing out that there was no inherent anti-CLI bias among Mac cognicenti, such as programmers. If Mac fan-boys feel a certain way, well, they're fan-boys.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Please ... please ... no more CLI vs GUI arguments. These days, you can have both if you want them, but in 1984, technology dictated that you choose one or the other. Let it rest. I ... am ... falling asleep ... just typing ... this.
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.
> 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?
Sometimes I write a song, make a few different mixes of it, put them on my MP3 player, go down to the beach and listen to them, stop by my guitarist's house and play it for him, and then I have to go home and email him a copy because the MP3 files that I made won't copy off a NomadII. All other kinds of files will, though.
A workaround is to remove the ".mp3" suffix on the files and then you can do what you please. A better workaround is that I'm going to get an iPod.
> I don't see this sdmi thing being a problem
> in real world applications...
YOU don't see it being a problem, but there are 6 billion people in the world, and lots of unforeseen possibilities and future technologies. I have a portable DAT player that I NEVER use now because of SCMI. DAT tapes are fragile as hell, so only having one digital master is ridiculous. Everything that goes on DAT first ends up eventually getting recorded (using analog outs) to a computer. What a chore.
iPod is the only FireWire MP3 player. Also, the only one with a high-speed interface of any kind. Make sure you try an iPod out before you purchase a device. Lots of people have said that a couple of minutes with iPod spoils you for other players.
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).