Where are the non-SDMI MP3 Players?

alen asks: "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. Looking at customer reviews on Amazon confirms this as you'll find at least one person saying you can't transfer the music from the MP3 player to your PC. At least on the newer players you do." I've been resisting the urge to get an MP3 player for precisely this reason, opting to use my laptop and a cassette adaptor for those long driving trips, but this is hardly affordable or efficient. Handhelds might work, but memory is a problem here. Are there any players out there that haven't forgotten the "fair" part in "fair-use"?

"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?"

Comments

iPod?

[jspectre]

Anther point for the iPod.. No nasty copy-protection. :-)

Re:iPod?

[toupsie]

Its no problem if they are your CDs. Steve Jobs actually has the right idea regarding "stealing music". He has said it is not a technology problem but a social one. People who are inclined to steal will no matter what technology you use to prevent it. "Don't Steal Music" sticker on a new iPod is a social message.

P.S. I own an iPod and its worth every penny of its $399 sticker price. It blows my Archos Jukebox 6000 out of the water.

Re:iPod?

[toupsie]

I have had my iPod for a little over a week now and its very trivial to copy files from the mp3 storage area to your mac. In Mac OS X, just hop to the "Terminal" and do a "cp -R /Volumes/[iPod Name]/Music/* ~/Music" and it moves across nicely.

Re:iPod?

[toupsie]

It takes my Archos Jukebox 6000 about 5 1/2 hours to copy over 6 gigs of data and it take my iPod only 12 minutes to copy 5 gigs over. The iPod can set individual EQ settings for each of your mp3. I can play breakout on my iPod. The iPod supports ID3v2.3 tags while the Archos supports on the 1.1 tags. The Archos only displays the song title while the iPod will display the song, artist and album.

Gay? Like in happy or your alternative lifestyle?

Re:iPod?

[sllort]

In Mac OS X, just hop to the "Terminal" and do a "cp -R /Volumes/[iPod Name]/Music/* ~/Music" and it moves across nicely.

You fool! Your comment is a circumvention device! I hope you posted it from an anonymous relay, because the RIAA Thought Police are already mobilized. Your comment is a "digital crowbar", it will be used by millions to deprive starving recording artists of their royalty proceeds! Jack Valenti is currently mobilizing an army, if I were anywhere near the Slashdot server room I'd leave the area immediately. Laser-guided "smart bombs" aren't always perfect for accuracy.

archos jukebox

[theridersofrohan]

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

Re:archos jukebox

[toupsie]

I own an Archos Jukebox 6000 but just switched to an iPod. Its a good mp3 player however copying files via USB is like pulling teeth. It takes about 5 to 6 hours to fill up its 6 gig HD. My iPod only takes 12 minutes to fill up its 5 gig HD via firewire. Granted, the Archos is compatible with Linux and Windows which probably makes it more useful for most folks on Slashdot.

I like the CD option personally

[night_flyer]

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.

iPod

[Green Light]

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.

I don't think that word means what you think...

[elmegil]

"Fair Use" in the context of copyright has a pretty specific meaning. It has to do with use of sections of a copyrighted work for review purposes and for educational purposes (among others, I make no claim to being complete in my description). But it has nothing to do with "that's not fair" as both the poster and the editor seem to believe.

C'mon people, we won't be taken seriously if we can't even learn the jargon.

Rio 500

[Bullschmidt]

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.

Apple iPod

[Josuah]

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.

this is a non-issue, afaik

[MoNsTeR]

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.

Seconded and amended - try the jukebox recorder!

[isaac]

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

The enemy controls the hardware

[Hobbex]

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...

Consider getting a MiniDisc recorder/player

[ziffie]

MiniDisc players are a viable alternative to portable mp3 players. The ATRAC compression technology has reached a point where you can store 80/160/320 minutes on a single 80 minute minidisc.

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.

Re:Head to eBay and pick up a....

[onion2k]

you can have different genres of music for driving/working out etc

Working out? You realise this is slashdot, right?

Re:Ipod! - not so fast there

[ncc74656]

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.

From what I understand, the iPod's HD is formatted with an HFS+ filesystem. This is what currently keeps it from working with anything other than a Mac. If Apple had chosen a more widely-used filesystem (FAT32 would've been adequate for the intended purpose), you would be able to plug into just about any computer with a FireWire port and move files around.

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?