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Dension DMP3 MP3 Player Reviewed

Posted by timothy on from the a-thousand-hours-but-no-ogg dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "MP3 Newswire has a review of the Dension DMP3, an MP3 player for the car that you purchase sans storage media. It sell for $249 and takes a standard IDE/ATA hard disk. With 100 GB selling for $200 these days the DMP3 gives you a ton of capacity for $450. The player itself is pretty basic, but I like the way they use a mobile rack frame to handle fast file transfers rather than use USB to spoonfeed tunes at a snails pace. Dension has also made the internal specs public including the playlist (.ply), logo (.lce), message (.msg) formats as well as the communications serial line protocol for adding third party devices like a mouse. Overall a neat toy, but most of all very reasonably priced for those who like to rip their tunes at the highest compression rates."

4 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. A car player that's too big for the car dash? by dan+the+person · · Score: 4, Informative

    If they shaved 20mm from the width it could have been installed in the Dash like a proper car stereo.

    Anyone got any experience running normall desktop drives in a car? The shock tolerences are way lower than a laptop drives which would seem to be the better choice for an in-car unit.

  2. Apparently even girls can remember stuff! by stienman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Select the JukeBox playback mode beforehand, because you can only select songs here (no lists, or albums), and max. 16 songs can be pre-programmed. All you have to tell your guests is to turn the driving knob to search, press it to select and add to the program. This is something even girls can remember, or if not, boys will surly be happy to help

    Sorry, couldn't help sharing this 'tip' from their website. Could be a cultural thing - I'm interested to see if the tips have such useful information in the other language on their site.

    -Adam

  3. affordable by asv108 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    What makes this player so nice is the fact that it is reasonably priced compared other offerings such as the RioCar or the Kenwood Music Keg, which is actually the same thing as a phatnoise phatbox, but phatnoise decided to supply the traditional head unit manufactures rather than compete with them.

    Overall, there are not a lot of reasonable offerings in a marketplace which shows a lot of promise. What I would like to see is a complete car package that offers:

    • Large Capacity with standard drives
    • Radio and CD player
    • The CD player doubles as a ripper
    • Wireless Access
    • Car 2 Car IM
    • Easily Navigable

    Imagine a car player with built in wireless access so you can easily add songs to your car but also trade songs with others, sort of like a p2p network on the road. Besides trading songs people could also IM each other, I think this would really catch on among teenagers, a demographic that tends to embrace IM, likes to cruise, and many teens tend to have run down cars with nice stereos. Obviously there are safety and security considerations to consider but I'm sure a compromise could be made.

  4. Re:Many players not compatible with CD-RW by swb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A buck each for CDR media? What?

    The last batch I bought was a spindlepack of 100 for $17 at Microcenter. Even Office Despot sells 100 packs for $34.

    Before you complain about the quality of cheap CDRs, I have been using these mostly in my car for the past year and I'm brutal with them. They get flung around the interior, sat on in the passenger seat, broiled in the summer sun, frozen in the winter, jammed 3-4 at a time into a single visor slot and I have yet to have one go bad.

    I'm sure they're not national archive quality, but for $0.17/ea who cares.