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The New Nomad Jukebox, And Handheld Oggs
Tha_Zanthrax writes: "The best portable MP3-player has become better!
The people from Tbreak.com have recieved a Nomad/Creative Jukebox 3. They have yet to write a review but have put up some detailed pics on their messageboard. It's a bit smaller, but the best improvements are the firewire-port and the 2 (!) internal batteries for 22 hours of operation. Too bad I recieved my Creative JB2 last week ..." If you have a hankering to play Ogg Vorbis audio, though, it looks like the first handheld ogg player has finally arrived in the form of a (payware) app for the Sharp Zaurus called tkc Player, available from theKompany. Where's there's one, there will be more. Woo-hoo!
The newer Ogg codec is really good. Much better to my ear than my mp3's. That player for the Sharp isn't bad either, interface could use some tweaking but sounds great.
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Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I thought the IPOD was the best mp3 player ?
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you can keep linux,
its 2002 no 1982 if you hadn't noticed
it's will never make it.
is this a messageboard or a product endorsment and evaluation site ?
that thekompany claims to have made the first portable ogg player, i mean the zaurus is like an Acorn in a really small case with whatnot extension options.. and i would guess the cpu is strong enough to handle the ogg decoder with fpu emulation. paying for some gui with a libogg backend.. haha foools :D
ps.
and i made the first portable ogg player when i startet to carry my midi tower around !
I think the next improvement should be a cynic inside the machine, who would scold you appropriatly if you were listening to N'Sync, or congratulate you for picking Radiohead.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
.. between this and nomad v2? Basically it's got a firewire port and lithium ion batteries. Some more details available here.
After rolling through all three (or whatever) faceplaces, the unit ends up looking naked; there's no way I'm going to plunk down $20 + S&H for a new set.
Yeah, right.
For a mini-disc player/recorder that not only "supports" mp3/ogg/wav/etc, but will also play them in their original format instead of converting it to an ATRAC file (such as the new Sony NET mini-disc players). No matter what happens to the price of CF cards, it will be a very long time before it can compete with the cost of a single 700MB mini-disc. These hard drive driven portables and such would have a hard time competing in terms of cost of unit + media, weight of the player, and size.
I have the original Jukebox, and this new one is gonna be even better. I only wish it were out right now. Anyone got any info on the cost?
I want you to assume that all spelling and grammar errors are intentional. Thank You.
inally Ogg is making an impact. But still endorsment by big cmpanies is needed before we have ogg plugins in evey mp3 player in market
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
There are a bunch of excellent, free graphical Ogg Vorbis players for X11, and they even work on small screens and handhelds. Why ever would you pay money for something like tkcPlayer?
You can find more details about the tckPlayer here - it can be bought as a single stand alone app or it can be bought in a package of 9 applications for (for Zaurus) for $74.95 (details are here)
Hetz (Heunique)
It's only been posted here for a few minutes. And it's friday. Come on people!
there's no place like ~
Even though you have to download software seperately if your a Windows user, Apple's 10 GB iPod is by far and away better.
There is no way any objective person could think this unit is superior.
It's got a 10 GB HD, 32 MB of Ram, the battery life is 10 hours, you can store your contacts on it, you can use it as a hard drive, you can even *BOOT* off it. There are also 3rd party apps to extend the functionality.
And still it's less then half the size of this thing!
For me, that's a key feature This thing is way too big for my pocket (the Nomad is *still* discman size!). It's just not practicle, whereas my iPod fit's in my shirt pocket (and isn't nearly as heavy).
The iPod is so small, and it's interface so simple and elegant, that I take it everywhere, even just nipping down the to the shop. I know I'd think twice before taking this thing outside with me.
I guess it depends on how much you like music.
- If your a big music fan, then your better off with something cassete player sized (ThinkGeek has one, though bigger that the iPod, it has slightly more storage, and still of a practicle in-your-pocket size)
- If your not a big music fan and only want something for long journeys then this could be the unit for you. But if you are, you'd be better getting a discman for 30 USD instead...
Even though the player is payware, I'm sure it's worth it. It sure looks like it from the screenshots.
/FS community. They have developed Aethera, Kamera, KDE Studio, Kivio, and Kugar, all of which are available under the GPL for free.
theKompany is a good company which has done a lot for the KDE
Support the companies that support Free Software. Buy something from theKompany.
they're playing "modern talking" on the tkc player. they *must be evil*
;-)
Does anyone have an iomega hipzip mp3 player? I have heard rumors (from reliable sources) that this player will play ogg vorbis files.
Can someone please test and confirm this?
comment directly in my journal
I just looked at the pictures of the ogg vorbis player... and I have to say, I was quite shocked by this one.
I was shocked by the amazing similarity between the (software) ogg player's interface and Apple's iPod. First iPod ripoff or what?
I guess this silences those who said the iPod's interface was "teh suck."
The Archos MP3 player series at least have this ambitious crowd of hackers working on replacing the firmware with an open source alternative:
http://bjorn.haxx.se/rockbox/
"Where's there's one, there will be more. Woo-hoo!"
Archos model 500277
Jukebox MP3 Recorder 20 - 20GB HD (USB 2.0)
PriceWatch lists it for $315
Jukebox MP3 Recorders / USB Hard Drives
Can both record and playback MP3s
USB 2.0 is standard on newer PCs
Everytime I hear about his new Nomad player, I
think of that old Star Trek episode, with the
confused probe. You know, it was an Earth probe
with a mission to explore that melded with an
alien probe who's mission was to sterilize. So it
went around finding new planets to wipe clear of
life. Ahhh the memories.
another source for news on Nomad JB's has some info too. http://www.nomadness.com/
I don't understand. The posting starts off saying, "The best portable MP3-player has become better!" and then goes on to talk about the battery munching USB wielding Bigger Than A Discman Nomad.
Was there an editorial problem? Shouldn't we have heard about it when the story broke? "The best MP3 player on the planet just got even better." It's small, it's got battery life beyond what I thought possible and the transfer rate over [IEEE 1394|Firewire|iLink] is pretty good.
Of course, that announcement was like a month ago.
I know my engrish sucks... but I don't really the error in that one... maybe the word 'from' could be replaced with 'at'?
And they've shrunk it. It's still bigger than the iPod by a good amount, but it appears to be less-than-CD-player size (see the site)
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Whatever you say, MP3-boy. And in the year 2006, when the RIAA is scanning your computer and making a list of all of your officially-watermarked MP3s and sending you a big fat bill (thanks to the Music Digital Rights Protection Act of 2004), Ogg users will be safe from this kind of nonsense. Hillary Rosen will be sitting at her computer, thinking about us Ogg users, tears streaming down her face, gorging herself on chocolate cake, shrieking "MY MONEY!! WHERE IS MY MONEY!? WAHAHAHA!!"
Personally, I like the second scenario better.
Screw the RIAA.
I use mine all the time for transporting gigs of data about the place.
My Journal
Klerck I use Mozilla under Linux, your page posts do not hurt me. Heh it is funny how you idiots always make fun of Linux and say how you are so proud to be Windows users and then at the end of the day your crap only affects Windows users and the rest of us (users of a better OS) are not affected at all. That must make you mad, huh? Heh, all crapflooders can go crawl off somewhere and die.
I have EphPod working on a WinNT 4/sp6 machine, and have MediaFour's Xplay working on a win2k box. (Still waiting for development to firm up a bit on linux communications).
As for iTunes management, that's only if you have it be the primary machine. You can move music around without having to have it on the machine first.
Go to MetaMage.com and get EscapePod to move mp3s off the iPod to iTunes.
Or, get iPod Free File Sync...
Or, get PodMaster...
So, there are a range of options you haven't tried to make managing your music a little more flexible.
I purchased the original 6GB NJB, and although it does work well as a MP3 player there are a lot of bugs that Creative will probably never fix. Some of these bugs sound simple to correct (eg. no line wrap on long song titles), but I now suspect that firmware development for the first NJB is done (last update sometime last year). I'm not sure when I will learn my lesson and stop buying creative products. They used to be a really great company and I have bought thousands of dollars worth of their products over the years (from several of the original soundblasters all the way to Live5.1 bla bla bla's, video cards, you name it). In the past few years I've just started to feel like support beyond their latest gizmo is not a priority for them. Oh well my next MP3 player purchase is a few months away so we'll see how the reviews are....
:wq
The iPod does, which is a really cool thing (tm).
Does the Nomad 3?
I thought Ogg wouldn't play on an ARM based device because the decoder supplied by Xiph used floating point, and the ARM processor has no FPU?
Did someone make a non-FPU version of the decoder? Or does the kernel on the Zaurus have FPU emulation enabled?
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
my iomega "hipzip" has been playing ogg for a while now
I was enjoying reading the comments on the T-Break.com forum until it got slashdotted. I knew about this way before it was posted but didn't say anything because I didn't want this to happen.
Oh well...
When you see the word "Voyager" do you have flashbacks of that horrible movie?
You can even drag an MP3 folder from a network drive directly into iTunes or into your iPod. Oops, that doesn't work!. You get a mysterious error -39 when you try this.
According to this list of Mac OS error codes, error -39 is "end of file". The mysterious thing is why iTunes gives you "end of file" in when syncing through Samba.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is great, there will be more ogg portable players in the future. I can't wait until they come out with one that can play oggs off of cdrs. What great news. I use the ogg format with my music, awesome.
http://www.darkambient.org
Or does the kernel on the Zaurus have FPU emulation enabled?
The ARM GCC toolchain will let you statically link FPU emulation into a binary if your kernel doesn't support it. It simply replaces all F___ instructions with calls to the emulator.
The differences between the Zaurus PDA and a pocket MP3 player: Zaurus has a very fast general-purpose ARM CPU, while the pocket MP3 players rely on either a cheap processor just barely fast enough to decode 192 kbps MP3 at 90% CPU or a dedicated MPEG audio decoder chip.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Anonymous to avoid karma burn...
Did you see the "..." part in my post you ignorant fuck? There's more to the rhyme. Once you're done with your sister or not brushing your teeth, depending on whatever "superior" country you're from, go look it up.
Size matters!
sulli
RTFJ.
yes, this feature is desperately needed. but it's the sort of thing that apple could add in a firmware upgrade (like they added EQ per customer input). i can wait for that.
sulli
RTFJ.
Hmm interesting points, thanks.
:-). Also hate the *stupid* way the Finder locks up when dealing with SMB/NFS shares :(
:(
I agree with SMB performance under OS X being pretty crappy, could be my network though
I've not tried the iPod on a Windows PC though, none of the boxes I have at home have Firewire card apart from my PowerBook. I have heard some bad things about it though, but assumed they were teething problems...
Didn't know was that bad on Windows
I've got an Archos 6GB playback-only jukebox, and the thing is pretty much unbeatable for what I need to do. What's more, if 6Gb isn't enough for you, you can grab pretty much any other decent 9.5mm drive and replace the Toshiba 6Gb with your favorite, and the system is none the wiser. A 1394 port is useful and relevant only to those people who have a 1394 port. Except for Apple, and a few specific models from Dell and Gateway and maybe a Sony VAIO, most machines are still not shipping with 1394, but every one of them ships with USB, and usually USB 2.0.
Archos has been remarkably good about firmware updates and there's a pretty active community involved in hacking and modding the Archos devices. Different controls, different behaviors, bigger drives, etc. I've heard of one guy who's planning on jacking a 60Gb into his. That's enough MP3s to make Hillary Rosen soil herself.
They're not the smallest/lightest/most-elegant, but the batteries last longer than I do, they hold a pile of stuff, play it back decently, and act as a nice portable drive for those times you don't feel like carting around a mountain of Zip disks.
I really don't understand the dazzle effect that the Nomads have on people. I looked at them, priced them, and said "eh."
And while I look on the OggVorbis development effort with interest, there's no compelling reason right now to move away from MP3.
Turtle
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Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
I don't have my machine setup as the primary, but I get Error -39 whenever I try copying files from SMB -> iTunes or iPod. Are you using SMB?
I have absolutely no need to do that. I just want to take my music and put it ONTO my iPod.
This appears to be more of the same. Copy files from the iPod, not to it. I don't want that.
Sigh, even more of the same.
I know someone that still has a betamax player too!
im from the country where it is spelled Wolfenstein.
Beg your pardon, I misunderstood your needs.
I am using SMB but not in conjunction with an iPod. I haven't tried dropping a folder of music files onto the iPod from an SMB-accessed share.
In all other respects, SMB is working great for me, but this is one I'll have to try. Sorry to hear it isn't successful for you-- I'm going to see if I can't replicate the problem, myself.
Think of it this way, minidisks are actually very old - over ten years since their introduction. It's very possible to apply recent technologies, similar to what is now common in DVD players, to increase their capacity. Such a disk would make minidisks very competitive with the iPod and such.
Willy
The HipZip, unfortunately, never officially supported Ogg and the firmware for HipZip that plays oggs only handles up to beta 4 files. It may well never be updated at this point due to an unfortunate pissing match involving the company that supplied the firmware for HipZip (iObjects/Fullplay).
So, yes, it can certainly be argued HipZip was first. HipZip certainly proved that an embedded processor had the necessary power (the early beta files were even more expensive to decode than current Vorbis files). However, Iomega never officially acknowledged Ogg support.
In terms of official company support, theKompany/Zaurus are definately the first handheld, and the first handheld to play all current/future OggVorbis I files.
Monty
I've read that FPU emulation isn't fast enough to decode Vorbis on current ARM CPUs.
Total IEEE FPU emulation no, but emulating floating-point via fixed-point math may show some promise. Fixed-point is especially fast with ARM because every instruction has a built-in rotation, making it easy to deal with scaling of multiplied values. From there, continue to optimize the code until you have something that runs in real time
Will I retire or break 10K?
It seems fairly evident that the phrase "open standards" has nothing to do with money, but with "trade secrets" and proprietary formats that a company can legally prevent others from using.
While the words free software can mean software that can be had for no money, making it "free of cost", the phrase "free software" usually refers to Free Software. Free Software can be a free download, or it can cost money to buy it. The point of Free Software, is that once you have it, you can do just about anything you want with it, even share it with your friends. A Copyleft like the General Public License (GPL) is a kind of Copyright, which ensures that everybody you give the software to has the same freedoms that were given to you. Even if all of Ogg were totally under the GPL, they could still try to sell the software for money, just like you can, one you have a copy.
There is no reason why you can't make money off of Free Software or open standards. For more information on Free software, check out http://www.gnu.org/philosophy
Dave@mediafour said in the mediafour.com/fourms that there would be an anouncement monday (04/15) about xPlay.
It may be a final release or it may be TP6, I've been a user since TP3 and have had access to my iPod since then, xPlay just keeps getting better, so when xPlay 1.0 or TP6 comes out it should be even better.
You can even update the firmware with xPlay now, what more could you want?
Think of it as a punishment for using IE. I use alternately Moz or Opera. They don't effect me either.