Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Flipster Portable Plays MPEG-4

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the its-so-cute dept.

An anonymous reader says "Pogo! Products has released a mediabox called the Flipster that plays MPEG-4 video and MP3 & WMA tunes. The unit's screen can display JPG and GIF graphics as well. What is interesting is the decision to go with flash memory for storage. Capacity is limited to 128MB plus whatever MMC card you put in the expansion slot. While it allows the Flipster comes in at 3.7oz, I would prefer to see something using the 10GB Toshiba drive found in the iPod. Maybe I'll wait for the Archos Jukebox Multimedia, but I'm beginning to wonder if that portable will ever appear."

4 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Why isn't this a phone? by cyborch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I would like to only have to carry a single handheld device. And there is no way I'll stop carrying a phone around. Therefore I would like to see the kind of features this device has in a phone rather than in a device that does not obsolete my phone.

  2. Quality by delta407 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't mean to start a holy war, but I have to admit that Windows Media Audio sounds better than MP3 at the same bitrates. Of course, it is Microsoft, the EULA on it sucks, and it's proprietary/closed/what have you, but I have noticed it sounds better.

    For reference, my music is ripped to 256 kilobit MP3s, but when loading stuff onto portable players, 64 kilobit WMA actually sounds decent. Seriously; compare it.

    1. Re:Quality by HeUnique · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Is that a problem?

      Install VMWare (or Virtual PC), and use the guest OS to load the copy-protected music. on the host OS install some "audio grabbing" utility which can grabs whatever the sound card outputs - now play the copy-protected song inside the guest OS and start recording in the host OS..

      3 minutes later - you'll have a WAV file which you can either convert to OGG, WMV, MP3 etc without any serious hacking...

      The more work they do on copy protecting multimedia - the easier it gets to copy it - ask Sony about their key2audio which could be beaten by a simple marker (heh, there goes few million dollars of investment in copy protection)...

      --
      Hetz (Heunique)
  3. Well ill have to wait.... by PepsiProgrammer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just bought a zaurus, and they talk like sony has already made a Mpeg4 video player update for it, but has yet to release it, it already plays Mpeg1 and 2 if im not mistaken, and of course it does MP3s, and downloadable programs can make it play OGG. heh and with a 802.11b card on the NC State campus, and a 40 gig NFS partition, ill have all the storage ill ever need on a PDA

    --
    "The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05