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Flipster Portable Plays MPEG-4
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."
The unit's screen can display JPG and GIF graphics as well...
More ways to carry pr0n round in my pocket! Yay for technology!
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
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.
Would an IBM Microdrive work in one of these? Speaking of which, now that IBM is getting out of the hard drive business, will those things even continue to exist?
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.
If you look at their products page, all their devices seem to be lacking enough memory. 64 and 128 megs for mpeg-4 files? Even the mp3 players they have use storage sizes that were barely acceptable 2 years ago. My ipod is maxed out at 5GB, I couldnd't imagine dealing with 128meg limit for video files.
If you're out there coding up software or drawing up circuit diagrams or in some other way preparing to release a product on the world, please bear in mind that as of October 23, 2000, the use of the suffix "ster" was officially deprecated as being Fucking Stupid. Please consider changing the planned name of Spreadsheetster or Videoplayerster or Toasterster before it hits the market.
Thank you, that is all.
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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
Other than running Windows CE instead of PocketPC (IIRC WinCE 3.0 was the version just before PocketPC 2000) and not appearing to have a stylus, but just having buttons instead, it looks like it has the same or similar guts to most models of iPaq.
Lower screen resolution (160x234 as compared to 320x240 on an iPaq), typical Microsoft codecs for audio compression/decompression, and not much more memory than an iPaq with only another hundred bucks of price... I dunno. I just can't see spending $399/449 on one of these instead of going to $499 or $549 for a nicely loaded iPaq. If this thing had the ability to synchronize with Apple or Linux, it might have some advantages... but it doesn't.
Nice idea, but for what they're offering, the price should drop down to someplace around $199-$250.
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I will admit that Windows Media format is really good for audio in comparison to MP3 for holding music for a trip. I started ripping my music to 96Kbit WMA for a while, which let me take around 2-3 hours of music on the go with me whenever I took my iPaq 3135 with a 128M cartridge in it. With a 6-8 hour battery life depending on volume I play things at, the $150 monochrome iPaq was probably one of the best tech purchases I've made. So even though MP3 might not get you 2 hours of music on 128M, this device does give you a chance to play just enough if you use WMA.
WMA for all it's origins, does sound about as good as 128Kbit MP3 audio.
Of course, I'm now debating what to do about my music since I got an iBook that only plays Windows Media one file at a time thanks to MS's player on it. Oh well.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
28MB is enough for the trip once. During the return trip you'll have to listen to the same mp3s
Seems to me that if you simply use the standard 128 kpbs encoding, 128 megs is enough for more than 2 hours of music...
This is a pure example of a product with an ill-defined target audience. All in all, it comes down to that this can only be used ideally as a MP3 player. But with a $449 price tag, this is rather expensive for this purpose.
With 64 MB memory, it can maybe hold a couple minutes of video at most. Maybe with an expansion card, it can hold a little more. But in the end, why would you spend this much money on a device that can only hold a couple minutes of video? At this price, you might as well get an iPaq that will be able to do the same exact thing plus more.
What would be a killer-app would be if they expanded the hdd to (what many of you mentioned) a Toshiba 10 GB hdd. At this point, you will then be able to hold a couple full length movies. Build in an external port to TV-out and there will be some actual application.
But to summarize, the limiting factor of this device is that relatively small storage space and a high price tag. In the end, they are not targetting any specific audience successfully.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Yup, I agree. Products like that really piss me off. Kewl features and form factor but just enough storage to make it utterly fucking useless. Hell, 128 isn't even enough for music IMO. That is unless you like the swirling hiss of 64K overly compressed tunes. That and changing your playlist more often than our shorts ;-)
I was thinking about this.... Exactly how powerful are these handhelds? I know it takes a buttload of CPU/RAM for the Wince. However, I was thinking of a design that would be fairly powerful (resource wise), and not be a battery soaker.
Why not use a 500 MHz equalavalent Crusoe processor with linux. I'm not advocating doing things with command-line either (it'll be accessable if needed). You'd be able to put a heavy size HD in this. For the video, mplayer. That might run a bit of problems with Microsoft (linux mplayer can play/convert asf and WMV). Slap on a ethernet and 1 usb and a video out (maybe a serial port).
I'd expect this to go for a lot, but it's a full comp that can do nearly everything.
It sounds nice and all, but where can I find any software to work with MPEG 4 now? All I can find is a bunch of wannabe formats wrapped up in AVI. And AVI can't even do MPEG 1.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
TiVo sync.
Should be possible with the tiny rez, and MPEG-4.
Would be quite cool.
-twb
Uhh. The issue isn't whether or not I have a player, it's whether that player can use the 96Kbit WMA files I encoded my stuff into so I could get the most efficient use out of the iPaq with only 128M of storage before I got the iBook.
If I want my music efficiently on both machines, I now have to keep it encoded twice which is a pain in the ass. That was the entire point of my post, which most people who actually know how to put 2+2 together without equaling 3 probably understood.
If you're going to be a smartass, at least be a halfway intelligent one.
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The word "unsupported" does not necessarily mean it doesn't work. It's likely that it works perfectly well under Win2K, but they haven't yet trained their phone drones to handle questions about using it with Win2K.
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According to your argument, we could say that we don't have broadband because we don't want/need it. I mean, why do we need broadband anyways.
As someone else responded, there isn't a demand for it because most people don't know about it. But like with broadband, once someone goes to cable/DSL, they'll never go back to dial-up. The case is the same here with cell phones.
Secondly, I don't think the market is inherently different. Once people are aware of the capabilities, they will demand more of it.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
The only problem is that MP3 has become a de facto standard for sharing on the web, so if you are trying to download tunes from Gnutella etc., you are going to be downloading MP3s 95% of the time.
Install VMWare (or Virtual PC), and use the guest OS to load the copy-protected music.
Windows: "The file 'Britney Spears - Shitty Pop Song.wma' could not be played, because Windows is running in an emulator, virtualizer, debugger, or other insecure environment. Please reboot the computer, load Windows onto the bare hardware, and try again." Under no circumstances will Microsoft sign the drivers necessary to run Secure Audio Path through vmware.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Kinda like how Japan doesn't have broadband deployment levels anywhere near the US? but Korea does?
Seriously, this thing simply doesn't have the features to make it a really worthwile solution for portable MPEG4, your best option right now is a decent laptop. This is essentially an MP3 player with some extras thrown in. For starters the storage is extremely expensive, its small, and its slow, USB 1.1? puhlease... How about a hd with usb 2.0 or firewire or, maybe even better, cd rom. Secondly, most of the mpeg4 videos I already have are at too high a resolution to play on this so if I want to watch them I'm going to have to reencode..give me a break... And third it doesn't look like this thing has any sort of video out, so I'm stuck watching it on a miniscule screen..boring... The idea is great and for a first try its good, but to really be usefull theres going to need to be some serious improvement.
I wonder who wants to be the first one to fry, uh, try, one on of these fuckers out.
I like the simulated picture. A boat. Yeah. Sure.
But I bet that when the coroner unplugs this sum'bitch, the picture won't be of a boat. "Debby Does Des Moines" on the DVD's more likely, playing over the recumbent, lifeless forms of some late party people with more money than sense.
If it had a heart shaped tub, you could sell 'em in the Poconos or Niagara. They'll fuck anywhere, anytime.
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you mean 1/3rd the weight of a beer. 'three times lighter' is an obfuscated reference to division. Please clean up your code, and avoid obfuscative programming, at least in the open source communtity.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html