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New MP3 Portables
An anonymous reader writes "This has been a busy week for the announcement of the latest crop of MP3 portables, probably just the start of many more with the holiday season only a few months away. First Samsung has announced their first jukebox model the Yepp YP-900, a 10GB unit using Toshiba's 1.8-inch drive for storage (same one as in the iPod) and eschewing FireWire (400 mbps) for a USB 2.0 (480 mbps) connection to transfer files. Mambo has also announced a jukebox player called the Digital Media-X PhotoBank Jukebox that is more akin to the Archos Jukebox Multimedia in that it can store and display photo files and possibly video files in the future. The Mambo holds 20GB of memory on a more common 2.5-inch hard drive, making it a heavier unit than the YP-900. Like the Yepp, the Mambo also goes with a USB 2.0 connection, heating up the competition between FireWire in digital music portables. The most interesting feature about the Yepp? It also has a MMC/SD card slot to facilitate trading tunes to and from other digital music players. (Take that SDMI). Finally SonicBlue has started shipping replacements for the Rio 600 and the Nike PSA[play 120 (made by Rio for gym workouts). Both the Rio S30S for the exercise-minded and the Rio S10 come with 64MB of memory and are upgradeable to 192MB through MMC flash cards. The S30S comes with an FM radio, while the base-optioned S10 is claiming 35 hours of running time on a single AA battery. Both players transfer files via USB 1.1's 12mbps port."
then it wouldn't be an "mp3" portable. So don't ask.
Id buy one in a second that had Ogg Vorbis support. anyone know of a portable player that has flashable codecs support?
adventure-today.com
I bought the GF2MX when it hit $90 and a GF3Ti200 when it hit $90. I bought my (older) 11 second buffering sony car discman when those hit $90. (It gets like 80 hours play on a pair of AAs, too, and works flawlessly to this day. Very nice.) So any MP3 player I'm going to buy is going to cost less than a hundred bucks.
I also don't want a device where the media costs more than the machine, which limits my choices to a pretty narrow range. Lik-Sang doesn't even seem to be loading, but that's where I'd ordinarily look for a device like that.
Does anyone know of a very thin CDRW/CDR/CD player which does VBRE MP3s and costs less than $100 which doesn't simply fall apart within a week of the warranty's end?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
While the ipod is small, other units have a number of things going for them that the ipod doesn't.
The NJB3 for example, has built-in recording in either uncompressed or MP3 format, and a battery life that's in the ~22 hour range with two batteries loaded.
It also supports bi-directional file transfer, so you're not stuck just "syncing" your media when you connect it to the host computer.
It's bigger, yes - but it also utilizes industry-standard 2.5" drives (which go up to 60gb now). That offers a lot more room for expansion than the 1.8" drives which are used in the smaller devices.
Saying "everything else is a joke" is naive, and flamebait imho. What may work for you may not fill my needs - the opposite can be true as well, but let's be honest here.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
What I wanted was a MP3 player that could be used under water. Those FM radios made for swimming have terrible tuning, specially when you dive a few inches (flip turn, for instance), and usually seek for another station when that happens. I understand the problems of doing a casette player for under water use (size, movable parts, water proof issues of openable containers), but a MP3 player seems perfect. That would be a sports friendly player.
And it transfers with USB 2.0, which is both faster than the iPod's FireWire, and is also more commonly available on the PC platform.
I don't want to throw a monkeywrench in here, but I might as well try:
How is USB 2.0 support more ubiquitous for x86 in terms of OS-level support? I was under the impression that it's still being tweaked for Linux (but it's there) and that Windows support was confined to Windows 2000 and XP. At least, that's the impression I get from the Microsoft KB. For other x86 operating systems, I have no clue.
Somehow, I suspect FireWire support is (potentially) a bit more common, though it does require additional hardware for most x86 PCs. Beat me with a stick, but I seem to recall there being FireWire support in the OS for earlier versions of Windows, so at least it's an option (where it isn't with USB 2.0).
I also suffer from the delusion that USB 2.0 requires USB 2.0 hardware ports for full transfer rates. I would think most consumers are still stuck with USB 1.1 interfaces and so, with sub-optimal transfers relative to FireWire.
So, how is it more commonly available on the PC platform again?
"If Bose would make something like that I would buy it in an instant..."
Apparently, you have never read a critical review of any Bose audio products.
I dunno about you, but I will find the player I want independent of bus interface and THEN, and only then, will I decide that I am not too cheap for
AN EIGHTEEN DOLLAR PART!!!
Sorry 'bout that.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
- Apple overnights me a box
- I stick ipod in box
- I call to have the shipping company pick up box
- Apple sends me a brand new ipod, arrives 2 days later
That's what I call service, most of the other players I've seen have a very limited warranty and the companies are almost guaranteed to object to a replacement. Apple was amazing and they should be, with the recent release of the ipod for windows, they are bound to get a few converts if they keep that level of service.Firewire is free:
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
However you really should look up the current specs. The latest model iPods do offer more then the Yepp, FireWire and USB 2.0 are about tied for market penetraton (their speeds are essentially identical right now though FireWire is going faster RSN), and most agree that the iPod interface & software integration are the best on the market.
While everyone is welcome to choose whatever fits their needs best the iPod is a remarkably good value bang-for-the-buck, particularly in the latest revisions. Comparing iPod Rev. A specs with the latest Yepp isn't particularly valid unless price is also listed (iPods have gotten cheaper quite quickly.)
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Yes, because the difference between 400Mb/s and 480Mb/s really matter when connecting an external hard disk. It's 2002. Hard disks do not run at 480Mb/s.
Besides, the "USB2 is faster then FireWire" talk is just Intel's marketing; USB2 is 480Mb/s peak, where FireWire is 400Mb/s sustained.
Firewire is 400mbps SUSTAINED between devices without needing a host controller. USB 2.0 is 480 mbps *MAXIMUM* throughput. Bearing in mind that everything a usb device does goes through the controller, you actually get a maximum of 240 in each direction, assuming there's nothing else on the usb chain. If there is then you'll get even less.
I am sure that in a lab you can get usb 2.0 to go faster than firewire but in reality there is no way it will.
I have both and I have usb 2.0 and firewire external drives and the firewire one smokes the usb one (they are both 7200 rpm ibm drives) even when the drive is the only thing on the usb chain.....
if I add a mouse it gets comical.
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
Overall, the machine is quite good and probably the best on the market. However ther are a few things that it doesn't get right.
First, gap removal -- I have many albums that arte contimuous (live recordings, DJ mixes, classical music, etc.) The iPod provides no gap suppression, so that in between every track there is a noticeable gap of about 1/2 second (or up to five seconds if the hard disk decides to spin up at the same time.) Now, I realize that due to the architecture of most portable mp3 players, gap suppression is not feasible because it requires processing on the decoded audio. So I went and re-encoded all those albums as single mp3s. However, that didn't work well because of:
File size limit: The iPod is very poor at handling files that exceed the size of its 32MB memory buffer. It is incapable of playing music while reading from the hard disk. So if you have a file that is longer than 32mb, it will play the first 32mb, then pause for 3-5 seconds while reading the next 32mb chunk into memory. This means that there is no way to properly listen to continuously recorded albums.
Furthermore, the iPod provides no mechanism for bookmarking or labeling points within a track, so it's impossible for me to see what the title of the current section on my continuously encoded album is. I would find this even more annoying if I listened to audio books.
The backlight is not adjustable, and it's too bright. In a dark room it hurts my eyes.
The backlight, unlike most other kinds of backlight, needs to invert the screen when it's on, which you can see if you take the iPod out into the sunlight. But on a cloudy day, the backlight and the ambient light balance out almost exactly, and the display is unreadable. I can hold down the "Menu" key to turn the backlight off, but that isn't helpful because when I move the wheel the backlight turns on agin immediately. So I have to navigate through the menu system (which is tricky when you can't see the display) to turn off the backlight.
Did I mention the menu interface? The menu interface provides no provision for muscle memory; it cannot be operated by touch. You must be constantly looking at the display while you move the wheel. This makes the iPod downright dangerous for use in the car (which is about 50/70% of where I use the thing). Much of the danger could be alleviated if the wheel provided any sort of tactile feedback -- there is a audible "clicker" you can enable, but you cannot hear it in a noisy environment, or while the music is playing. You cannot adjust the volume unless you are in the "Now Playing" section of the menu interface. If you wanted to turn down the volume without looking at the display, the sequence you have to go through is this:
That's a little much to expect when you're trying to just mute the damn thing while keeping your eyes on the road!
Finally, iTunes seems to have some speed issues in reading files off of CD-ROMs. Off the hard drive is nice and speedy, but from the CD it clocks in at around USB1.0 speeds. I don't know why this is the case.
I would like to know if there are any portable hard-drive based mp3 players which address these issues.
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