USB Key-Sized MP3 Player With LCD Display

nhahmada writes "The Muvo MP3 player/storage device from Creative has been out for awhile, but some have complained of its lack of a display or equalizer. Well, now Innogear has released the 128MB Duex mp302 with a backlit LCD supporting ID3 tags, a "multi-category" equalizer and a timer (Why?). The mp302 also has the ability to record/playback voice via its built-in microphone. It can be used for storing any type of file and plays MP3/WMA/WAV. Both the Muvo and mp302 run on one AAA, giving 12 hours of continuous playback. Running at $179, it's a little more expensive than the $169.99 128MB Muvo, but I am willing to shell out ten bucks for an LCD. Go here for a better look at the display."

Comments

LCD Display

[PerlPooch]

LCD = Liquid Crystal Display. So that's Liquid Crystal Display Display.
From the department of redundancy department.

Re:LCD Display

[siskbc]

Does that make you AR Retentive?

Who mods this up?

Re:LCD Display

[El Kevbo]

Somwhere, an English teacher cries out in pain and wonders why...

What I want

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want is an FM radio with MP3 recorder and programmable recording.

So I can record, say, Talk of the Nation on NPR in the morning and listen to it in the afternoon.

Why doesn't anybody make this yet???

Tivo for NPR. It would be great for saving stuff to listen to while driving, for those times when I want to actually use the time to learn something.

Re:What I want

[Sc00ter]

I do this with an FM card in my linux box. I record Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and a few other shows. Here's the script I use for Car Talk:

---

#! /bin/bash

#Kill off anybody using /dev/dsp
/sbin/fuser -k /dev/dsp

#change to the right freq
/usr/local/bin/fmio -d v4l -f 89.1 -v 7

#set correct mixer settings
/usr/local/bin/smixer -s /root/mixersettings/recordshow.mix

DATE=`date +%Y-%m-%d`
/usr/local/bin/mpegrec -b 32 -l 3600 -x "-b 32 --resample 32 -m m" -o /home/travis/radioshows/Car_Talk/Car_Talk_-_$DATE. mp3
/usr/local/bin/smixer -s /root/mixersettings/default.mix
chown -R travis.travis /home/travis/radioshows

---

Hope that helps some, works great. You can use a bitrate of 16, but my portable MP3 player won't play it if it's that low for some stupid reason.

Re:What I want

[mithras the prophet]

I do this with a combination of streamripper and a crontab. (This only works if you have an always-on connection like a cable modem, of course)

There are a number of NPR stations that broadcast in streaming mp3:

• KCRW Santa Monica
• KPBX Spokane
• KUOW Seattle
• WYPR Baltimore

I just set a crontab to run streamripper and record from one of those stations, at the time and for the duration of the program I want. Then tell iTunes to dump the file to the iPod, and poof - several hours of interesting listening, ready and waiting!

All of the stations have program schedules available, or you can just guess for the live programs.

When I have some time, I'll be gussying this up in a Cocoa interface for any fellow Mac OS X users.

Re:Could be a great device if..

[dildatron]

why not just put your phone on vibrate?

I personally want my phone to be a phone and my mp3 player to play mp3's. convergence creates bad interfaces or limited funcionality most of the time.

Timer is for Exercisers

[__aaahtg7394]

a timer (Why?).

Because when you're working out, you often want to know how long you've been going. "OK, good, i did my 5 minutes of hard running, time for a smoke!", etc. Joggers, treadmill junkies, and other people-who-move are a target audience for these things (remember anti-skip CD players? "Perfect for Runners!")

It'd surprise me if this didn't come with an armband of some sort, either out of the box or as an option.

Re:Timer is for Exercisers

[Anonymous Coward]

Surpising that the author couldn't understand the reason for a timer. I would hazard the guess that he is a typical Linux Hippie, 50-60 lbs over weight. His primary exercise would be whining about Microsoft. Last time he raised his hands above his head would have been to search for some stray Cheese Doodles on the top shelf.

Re:What I want...

[saskboy]

A discman that plays MP3 CDs, has a SW/FM/AM, LCD TV, decodes OGG, downloads with Wireless Ethernet or IEEE1394, and runs off a Hydrogen Fuel Cell. Until this device is available, I refuse to support the crappy home electronics industry.

Re:to eliminate a hundred comments

[Joseph Vigneau]

Yes.
And I'm not buying a dedicated player until it plays ogg files. I bought a Zaurus 5500 just for this purpose. I'd like to also buy a more purpose-built device for this, though, and I refuse to buy one that does not play Ogg Vorbis I files.

Re:Could be a great device if..

[Elwood P Dowd]

Bluetooth would have provided perfect convergence if it had been designed properly: Your headphones would play the audio feed from your MP3 player, but give your cell phone a higher priority when it rang.

I get a little teary when I think of the lost potential in Bluetooth. Maybe they'll get things working right in a couple more years.

Recharge?

[photon317]

Nice device, but would it have been all that hard for them to replace the AAA battery with a rechargeable one and let it recharge from the +5V on the USB connector?

Re:to eliminate a hundred comments

[xercist]

No, actually it takes a bit -less- processing power to decode vorbis, but a bit more memory. The real problem here is that most of these players use dedicated mp3-decoding chips. That's all they do, and can't be reprogrammed for other things. Some players use ARM based processors, and this is where a firmware upgrade enabling vorbis-decoding is possible. However, the truth is that right now most of these companies are losing money on portable players - they're just so cheap. To make them play oggs requires engineers, and engineers cost money. Most of these companies have already laid off all their engineers because they can't afford to keep paying them after initially creating the hardware/firmware.

Anyway, you didn't hear it from me, but iRiver is currently working on implementing vorbis support in their portables.