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iRiver Announces A New Ogg/MP3 Player
An anonymous reader writes "CD Freaks and Mobile mag are reporting that iRiver has unveiled a new Ogg-capable mp3 player. Featuring 20 GB of HD space and USB 2.0 connectivity, the iHP-120 might just be the answer to the question all us Apple-fearing geeks have been asking...
Although the new product has yet to show up on their website, the older model iHP-100 is similar in design but with half the storage space (10gb). New software will be released in October to update it and other players from iRiver with ogg compatibility as well."
Well, the Diamond/Rio ogg player that was on here earlier also had FLAC support. Would be nice for more portable players to have that now that the disks are getting huge.
Or, maybe, this time again, it means some of us will need to do some reverse-engineering of one more of those primitive tools all these player manufacturers supply...
I've been considering getting a portable music player for a while, but I've had a few problems. Flash memory players are too small capacity, and cost too much per meg. Hard drive players tend to be too large, however. The only two I've seen that are good are the iPod (too expensive), and the Zen (considering it). However, since this plays .oggs, that gives it a nice big advantage over the Zen. Also, it weighs about 2/3 what the Zen weighs... Anybody have any info on the price of the iRiver? I'm also looking at the Muvo^2, but I'm not sure what the price is... I'll have to look that up...
Look at the cost of filling up these HD-based players with legally purchased music, say 20gb of AAC from iTMS (bad example for this player, but anyway). I'm quite sure that some of the biggest purchasers of legal music are also some of the biggest pirates - simply because they have a profound interest for music, but not that kind of money, even if they are willing to pay for music. Rank in order from biggest to smallest offender:
1. Person downloading 20gb of pirated music, 0gb legal.
2. Person downloading 15gb of pirated music, 5gb legal.
3. Person downloading 10gb of pirated music, 0gb legal.
Legally, it's 1-2-3. Morally, I'd disagree with that order. And I doubt #2 is willing to sign any "amnesty", even if he's a good customer of the recording companies. In fact, by any standard I see among my friends, I'd say he'd be a premium customer. Only the RIAA play it blind - they only see what's being pirated, and so they are just as likely to drive him into the ground as the other two.
The RIAA can dream about their magic customer #4, that never pirates anything and purchases everything legally. Judging by friends, family, class mates, co-workers and people I meet on the Internet, they'll be very few. Even old dogs seem to be learning new tricks. Strike down all but those and you'll also strike down the majority of the market. And the market doesn't like being treated like criminals - even if they by the letter of the law are.
Kjella
P.S. Regrading the use of the word criminal, since the US has defined "sharing for getting other works in return" as commercial gain, I think most sharing would fall under criminal statutes, not civil. The difference lies more in evidence, compuer logs don't establish who was in front of the machine. While it's probably enough for a civil case, I doubt it'd hold in a criminal case...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Ogg support is obviously a good thing (tm).
Someone has to say this out loud: nobody * gives a rats behind about Ogg Vorbis.
* By "nobody" I actualy mean that only a very tiny minority of people who listen to music will a) know what it is and b) care enough about it for it to influence his/her purchase decision.
Listening to slashdot folks go on and on in discussion after discussion about it gets a little silly. It's almost as if readers here believe that the iPod would sell 10% more units if only it supported this codec. (This is of course ridiculous.) We sit around and discuss how "the industry" is reacting to Ogg, when in fact it's hard to imagine how it could be less relevant to anyone except the tiny, tiny minority of people who a) use Linux on the desktop and b) are willing and able to shell out for a portable digital music player and c) aren't just going to dual boot windows to do it. (Regarding point b one wonders how 'willing' a lot of these guys are, they way they go on about how they build their own Linux boxes for $0.79 out of junk parts from thier basement Comodore graveyard, but I digress.)
And don't even get me started on the tragically misguided "I won't participate in any music sales scheme that doesn't involve zero compression, zero copy protection" ethos.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
You're obviously in love in with your iPod but you equally obviously haven't tried an iRiver either.
I haven't tried an iPod so in balance to your points here's what I like about iRiver ( I have one with memory rather than a hardrive btw )
1) Device is very solidly built, small and light. It's "tolbleronesque" shape is very nice also. Also the headphones supplied are nice and the sound quality is superb.
2) It's a USB Mass Storage device which means I can copy across music from Linux, Windows or Macs
3) It's navigation and menu system is an absoloute breeze to navigate using the little joystick - basically you can do everything you need to do with one thumb and this joystick almost without thinking about it. It's great.
4) Support from iRiver is great, they are regulary improving the firmware offering users thing like USB compatibility ( whilst retaining the old non USB method for those who prefer it ), constant enhacements to the sound equalizer and now they are offering OGG as well - like they have always promised they would do. In short I think they really care about their customers and want to make the best player they can.
5) There is no DRM at all when used as a USB Mass Storage - you can record songs off the radio ( or through the line in ) and download them to your PC no problems at all.
Essentially if you are looking for a portable music player iRiver does this very well indeed.
iRiver made an announcement a few days ago about what devices past and future will be supported. Most aside from the lowest-model devices (i.e. 100-series) will be supported, but those with only 8Mbit flash will either support MP3/OGG or WMA/MP3, but not both. The newest devices out on the market will have 16Mbit flash, and so should support plenty of formats including Ogg. The one I'm most looking forward to is the iFP-500, their 256M to 1GB (w00t!) solid state player. Ogg support, up to 1GB flash. Very nice.