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iRiver Announces 40G Player & Previews 2004 Line
slavitos writes: "Just as we've finished our discussions of OGG support in iRiver players, the company has announced it will soon release a 40G HD player. According to
this source, the new model will differ slightly from the previous 20G one - for example, the 40G player will be 3 mm thicker and 12 grams heavier. The cost of the device has not yet been determined." While we're on the topic of iRiver, thopo notes: "iRiver presented their new products coming spring 2004, here are pictures from the show, including pictures (and specs) of all new models. Especially noteworthy is the IHP-300 which comes with a 2" color TFT LCD and a very classy design. This thing got 'iPod Killer' written all over it." The page is in Korean, but most of the product descriptions in the pictures are in English.
The 40 GB iHP-140 is described in English on their Northern Europe website. You have to click on the English flag in the upper right corner.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Decoding video requires a lot more horsepower than audio. My Egoman MP3/VCD player will only play VCD when plugged into the wall. RCA jacks take up a lot of room on the board, it's easier to use a minijack -> RCA adapter cable (they're cheap)
Trolling is a art,
Alpine has announced that they will demonstrating at CES the first solution that allows users to connect/control their iPod through their in-car system. They'll be able to view playlist, artists, songs, etc. through the Alpine's receiver buttons. And the connector will also charge the iPod. To get more info, write to ipodready@alpine-usa.com.
http://slushdot.org/mirror/iriver/board.php
Minus all the other crap.
I haven't run into that problem. Usually the partial albums have only the good songs from what I've seen.
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
Most of my mp3's are not itunes files (actually I lied - none of them are) - a lot of them I made myself.
Plus this device just acts like a usb hdd when connected to your mac/pc - if you could figure out how to get your itunes files into mp3 format you're set.
1. Shuffle still isn't random (just all your tracks in a different order - but always the same order)
2. Doesn't support any type of secure files.
3. DB application can't handle OGG or WMA file tags, so you can only search by Artist/Album/Genre if it's an mp3 file.
4. No on-the-fly playlist ability, and very limited playlist ability at all (only when using the Beta firmware that's been out since November).
In fact, AAC doesn't really support DRM either. It's a hack using a special stream entity to mark it as encrypted so the player knows to fetch a decryption key (hidden from the user by the firmware/iTunes)
OGG is a container format that has tons of ways to add in custom markings (including arbitrary attribute strings...) one of those could be used in a similar fashion to mark the bitstream as encrypted.
Plus it already plays unencrypted files (the only kind it DOES support is AAC).
So... not a good reason.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
If it works anything like their cd based mp3 players, it will use the id3 tags if present, and fall back to filenames if not present.
High level organization of files is done through the directory structure.
IE:
root\
--> album1
--> album2
--> my favorites
You can navigate through the directories and see the files in each subdirectory. I haven't noticed a way to see all of the files on the unit regardless of what directory they are in (but I've never really cared either...). You can have the player play all files, or files in just a particular directory. You can also have the player play files randomly on the disc, or randomly in a particular directory.
I think there is also a way to create playlists, but I've never messed with it.
Frontier Labs. There's your answer... although there's no support for Ogg.. they claim there will be at some point. Frontier Labs And here's a place that sells it pretty cheap... Inside Computer
The 20GB player. Here is super-quick review from a professional audio engineer (me).
Pros:
- The output sound is tight, crisp and full-bodied. The level is clean and hot, just the way I like it.
- Plug-N-Play. No drivers, no nothing. Plug the USB cable and it shows up as a HD. Organize files however you like. By ID or standard directory structure.
- The remote has its own tiny LCD dispay. Very cool.
- USB 2.0 file transfer if very fast. I did 12GB while I ate a bowl of cereal.
- Transfer & store any type of file
- Its supports more codecs than I'll ever use.
- OGG support. No DRM
- Digital In and Out!
- Analog In and Out!
- Records to WAV and MP3
- FM Radio!
- Internal Microphone
- External Mic jack (mic included)
- Firmware upgradable
- Quiet and fast
- Its packaged with a real leather case and all the cables and adapters you'll ever need.
Cons:
- The GUI could use some work
- The Joystick can be a pain
- Navigation can be rough
- Issues with Recording time limitations
Its looks like the software faults can and will be upgraded through the firmware.
Overall a great little package. Its not as slick as the iPod. But for less than the 20GB iPod I get a ton of more features.
sorry, here is clickable: http://club.iriver.co.kr/column/view.asp?Page=1&Sr chItem=&SrchString=&idx=370
keep it simple.
I may not have a math degree, but if the low end iRiver is more than the 40 Gig iPod, I really don't understand "cheaper".
Of course, the Swedish price may not hold and may be artificially high at this point, but that's the only info I have to go on to gauge price. The built-in FM tuner is kind of cool. Looks like a freaking gadget hell though. The iPod is designed a lot nicer IMHO.
I see it for $359 by searching on Amazon, I'd say the swedish price is completely goofed at this point.
"OGG" is incorrect. The correct capitalization is "Ogg." More info at the official Vorbis news page and the associated Ogg Traffic:
True story.
I won't give them a break if they're intentionally hiding the good songs on otherwise crap albums
Blame the record company. They decide what makes it onto the store and what doesn't much more than Apple does. In this case, and many others, the particular song is probably missing because the record company knows that it would cut into album sales to have that track available by itself.
Other times, it's because the (or one of the) songwriters hasn't given permission for that kind of distribution.
Other times, it's because the (or one of the) copyright holder of a sample used in the song hasn't given permission of that kind of distribution.
So, there are lots of reasons that certain songs might be missing. But it's extremely doubtful that Apple is doing such a thing intentionally.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
You are a either a troll, or you are serious, but have never done a blind A-B on Ogg, WMA, RealAudio, AAC, MP3, MusePak, etc and haven't heard from anyone that has. Let me inform you of my own experience.
About a year ago I decided to encode my entire CD collection (yes, a bit late to the game!) to my computer. I didn't know which codec to use and heard different things from different people, so I set up my own blind test. I encoded with each of the above codecs at five different quality settings (where this was possible) on some sample material, taking care to get the bit-rates very close to each other for fairness, and then un-encoded them all to wav again, so there could be no doubts.
Then I wrote a script to play every wav file in a given folder (one per bitrate/song part) in a random order, but recording it in a log. This is what I found:
Ogg Vorbis was the best at very-low, low, and medium bitrates, and was equal with MusePak at high bitrates. MusePak was the best at very-high bitrates (~185K), although the difference was marginal.
AAC was very good (second best) at all but very-low bitrates, but sounded a little lifeless (the sheen was removed). BTW: Worked very well with cinematic effects where had a greater clarity - the slight lifenesses that I perceived for musical material.
RealAudio was the second best at very-low bitrates, and had a beautiful, signature, analogue valve sound to it. Highly coloured, but very pleasing to listen to.
WMA pretended to be very good, but used trickery to do it (equalisation and compression), and the result was often painful on the ears (scratchy), and never melodius. This might actually be good with cheap equipment, though I didn't test this.
MP3 was the worst of the bunch. It is actually a very good codec provided that you give it enough bits; it only lost out in each round because it was noticeably inferior to the competition, but is really very good if you give it a bitrate handicap (~70K).
The result of this is that I encoded my entire CD collection with Ogg, but would also strongly reccomend MusePak (very-high bitrates), AAC (cinematic), RealAudio (Internet radio - for the cosy feeling), and MP3 (compatibility, with very high quality if you spend enough bits).
-- Make of that what you will.