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iRiver H320 (Almost) Hits The Market
skyshock21 writes "iRiver appears to now be taking pre-orders for their H320 hard drive MP3 player. This is the one with the color screen that was featured on Slashdot a while back. Although it doesn't support .flac files like the Rio Karma, it does support .ogg, in addition to the usual file formats (mp3, .wmv, .asf, .wav) and sports a nifty color screen. There is also a review posted on CNET."
According to the CNET review it get's 16 hours of playback. Which is over twice that of the iPod. That's twice as long with a color screen then the iPod with your 'monocrome' screen.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I've have one of these for about 3/4 months now, living in Ireland. Had the IHP140 which was cool. Better batt life on this one, and I got a batt. pack that is take any 4xAA batterys. 28:06:42:12 Meow
It's not twice as long as the 4G iPod. They can get around 12 hours.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
Well, the previous models' batteries can be replaced with a TORX screwdriver, so no reason why the newer should be any different.
FLAC would be nice (and easy to add, since decoding it is all cheap integer ops), but the bitrate of the files is so high that the device would need to keep its hard drive spinning the whole time in order to play them - and that'd kill its battery life.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I personally got an E340 (40GB, same type) a few weeks back, and - being a 2G iPod owner I have a few comments about the good and the bad: The good: Recording features (internal/external mic, line-in), 40GB, file browser, FM radio, connection to USB Mass Storage devices directly, and -line out-. The bad: Here's where the Apple really beats the iRiver - the buttons make scrolling through a big list of songs/artists/albums slow, very limited settings for EQ, no option to play groups such as -all songs by Artist- (The iRiver, although comes with a -rather bad- databasing application, organises songs internally through the filetree), no LCD Remote (which is standard on the H100 series), no on-the-go playlists, and the LCD turns itself off after 20 seconds (can be changed) to save the battery. Having said that, the E300 series is one of the best MP3 players out there, but if you want ease of use and everything to work together I'd recommend the iPod...if you're a feature-hungry music geek (like me) then the E300 series, IMO, is for you. *~Aly~*
When I was looking for a 40GB player (yes, my music collection plus use as a portable HDD necessitates 40GB for me), I could find quite a few local places that had the iHP-120, but no one who had the iHP-140. Heck, it was even a pain finding any online store in Canada that had it.
I ended up buying an iPod since I could have it in my hands right when I purchased it, get a student discount and not have to pay any shipping.
Especially with the Archos mini400 out now. Saw one today and I instantly fell in love. The thing is a geek's dream come true. My credit card is getting quite a workout.
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Because they all use the TEA5757 tuner chip or similar, this one only has FM capabilities.
(appended to the end of comments I post, 120 chars)
The H140 comes with an external mic input (and an external mic) as well as its internal mic.
Now I'm not the biggest audiophile in the world, but the external mic input with a decent mic attached has given me very good sound quality. People have done pretty good bootlegs with it, player in pocket & mic in hand.
As a current iRiver H140 owner, I offer a warning to anyone thinking of buying one of their products - make sure you are happy with their specifications 'as is'!
Although the players are fantastic, and I wouldn't swap mine for the world, iRiver have developed a reputation for misleading customers about firmware. I have personally been waiting for "on-the-fly" playlist creation to be added to the player since I bought it. They promised it in April, then late August... In mid-September the firmware finally came out - without over 90% of the promised features. (yes, including on the fly ) I've heard similar stories from users of other iRiver players.
Don't get me wrong, the players are great, but make sure you know that what you're buying is what you want - and don't buy based on a feature "coming soon" via a firmware upgrade!
Not exactly sure, but possibly: 1) A built-in AM antenna (ferrite rod type) is too bulky to fit inside the case. With FM you can use the headphone cord as an antenna. 2) The noise generated by the clock signals of the player's circuitry would affect AM reception too much. FM is generally broadcast on higher frequencies than AM and stands up better to interference.
I think the main purpose of the AM tuner would be to achieve Tivo-like functionality on a radio. If you listen to AM talk radio, you would know that there is about 50% content and 50% commercials. To me, this is not an acceptable compensation for my time, therefore I will not listen to talk radio for any prolonged period of time. But if I could Tivo the radio (for a reasonable cost) I would definitely listen to AM more.
Here is an AM Tivo-like product, but it is $150. The sad thing is that it is probably 80% redundant (except for the AM tuner) with other MP3 players that can record from FM. I don't want a 2nd mp3 unit though. Why can't I pay $50 extra for a nice mp3 player that has the functionality I want?
It's not the Hard Drive manufacturers that need to stop the practice, it's all the users who dont know what a GB is.
20 GB = 20 * 10^9 Bytes = 20,000,000,000 Bytes
20 GiB = 20 * 2^30 Bytes = 21,474,836,480 Bytes
20 GB = 18.5 GiB.
bar = (foo * 10^9)/1073741824
Where foo is the Metric GB and bar is the Binary GiB.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Don't believe me? http://www.iriver.com/community/notice_view.asp?pa ge=&idx=31&mode=&strque=&field=1
They admit the problems and plan a fix. Never happens. Appology note posted says that they're still working on it, with no date in sight.
Sometime later they post this... http://www.iriver.com/company/news_view.asp?idx=37 3
and there is much rejoicing at such a comprehensive list of both defect fixes and user complaints/suggestions.
And they don't make this date either, with no explanation ("Late July/Early August" != September)
Sometime later, http://www.iriver.com/support/download_view.asp?id x=609&page=2&p_name=&word=&categor y=
finally appears. But compare it's feature set with what was promised. A couple of things were fixed, but gapless playback isn't gapless, it just shortens the time between songs. With all the other mp3 players, gapless playback means that one song fades into the next. Shuffle still isn't shuffle.
No, I will not be doing business with iRiver anymore.
Here's a link to Archos Gmini 400. The specs say it works for both PC and Macs. The Archos AV 400 and Gmini 220 look pretty interesting too. The AV 400 looks like it's supposed to be a Portable Media Center for Windows XP Media Center Edition, but it isn't - it doesn't need a computer to record from television. I never heard of these products up until this point, and I think they look like serious competition for the iPod, even for Mac users.
I don't see why they don't just add stylii to these things so they can also be PDAs. Surely they can function as PDAs if you can install software like games on them. If they did so, these things could compete with PalmPilots, and they already look like they are already good competition for the iPod, Portable Media Centers, GameBoys, and Portable Playstations.
2 is wrong.
AM is more subject to interference than FM due to the modulation method used, not due to the frequency. AM at 88-107 MHz is susceptible to interference just like AM at 560-1600 kHz. AM carries its information in the amplitude of the signal; FM carries it in the instantaneous frequency. Noise is (generally treated as) additive in amplitude, meaning that in AM noise adds directly to the message, while in FM noise only indirectly affects the message via how it changes the instantaneous frequency. In addition, in FM interference is inversely proportional to carrier amplitude, while in AM it is independent.
The analysis to prove it is pretty complex, but basically - angle-modulation methods (PM and FM) have higher noise immunity by design than amplitude modulation; the cost is they require greater bandwidth. It has very little to do with the frequency they run at.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
can I just plug an USB compactflash card reader to it and transfer the pictures?
Come to think of it, any other player that does support that? I don't need a fancy color screen, just the storage capability.
Belkin makes a Media Reader for the iPod that allows you to transfer images onto an iPod.
Funny you should ask that, since all of the iRiver iHP/H Series players have built-in mic, (amplified) microphone input and line-in, as well as (IIRC) S/PDIF in and out, and has had this for years.
If you need really high quality, just get an amplified mic or external amplifier, or build your own.
Check your facts.
:wq!
then I might be interested in any of iRiver's new models.
.REC before copying them into the MP3/ directory on their flash players -- they play fine, but you can also copy them back out if need be).
A warning to everyone: their flash players are decent, but intentionally cripple their UMS firmware to limit MP3 recording to lower bitrate (well below 128kbps/44.1kHz -- I don't have my player here right now).
The regular firmware requires their special iRiver Manager program, which tries to prevent MP3 and WAV files being copied back off the device. (Hint: rename your files to
iRiver has always given a totally lame-ass explanation that UMS functionality somehow prevents high-bitrate encoding. Tell me how the USB interface code has *anything* to do with the audio signal path or the A/D convertors used for recording.
And, as others have said, they promise to ugrade their firmware but it always gets pushed back. Nice players if you like the features they offer at time of purchase -- but don't buy one if you are waiting for one of their 'real soon now' promises.
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
But then, after I bought the device, they merely posted an apology when they failed to release a firmware on their first deadline date. And then, silence. For months. You can go check out their online forums and you'll see that they are positively filled with irate customers screaming for iRiver to get its act together and release the updates it promised, but as far as anyone can tell nobody from iRiver even reads the forums.
This was a real disappointment, because in the past I owned an iRiver CD-based MP3 player and their firmware updates were regular, timely, and added all kinds of valuable features, from extended battery life to extra anti-skip protection, etc. It seems clear that iRiver's focus is now on pumping out new products (such as the H320, the market for which isn't entirely clear) rather than satisfying past customers. A real shame.
Right now, the H-series from iRiver is still missing:
- Gapless playback
- On-the-fly playlists
- A proper shuffle feature (the current one is not particularly random)
- Level indicators for the record function
I'm sure other people can point to other bugs and missing features that had been promised earlier.Breakfast served all day!