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."

Comments

Re:Battery life?

[OverlordQ]

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.

Re:Battery life?

[twbecker]

It's not twice as long as the 4G iPod. They can get around 12 hours.

Re:Why no FLAC?

[tuffy]

It seems silly that it doesn't support FLAC, being a device with a large hard drive.

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.

My Opinions

[elynnia]

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~*

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Re:Why Never An AM Tuner?

[vladoman]

Because they all use the TEA5757 tuner chip or similar, this one only has FM capabilities.

Re:Why Never An AM Tuner?

[iBod]

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.

Re:For all those dismissive of the iPod's interfac

[PeterChenoweth]

Anonymous Coward may be an anonymous coward, but he/she speaks the truth. I've had an iHP-120 for about a year, and the "firmware upgrades" have been pitiful or non-existent. The player's hardware is fantastic, the software is the problem. The iHP has several flaws (the shuffle isn't shuffle, files played in a different order than they were copied - but it's always the same order), and iRiver has made several promises over the past 6-9 months that they simply have not met. I will not be buying another iRiver product, I just can't handle a company lying to its customers.

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.

Re:Why Never An AM Tuner?

[Kiryat Malachi]

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.