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iRiver H320 (Almost) Hits The Market

Posted by timothy on from the looks-sweet dept.

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."

4 of 323 comments (clear)

  1. US release? by Billy69 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm a bit confused by this. 2 weeks ago I went to my local branch of Richer Sounds and was offered one of these when I asked for an iHP140. The showed me it, I prodded it a bit. So, does this 'taking advance orders' thing apply only to the US release?

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  2. Why Never An AM Tuner? by jetkust · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can you radio experts help me out on this one? Why do mp3 players never have an AM tuner? Always FM only, but most talk radio comes in AM, it seems only natural that they would include this. What's the holdup.

  3. AM is essentially deprecated in the US market by sczimme · · Score: 4, Interesting


    When radio first became popular, I believe all stations were AM. When FM technology gained ground and passed AM, the AM market began to decrease. Currently talk radio is the primary reason for using AM, but since a lot of programs are available on AM and FM stations (often the AM will have an FM counterpart) there is a relatively small demand for AM these days. Adding parts/manufacturing expense - thus increasing the cost of the final product - to support AM is seen as a losing proposition (low to negative ROI for the PHBs in the audience).

    I like AM. The signals propagate much further than FM, and late at night one can pull in AM stations from hundreds of miles away. However (for me) this is an amusing sidebar: the [lack of] support for AM wouldn't be a dealbreaker in the MP3 player purchase decisionmaking process.

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  4. microphone input by StripedCow · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When are these portable players/recorders going to include a decent (high-quality) microphone input. I mean, as opposed to offering some cheap 'voice-recorder' option. It would be really nice if I could record concerts, and the like, with near-original sound-quality. Until now, this seems only possible with a Sony MiniDisc.

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