Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

9 of 323 comments (clear)

  1. Battery life? by NETHED · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I for one, don't want a color screen. I want a battery that lasts me a month. I'll deal with a small, effective, elegant monochrome screen.

    Just my two bits.

    --
    --sig fault--
    1. Re:Battery life? by RazzleFrog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know I thought the same thing about cell phones until I got my Samsung. The color screen is much easier to read in bright sunlight as well as pitch black night. The battery life obviously suffers but I have a charger at work and at home.

      The iRiver says it has a 16 hour life so figure 10-12 hours realistically. Unless you are flying half-way across the globe I think that should get you to and from work.

  2. Um. by eddy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Although it doesn't support .flac files like the Rio Karma, it does support .ogg,

    That's pretty close to a contradiction since we have both Ogg FLAC and Ogg Vorbis. You meant to say it supports Vorbis? Or is it just plain FLAC files it doesn't support, but Ogg FLAC is fine?

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  3. 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.

    1. Re:Why Never An AM Tuner? by vladoman · · Score: 5, Informative

      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)
    2. Re:Why Never An AM Tuner? by iBod · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  4. Re:Why no FLAC? by tuffy · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

    --

    Ita erat quando hic adveni.

  5. My Opinions by elynnia · · Score: 5, Informative

    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~*

  6. Re:For all those dismissive of the iPod's interfac by PeterChenoweth · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.