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Big Demand for Digital Music Players
An anonymous reader writes "Market research company IDC is predicting a rosy future for MP3 player sales. They predict that by 2008 it will grow into a $58 billion industry - four times bigger than the US record industry. Also in the news, Sony will finally start making a digital music portable that plays MP3s. Their present players only read their proprietary ATRAC3 format, forcing you to transcode any MP3 files you want to play on them."
now that sony will be actual compition, do you think that the ipod/ipod mini will be not in first place anymore? i want a good ipod for $200 without havibg to go to ebay. btw, i doubt it, but first post??
And I own one... It's called a CD/MP3 player and you can get one at any Target, Wal-Mart, etc.
They go for less than $50 and they hold as much space as blank CD-Rs you are willing to buy.
Didn't it go mainstream a few years ago? Napster made it mainstream.
Finally Sony kind of understands what the market wants... I was disappointed with them at first. Having to convert all my MP3's into ATRAC3 is just a pain in the rear. Any chance they can take over Apple's market?
[insert generic slashdot meme]
You watch, in 10 years we'll be trying to get rid of the mp3, but it simply won't vanish ( due to cluelessness, but still ).
Regardless, I'd like a decent sub $100 mp3 player with decent storage. ipods are damn cool, but there is no way I'm dropping that kind of cash on what is essentially a fluff item.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
$58Bn is about $10 for every person in the world icluding babies. By 2008 there will be cooler things to spend your hard earned money on.
I have a Neuros and its far from just an "MP3 Player". My Neuros plays MP3's, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, and even the dreadful WMA files...
I hate when people call it an "MP3 Player".
<shameless plug>
If you haven't looked the Neuros, you don't know what you are missing. It's the perfect player for the geek in you. Recently they have open sourced the Firmware, allowing us hackers to have our way with it.
</shameless plug>
As long as people also remain willing to pay for music to support the music industry. If people fail to support the artists and music production slows down, people will have less need for a place to keep their music.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals."
I predict that sales will grow 5.4 fold. Really, how solid are their figures?
For anyone who is excited or dismayed about this it's worth recalling that McKinsey, who are about the smartest and best consultants in the world made a prediction for the number of cell phones that would be in the world by 2000 in 1990. They were out by a few orders of magnitude. Motorola built the Iridium network on the basis of these figures and similar predictions and took a bath.
Don't get too excited. This is just some press release with a few ads.
This obviously makes sense seeing as mini hard drives are dropping in price so it is becoming reasonable to carry around a large collection of music with you (thus making it better than just carrying around a CD player).
However, I wonder if its at all sustainable. I mean, once you have a 40 gig player, I can't imagine needing much more. Sure, there are a few people who want more, and maybe there is a market for video players, but I think the current line is all I would need for now. Sort of like how CD players have just sort of stagnated. There are no real improvements, they just get cheaper. The only reason to buy a new one after your first is if it breaks. Will there be any real innovation in the mp3 player market?
GMail invites for completed freeipods.com of
LOL, only on Slashdot is that a troll instead of offtopic.
The constant in life is change. Good-bye "cassette tape".
I didn't understand why Sony didn't come out with something that played mp3's in the first place. Did they think people would be on top of replacing huge mp3 collections with their format...I don't think so.
"If it sucks without butter, it still sucks with butter, only creamier." - AC
Sony still doesn't get it:
For the time being, Sony customers will have to be satisfied with MP3 support in flash-based players, which could come as early as this year... The company is also considering expanding MP3 support to hard disk devices, sources told ZDNet France, but no decision has yet been made on that front.
Is it that hard to one unified plan? Why the restrictions on HD-based models. "It's OK to pirate music, provided it's less than 256 MB!"
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
that by 2008, none of the recording companies will allow me to purchase an MP3 in a store.
Why do I have a Sony CD/MP3 player sitting next to me that I purchased a little over a year ago????
Using MP3 must definately drastically reduce the "30 hour" battery life.
And there goes their "13,000 songs" claim.
Was drunk one night, messing around. On a hunch I popped a CD-R containing MP3's into my DVD player (a nice Panasonic). After a couple of seconds, it displayed the directory structure of the disc, and allowed me to select directories and individual tracks.
I'm sure this is not news to most of you, but it was to me (I got my player as a christmas present, as a refurb without the original packaging).
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
December 2003: MP3 player sales for 2003 doubled
February 2004: 7 million MP3 players will be sold in 2004
July 2004: No, 10.8 mln digital music players will be sold in 2004
September 2004: 50 mln by 2008
The first link, however, will tell you that 19% of those who download music online already have an MP3 player. Furthermore, you have a whole bunch of people who use a PDA, their MP3 watch or what not to listen to the music.
I don't think I'll be shelling out for one till it plays mp3/aac/ogg. mmm it'd be nice if Sonys new 1Gig MD system would allow for multi format tunes. Think it only plays ATRAC though, of course. :(
And this relates to the topic how?
http://www.busyweather.com/
About bloody time. Sony's portable music players (even their new hard-drive player) are a joke.
It takes a special kind of asshat to make a portable music player with no MP3 support.
Sony, welcome to 1999!!!
For that matter, wait till somebody gives away free FireWire cards.
40 gigs ought to be good enough for anyone?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Like almost all "analysts", it's about as solid as pea soup.
I worked in the IT department for a company that distributed analyst white papers, and these people were dumb as fucking bricks, according to the people in the company who had to deal with them on a daily basis. Like, "well, I can't figure out how to email this so I'm going to print and fax it to you", dumb.
As IT workers we were continuously astounded by how poor the reports were, making ludicrous predictions and giving blatantly bad advice. As others on slashdot have said- people pay for and buy these reports to justify positions, not to learn how to do something. When I googled names of authors on the papers- some of which dealt with hugely complex corporate IT problems- the authors were fresh out of college, often with a degree that had absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter. Ie- INTERNS, people!
It's like the old "it came into my email box, it must be true" adage, only with a real company with a fancy website and a list of clientele a mile long telling you that "sure, it's perfectly ok to dump water on your computers." Everyone's too concerned about looking stupid to admit they're being had.
Please help metamoderate.
They are a blip in this market. They aren't even competing with Rio let alone Apple.
we will be closer to a decent PDA/Cell Phone/MP3 Player in one device. Multiple gadgets are a pain (and make you look like a Christmas tree). I am pretty certain it would have to be solid state player though. HD won't work well in a combo.
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
What are they going to do, sell you a CD with MP3 files on it?
Or was this a joke that the mods and I didn't pick up on?
I really liked these devices but with no support for mp3 and the stupid check in/checking out of ones own music was too much.
But with mp3 support and ditch that system I'd probably grab one.
Btw, anyone try and get one of these working under linux?
Look at these clowns trackrecord for the Itanium
Help fight continental drift.
I have seen a lot of the in-car CD based mp3 players for around $150 at Fry's, but I have never seen one that supports ogg. I know there is the music keg, but I'm looking for something cheap. Is there anything like that on the market yet?
It sure would be cool if one of these could play from DVD-R media as well.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
I can't wait for the inevitable front page /. story one year from now proclaiming a glut and collapse in the portable MP3 player market.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Wouldn't you hate to be in the boardrooms of the empire music groups now that estimates put digital music as a $58 billion industry? Big Executive: "Why didn't we get in on this music market!!!" Peon: "You said we needed to sue everyone that had anything to do with digital music" Dare I even say piracy breeds inovation? ::rolls eyes:: Look at the markets created from cassett tapes, VCRs, CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, and now digital music is an incredibly booming industry... I sure feel bad for the dinosaurs at the RIAA who decided to go after p2p instead of trying to adapt in a profitable manner...
Sony has a portable 8 Track player?
I know God exists.
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me
Do you really see a major RIAA member like Sony encouraging the use of mp3/no-DRM in digital music?
I wonder when the people who buy such stuff will discover that there are very good music pieces with no copyright or with creativecommons/etc licenses...
who needs copyrighted music nowadays?
Alternatively, a slot loading mini DVD-r/w player would be nice. The mini DVD/CD format is small enough the player would still fint in a pocket, and also the reduction of spinning mass should save batteries.
Lastly, a question... I'm confused my the Sony MiniDisc players. I thought that they supported MP3 now? Is that not true?
Wow, it's about time.. My first MP3 player purchase will be a Sony, as long as it supports Mp3. They always come out with the best looking devices.
Because they naívely believe that people enjoy having to change all of their music to ATRAC3 in order to move it onto a different medium - oh, wait, doesn't everyone have all their music on Minidisc anyway? I know I do.
I'm a Photographer and get MP3 players with compact flash readers and hard drives to save my photos to while at Weddings and the like. So they aren't just for MP3's.
Once they start enforcing DRM in the mp3 players, then the 'demand' for them will drop..
Only the diehards ( and clueless ) will buy them at that point..
Much as the MD market is now.. either you are clueless of the restrictions, or you find a way around them as you are determined to be able to do what you want with your own music, and have it portable.. ( though I do agree lack of marketing on Sony's part hasn't helped much either, most average Joe types don't know what MD is... )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They're banking on selling to the "idiot consumer who doesn't know what they're doing and buys the first thing he hears about" demographic. I think Apple already has that demographic, and many others, covered as far as digital music goes.
Nitpicking, I know, but the Sony CLIE can play MP3s, and I do use mine as a secondary MP3 player (I also have an old-skool Archos Jukebox 6000). So, Sony, as a megacorporation, does support playing MP3s at one remote corner of it. I'm just sayin'.
Sony's Clie' SJ33 plays MP3's and Atrac3.
This should be obvious. To most Slashdot "in bed with Apple" Readers MP3 = iPod
Sony wanted to do MP3 a long time ago, but it was their devision tied to the entertainment industry that FORCED them to use a propritary format...such as ATRAC3.
It's just a legal roadblock and civilwar for sony, not one of ignorance.
Life is not for the lazy.
In order to truly compete in an overwhelming apple market, they needed too. Nobody is going to buy those when they can buy an iPod which DOES play mp3's.
"If it sucks without butter, it still sucks with butter, only creamier." - AC
I finally bought an iPod because I was getting an audible.com account and I could get $100 off an iPod. I bought a new 4g iPod, which I love slightly less than my mother. Where was Sony? Where is my MP3 walkman? Man, they have the money, mind and moxy, why the hell is Apple getting the industry (other than the fact that Jobs has balz = steel and they hired a great marketting firm).
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Personally, I think a lot of the "We need MP3 playback" is just because people are familiar with the name. So what if you have to transcode or reencode the files or original source? Most people I've talked to listen to 128k MP3s. I highly doubt that if you can tolerate MP3 at 128k, you'd have anything to complain about with ATRAC3Plus at 256k. Even with artifacts introduced in the transcode process, the sound would still be fairly close to the original. If you care enough about the absolute most minute details in audio quality, you can rip the CD again. It doesn't take that long anyway. I can rip and encode from CD to ATRAC3Plus at 256k in about a minute a track on my 1.5GHz P4 laptop.
Well the topic is digital music players.. ipod is a digital music player. and i got it for free and i felt like bragging.
neenerneener
He's right. Take your hands off your filthy penis while moderating, michael.
In order to truly compete in an overwhelming apple market, they needed to
Yes, but the fight has been between the consumer electronics division and the content division. Which makes more money. A lot more. That's why they haven't until now.
My suspicion is the only reason they've gone towards mp3s now is that they risk losing mindshare among teens, and Sony hardware will be viewed as antiquated and not worth getting... and the Sony name (aside from in the front of movies or CDs) will become a thing of the past.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
The Aiwa HZ-WS2000
Anyway 1.5gb and smaller and lighter than an Ipod Mini.
lounge around on the blue couch
Well if their MP3 players turn out to be anything like there more recent VCRs then I won't be wasting my money on them.
:-)
I bought a top-of-the-line Sony VHS VCR back in 1991 and it lasted 10 years, giving an exceptional picture and brilliant audio.
The top-of-the-line Sony VHS VCR I bought in 1999 gave nowhere near as good a picture and just died, lasting only half as long as the previous one.
The top-of-the-line Sony VHS VCR I bought in 2000 was even worse in respect to its performance and died back in late 2001 -- lasting less than two years.
The 21" Sony TV I bought back in 1992 is still going strong and gives an excellent picture. The 29" set I bought in 1999 has crapped out twice and the tube is showing pronounced signs of softness. The picture geometry has also gone to hell in a handbasket.
If this trend continues, that Sony MP3 player probably won't make it to the shop doorway before it craps out.
As an electronics tech I took a look at the Sony VCRs and have to say that the standards of design and construction have fallen significantly in the 10 year period from my first to most recent purchase.
I don't buy Sony gear any more -- they used to be a premium brand with excellent quality but now it's actually worse than some of the cheaper stuff on the market. The budget 2-head NEC VCR I bought at the same time as the 2000-model Sony is still going strong.
When it came time to buy a new camcorder, I bought a Panasonic and have been *very* pleased with the results. Even my friends who spent 50% more on a Sony camera are very impressed (and kicking themselves a little
Sony? I don't think so.
... I'd really like it if someone (I don't care who) made a cheap CD player with a couple of MB of flash ROM [or something similar], so people can upload their own decoders for whatever format they wish to use the player with... it'd be insanely successful with the public (and I'll buy it as well), as people could shove on OGG, MPC, MP3Pro, anything they want to use, they just port it [with instructions and maybe a dev kit given by the manufacturer, of course]. Oh, and battery life. No huge backlit battery-consuming LCDs with uber displays. I've got a Panasonic SL-SX420. The LCD has cracked partly. Not like I needed it anyway. All I need to see is what track number it is, and that's it. Plus, in winter, say you're walking to school. The liquid in the LCD takes more energy to refresh as minutes/tracks change on the display), consuming your battery. The only useful features would be a small graphical equalizer, volume up/down, lock, play, stop, next, and back. That's all I need. Yes, I realize it's only my view, and someone else might have a completely different view. But then again, I'm just saying what I'd like introduced to the market. An ultra-slim CD player, with insanely low battery usage, the basic controls, a nice EQ, and an USB port so we can flash our decoders on. All for less than CAN$150 :)
Ahh, dreams...
MP3 PLAYER MP3 PLAYER MP3 PLAYER MP3 PLAYER!! MP3 PLAYER !!
-Letter
Probably because they realized that technology and software can be too easily circumvented for any media to remain safe from unsanctioned sharing of music. Since they are not strictly an electronics company anymore, it's probably a can of worms they didn't even want to come close to opening, especially given how easy it is for MP3 to be copied and transfered.
Of course, they could have easily looked at it from the other angle and locked in their customer base (and whatever DRM they wanted) from the ground floor if they had tackled the issue aggressively from the beginning. It is rather ironic that everybody else is now doing the the very thing they did with the CD player. They went from an agrressive cutting edge technology seeker (and still are in some areas) to an overly cautious monolithic company who thinks they have too much to protect when it comes to radical technology. In this case, they were the latter and it cost them. Sony could have easily been the iPod with their reputation for innovation and design.
Speaking of digital MP3 players, feel free to bid on my 256mb Flash MP3 Player w/FM tuner and voice recorder! ^_^
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Minidisc had the potential to be a huge cash cow for Sony, but for every step they took forward, they took two steps back in the name of "Rights Management." Had they initially released the format without DRM restrictions, you'd have MD data readers in a huge section of the home-computer market, and they'd have beaten the whole ~1GB portable-storage market before it started.
ATRAC sounds great, but since music MDs and data MDs are two completely different (and incompatible) things, the whole idea is crippled. If that barrier didn't exist, there'd be no market for the flash-players out there, and Sony would be sitting on top of the world. Same goes for the appalling mess that they made of NetMD. If MD portables acted as simple mass-storage devices, they'd be huge (and in time, cheap), and folks wouldn't see a need for a HDD-based mp3 player. It's a wonderful format for live recording, but when you're done, how the heck do you get it uploaded to a PC? You just don't. I still have a great Sharp unit that I use for recording, but it's a pain to have to play it into the line-in jack of my PC in realtime just to edit and store the thing.
If only they had done it right...
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
Get a Creative Jukebox Zen Xtra (30gigs, $199 at frys). Bigger (more gigs) than an Ipod, better sound quality, and about half the price. The only thing the Ipod has is a slightly better interface (slightly) and is a status symbol.
The Creative has a nice browser feature once you install the drivers on your computer too. I've been very happy with mine.
Sony supports MP3 on its CD products, but not in its best digital products which is what most people think of when it comes to MP3/music players.
The real story here is shift in business strategy. Sony was the king of portable music after the introduction of the Walkman, but has seen its share slip. It seems that someone at Sony has realized that using a closed, proprietary standard and forcing customers to listen to their music collections how Sony wants them to quickly turns them into ex-customers.
That is big news for Sony. The Sony PSP is coming and Sony has decided to introduce yet another proprietary standard: the Universal Media Disc, which will be hardly universal if Sony is the only one that uses it.
Original post follows:
There are other reasons to favor the Neuros over the iPod, but those are the big ones.
But, as for everything, personal preferences play a huge role in your selection of a personal music device (PMD).
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Now if they just supported more codecs/formats (such as ogg).
Cool, if someone incorporates a Speex decoder, I'll buy one.
Storage is always useful, and more is better.
Maybe you can only play mp3s when the device is used by itself. But it isn't useful unless it's connected to other equuipment at least part of the time. That's when the universal storage aspect kicks in.
Imagine that you are on vacation. Wouldn't it be nice to move pictures from your camera to your iPod? How about plugging it into the TV in your hotel room and watching movies that you chose? And so forth.
It may only play music, but it can store anything.
It continues to be interesting to see who adapts and benefits from the inevitable shifts.
RIAA wanted to stay with retail shrink wrapped CDs (profitable and their advantage). Users became empowered with alternative choices (ripping, P2P, portable divices). Apple said a portable player and fee music download was possible (and now leads the industry on both). Sony thought their 1990's proprietary tricks would still work (what were they thinking?? they have no share yet).
Regardless of the forecast by 2008 it will be big and (fee) downloads will be very viable and may out sell traditional music CDs.
The classic paradigm shift rules apply - risk takers and early adopters of new technology and processes will win. The laggards (read RIAA and Sony!) will loose. Who knows what it will be like in 2008 but there will be lots of portable players and a big (fee) download market.
Apple will benefit from their insights and I doubt Sony will be in the top 5.
Life (and business) goes on.
P.S.
The Sony article says "... Sony had found that users of its flash memory music players are not happy with the company's current system" -- me thinks "not happy with" is really "not buying" the non MP3 devices -- hello Sony, is this really a surprise?
According to the Fortune 500 list, M$ and Apple are resp. :
46. Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash., 47, $32.187
301. Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, Calif., 300, $6.207
billon dollar businesses. - Now according to Steve Jobs himself (from WWDC2004) the ipod's have a +50% market share (mesured by units!).
- - -
Ok, now let's do some *simple* math! :).
$58 Billions * 0.50+ = $APPLE.MP3.PROFITS+
${APPLE.MP3.PROFITS}+ + 6.207 = $35.207+ Billions
- - -
say, if M$ has to compete with the 'Linux Desktop' for markes share(s), which *let's assume will* hamper them from further increasing *much* ... APPLE would by 2008 at least catch up to them ... simply by not competing for the 'Desktop' :-)
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
I mean, I threw out my Atrac player in the '70s when it kept skipping tracks every time I went over a bump.
(Ba-dum, dum!)
However the iPod is also significantly smaller. Put them side by side.
From the register:
The Zen is more for geeks who like to count and compare features, and the iPod is more for people who don't like to have full pockets or purses. No offence, this is just an observation.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
sony made mp3 players before in the 1998 1999 craze of silly ones that used a memory stick.
I had a MDLP player a while ago (got stolen), so when I first saw the Net MD, I thought I was in love. Then I found out about Sony's proprietary format (which is not mentioned ANYWHERE on the Net MD packaging at the time, or in their promotional materials at Target or Circuit City). That killed that infatuation, before it was ever consummated.
It can take a minute per track to convert? When you're talking about dozens of tracks per disc, that's getting to be a pretty substantial amount of time. It takes me about a minute or two to burn an MP3 CD. No contest.
I wonder, is there any example, EVER, or a company trying to restrict/control the use of a device, standard, or format that did not have any significant impact on that items usefulness or convenience? Ever?
The new solid state and had drive players are the subject of this article, as far as the author is concerned.
The author would have written a BETTER article if he considered that a lot of people were at first interested in CD players that could also play MP3's. Until recently, they offered the best value in terms of storage space and ability to play digital music files that are obtainable over the internet. They should not be glossed over, because surely companies were able to make great profits off of them.
Did you catch that? I already have everything ripped to MP3. Everyone I know has their music in MP3 format. I bought a RIO Karma and decided to convert everything to Ogg Vorbis, and it was a NIGHTMARE - Even when it was all batched. Then my Karma broke into pieces, and I went back to my IPod. I'm glad I kept my MP3s - They sound good enough for any of these players. Sure, if I want to stream these at home, I may invest in a 200GB drive and rip them into FLAC format - But till then, I cant distinguish the difference of a properly ripped song using LAME encoded MP3s while driving in my car with the windows down, or biking through the woods, or jogging down the road.
MP3 has been defined as the standard by all of us. Companies need to realise this or just stay out of the market and miss out on a great cash flow. This proprietary DRM crap needs to go away - forever.
My brother has one of these (IIRC, a Creative Zen Jukebox Xtra Zen or something), with Linux / Debian. No patching was required.
I think he uses it uses Gnomad2 , which interfaces to Libnjb, to get files across.
I haven't personally used the software, but it doesn't appear to be lacking anything.
*Ahem*
AAC, proprietary? Hardly. It's Fraunhofer's next-gen codec that was supposed to supplant MP3, since (theoretically) it has superior audio quality to MP3. The only one to glom onto AAC seriously is Apple, however.
In my own personal use, I can't tell the difference between an AAC file encoded at 128 kbps and the same song encoded in MP3 at 192 kbps. iTunes was used for encoding both files, and they were played back on a variety of speakers. Long story short, now I only use AAC for encoding. And since I have an iPod (and don't run Linux often), compatibility isn't an issue.
(And before you ask, yes, I could tell the difference between the 128 kbps and 192 kbps MP3s of the same song.)
Want a gmail account? I have five to give away and no friends. No joke. E-mail me, I won't check back here at Slashdot to see if someone wants one. Thnx!!
Unique.
And we might have a more realistic amount of cash being spent on music players.
They predict that by 2008 it will grow.... four times bigger than the US record industry.
Is it a hint that the US record industry would be so small in the future?
*whistles*
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
I guess phonographs finally went out of style. Sob.
I have been looking at portable players, and it seems the two most popular/feature packed are the iPod and the Creative Labs models - both have 40g+ models. I'm curious if there's DRM built into them so that some mp3s from some sources may not play?
I've heard rumors that with the iPod you can only connect it to one PC. You cannot transfer mp3s using the units between PCs.
Any thoughts on what the best portable mp3 player is right now?
the first one was a riovolt mp3/cd player. i got an ipod, then i got another ipod. just recently, i got one of those sandisk cruzer micro mp3 companion things, which is sweet. and i just bought a mini mp3/cd player on ebay... i also think i might get an ipod mini sometime next year...
I use the driver solely because on the my computer window I now have an option to open the jukebox. It opens it as a file system, but if I go to the music directory, it then opens a custom window for doing stuff with the files (And is drag and drop, real easy to use). If I go to the data side, it just acts like a hard drive.
While you are replying to comments - can you tell me how it gets 'better sound quality' than the iPod?
:)
One could take arguments like this at face value if we were talking about casette tape recorder vs a (creatively named) Creative Jukebox; But when you start comparing devices that are essentially the same, and play essentially the same media, you'll have to provide something to back that up.
Does the Creative use Dolby C noise reduction or something!?
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Free iPod == selling your soul
...and any other planet? Ack!
Nothing is free. And I actually own an iPod. (10GB 2nd Gen) (joy!)
I checked out one of those links for a "free" iPod. Wait, you want my first born child? My Social Scurity number? The names of everyone I know on this planet?
It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
Vurtualy any PC with a sound card or Macs
can play MP3's just fine. I have an old
Pentium 166 with a SoundBlaster 16 that I use
for this purpose.
I had a couple of DVD players from 1997 that
predate the MP3 craze (hell, CD-R drives were
a rare thing to have back then.)
When I went to a used video game shop that also
does repairs, I saw a bunch of disassembled PS2
consoles on the floor. I got a look at the innards as well as being able to see how thick the
casing was, and I was stunned at how cheaply built
it looked. My old Super NES, on the other hand was
built like a tank, thick plastic and everything,
and looked like it could take the abuse a 5
year old could give it. I don't feel the same for
the PS2
Wasn't Sony the box of genius that made the marketing decisions that led to the utter dominance of the Sony Betamax videotape format some years ago?
Yeah, but they also had that proprietary PS/PS2 that didn't do too badly. I just can't believe how long they held on to ATRAC however (not to mention all that check in/out DRM crap).
Sony's philosophy is to tie you in to an integrated suite of media/formats (e.g. memory stick on their cameras, music players, VAIO computers) so that a Sony VAIO will work easily with a Sony camera, etc. etc.
In the first place? Hey, I was using minidiscs in 199fucking TWO, where the fuck were the MP3 players back then!? Do people think I'm going to replace my huge collection of MDs with your format? I don't think so.
It's the price to pay to be a real technogeek, not a Johnny-come-lately 'me too' late adopter.
Hey, I was using minidiscs in 199fucking TWO, where the fuck were the MP3 players back then!? Do people think I'm going to replace my huge collection of MDs with your format? I don't think so.
It's the price to pay to be a real technogeek, not a Johnny-come-lately 'me too' late adopter.
These POS MP3 players force you to use a MusicMatch plug-in to transcode from MP3 to MPY, just in case you'd want to transfer songs to another PC.
To add insult to injury, it play WMA files WITHOUT MODIFICATION!.
They could easily fix that since the toy loads its OS from memory storage area.
Moral: Don't buy MP3 Player from companies that own Music Labels (read: part of the RIAA cartel). (I got this as a gift)
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
To be able to tell the difference you would need some serious headphones on you where ever you went. Which kind of limits the portability.
:)
Then there's also the question of battery life with huge files. The harddrive would have to spin almost continuously with the buffer designed for compressed files.
With the ever increasing bandwidth you're probably going to be using a wi-fi enabled mobile to listen to all your music when you're not at home. You could store it on your personal media server lossless and then downsample and stream.
Ahhh, convergence
Funny comparo of an iPod vs. cassette tape: here...
You would be surprised to find out how good an iPod (or any of the better competing models) can be if you use lossless codecs like FLAC or Apple's ALAC.
These codecs work like ZIP, no loss of quality or detail unlike MP3, and if you listen to subtle music (e.g. classical or jazz) in a not too noisy environment, it will make a big difference.
I am in the process of re-ripping my classical CD collection to ALAC, and once I am done, I won't have to touch a silver disc again - my G5 streams CD audio to my AV amplifier via Toslink optical fiber digital audio, and on the go, I have an iPod 15GB (3rd gen), which can store roughly 50CD's worth of lossless audio.