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Olympus Preps MP3 Player With Cam & Color Display
igrp writes "Japan-based electronics manufacturer Olympus just announced their plans to enter the HD-based MP3 player market currenly dominated by Apple's iPod. What makes this stand out from all the other 'iPod killers' are their players' specs. Their top-of-the-line 'MR-500i' model sports a 1,22 MP camera, a 3.7" color touch screen VGA display with a slick-looking red backlight, JPEG support and according to this German newssite weighs in with a battery life of 8 hours. No word on prices and availability in the U.S. yet."
Useful for listening to tunes in the darkroom...
Worst BBC News Stories
So you can take a picture of yourself listening to music? I've never looked at my digital camera and thought "gee, I wish I could plug my headphones into that!".
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
but can i use it to record video, check my email, read ebooks, have it read me ebooks, play ogg, play flac, read websites, check my stocks, does it have a virus scanner?
i'm still looking for that all-in-one device that is as small as an ipod/cell phone/digital cam
This product is going to be either hit or miss. The camera is only 1.2 mp, which isn't exactly fantastic. Let's hope that the music quality and features don't suck.
For the most part, I've found that separate devices for separate functions tend to be cheaper, smaller, and more effective. Imagine if you had to haul along your laptop, camera, and electric toothbrush if all you wanted to do was listen to some music.
No ogg vorbis support :( I'm disappointed...
"It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad."
I mean really, I was always waiting for the iPod photo, I probably would have bought one instead of my mini. Are you telling me you never had your iPod with you and said, wish I could get that on film? if Apple could get a 2MP camera onto the end of an iPod, throw in a colour display, and keep it simple they would sell very well. We all know it... least... we assume they would. Keeping in mind I said if Apple could do it, not if they just stuck one on the end, we have to keep in mind the fact that Apple kicks butt with design and thus it would actually be useful. I imagine an iPod sized device with a micro drive ala the mini and a 2MP camera would be a really good paring. That said iPhoto if it was ported to the PC would most likely be less feature rich, they'd probably sooner bundle some basic software with it.
1. Find hot girl
2. Ask hot girl to listen to song
3. Take picture of hot girl's boobies while she listens to music
4. Profit!
that's funny. i just bought mine yesterday and i love it!
that would be this
i don't see frontpage posts about it though, perhaps they didnt pay the right people
Ah, the greatest electrical engineering principle of them all:
Low on features? Install a shitty camera.
On ANYTHING.
[insert witty sig here]
Thats all and good but can you listen to Vertigo by u2? Didn't think so!
Now how is your Japanese?!?
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
It makes less sense than a coffee mill in your gun stock.
Oh, well, I suppose it doesn't hurt the battery life much, if they can still claim 8 hours.
See what I've been reading.
This is on cnet.. has a bit of info about availability, etc. http://reviews.cnet.com/Olympus_M_robe_MR_500i__20 GB_/4505-6490_7-31149052-2.html?tag=tab
249 for the 100i
. ht ml
499 for the 500i
http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/1097689832
Comsidering this is from Olympus, I see this more as adding an MP3 player and hard drive to a digital camera...
Now I can have a digital camera in my cell phone, PDA, digital music player, underwear, toast, milk carton, and pencil.
We get the point, CCDs are cheap and small now. Isn't technology grand. Now stop shoving shit into places they shouldn't be.
Sure, you don't have to buy them all, and you can go for a model without a camera, but it seems that every 'high-end' gizmo that comes out has to have a camera onboard to sell, while at least for me, in none of these cases the camera is a reason to buy one.
Jan
MP3 player + camera + color display. I think iRiver already did that.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I'd say this is the closest to an iPod killer I've seen so far. It's not locked into WMA but can play them if you have DRMed WMAs.
Style is the killer part here... this thing just looks great. It easily competes with iPod on style... as llong as the UI is as easy to use as it looks...
my 0.02
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
There are a lot of things Apple probably should do with the iPod. It's overpriced (as compared to the rest of the market), won't play formats it could (Ogg is the obvious one), is missing optical ports and any inputs (thought it was for audiophiles...), lacks the basic feature of an FM reciever/transmitter, no longer/doesn't come in the largest and smallest sizes, etc. They even block the transfer of music with iTunes... They've left these simple additions that most other players sport to third party addons, which add expense and bulk to the player (and cannot be used simultaneously). It seems like they're going out of their way not to change anything, even when everyone else has. Certainly it's not hurting them, but it's unfortunate for the consumer.
This poor record regarding innovation/adoption predicts that they will not be adding cameras anytime soon.
It has yet to be manufactured.
Me +5 Informative
You -1 Troll
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,53123,00 .asp
Chris Williams clw7500nc@gmail.com
The problem with sticking a digital camera on another consumer device (like a cell-phone or PDA or, in this case, a digital music player) is that you have to make the optics very small and fixed focus. Which means you'll never be able to get very good pictures out of it.
Did anyone else have their brain spontaneously go into Christopher Lowell mode when reading that press release?
With phrases like "The m:robe brand derives its name from the fact that m:robe products can be carried anywhere, anytime, allowing users to 'robe' themselves in their favorite music wherever they go." and "Their white signature color reflects the timeless beauty of white porcelainware, which, rather than making a strong style statement of its own, tends to draw attention to the beauty of the flowers or foods that it contains. In the same way, m:robe products are designed to be like 'white porcelain vessels' that enhance the beauty of the images and music they hold."
The fact the iPod is white is obviously a complete coincidence!
From press release: The information contained in this news release applies only to the Japanese market. /me packs his bags and heads for the airport...
Small disclaimer on the Olympus website:
The information contained in this news release applies only to the Japanese market.
This will probably go over big in Japan. CNET has an article about how gadget-hungry they are there.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
forget the shitty camera, what's the point of this? I don't buy the "cool looking" coment; I want my color displays to have white backlighting, not red. Why have a color display if the backlight is red?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Smaller, cheaper
a 1.22 mp camera and a VGA screen don't kill the iPod, that is not what the iPod is for.
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
Until someone can come up with something equivalent of Click Wheel... Ipod has the best UI and it shows. When I'm running around with an MP3 player, I don't have time to use stylus to tap on the touchscreen nor do I have the patience to marvel at the color VGA screen in its full glory... just let me play music quickly and easily...
http://www.up0.com/
>
Good thing all other Apple products are so reasonably priced!
That should be modded Insightful. I wish I had mod points...:(
..that mp3 players are also about style. Frankly this is the first mp3 player that I think has some level neatness, coolness and style to it to compete with ipod. Hope the usage is not clumsy.
Since every piece of electronic equipment i own is soon to have a shitty digital camera on it, can I combine them all and get like, one good digital camera somehow?
in bed.
Rhymes with pilldough
I must genuinely be the only person on the planet who doesn't wander around going "Hey, wish I could get a photo of that". I carry a digital camera (a very small digital camera, I might add) to parties and events, and even then don't take that many photos, and it's not unusual for me not to take any.
considering how xD hasn't seen the popularity increase as the CF or the SD cards, shouldn't olympus make an conscious effort in trying to include that capability in their products? (sort of like sony putting in memorystick slots in everything they make - laptop, tv, camera, pda...)
i realize it's not that important to have an xD expansion slot when you got a large HD, but still...
Adding additional feature to a good product would be a good idea, which is what Apple is doing to the iPod now. Making it great at one thing, then slowly improve it.. Trying to stuff a camera, mp3 player and digital picture viewer together isn't going to threaten the stronghold iPod have. Unless it does both of them better then the iPod does. And with a 1.3mp camera.. don't think it will do much.
On the features page it says it has a high-capacity 20 Gb hard drive. Is this like Intel when they changed the name of their processors no non-techy people can tell the performance? If it had a 40 Gb hard drive would it be super high capacity?
Troll? Are you out of your mind? It's a joke. Laugh.
if apple was once the dominating mp3 player but now on the decline, then your claim that apple is being stupidly stagnant holds water. however, they have been and still are dominating the mp3 player market...
More like a digital camera that can play MP3s.
A device that has more features that are unrelated to MP3 playing than the playing itself should exclude the device from the MP3-player group.
They should call it a multimedia device or some other buzzword so it isn't confused with an actual MP3 player.
Though I tend to agree with your specialized devices work better theory, I think it only works at the high-end/professional side of things. Once they figure out how to cram a decent digital camera into a palm pilot, I'll be one of the first to get my all in one palm/cellphone/ogg player/camera/browser/etc.
Why doesn't palm advertise their products as having MP3 playing capabilities?
My Rio Karma still trounces everything else, if for no other reason than the fact that it plays tracks back without the annoying gaps that every other player out there puts in. It's even smart enough to eliminate the tiny gaps that the mp3 format includes by default.
Show me any other player that can do gapless playback, and I'm there. Until then, I won't consider any DAP that doesn't play back music the way it was recorded.
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
For the sake of fairness, every time Slashdot has an article about Linux or OS X, the article brief should be forced to include either the line "in a field currently dominated by Microsoft Windows XP," a desciption as a "Windows Killer," or preferably both.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
What is the maximum data rate it supports for JPEG playback, since most of my JPEGs are recorded at 320 kp/s (kilopixels/second.) I know that some JPEG players can't play back images that are recorded that quickly.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Better, cooler
A smaller or cheaper device doesn't kill the iPod because the iPod isn't successful because it's small and cheap.
GPL Deconstructed
I guess you missed the recent slashdot post + discussion about having to smack the Rio Karma hard on a table every now and again to keep it going?
As I said, Apple isn't making poor business decisions, it's just unfortunate for the consumer that they leave out features. I also said the the iPod was overpriced *as compared to the rest of the market*... The average price of a player is much lower than that of the iPod. It's not a personal feeling that $300 (for the smallest model) is quite high, there are only a few other players that expensive. Most of the 20GB models from Creative, Archos, DI, Rio, Dell, Phillips, etc. are closer to $200. Just look at a relatively accurate list from Reseller Ratings, that's how it is.
Note, I'm not sure whether the MR-100 is smaller or cheaper than the iPod. It is however the smaller+cheaper of the two Olympus models.
What am I supposed to do with these images? 1.2Mp today is like including 8 track functionality or minidisc digital input on a stereo system . . .
I think I'd rather pay less and have a smaller device that didn't have substandard features included . . .
It will be interesting to see how they will be marketed once this happens. Is it a camera with an mp3 player or vice versa?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I looked at everything in the market trying to avoid buying an ipod and saving, ultimately, some 70 euros. Know what? It's a bargain at twice as much...
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
"mRobe"? What? Why "mRobe"? Of all the suffixes for the letter 'm' they picked "robe"?
Was "iLube" taken or something?
So is there that much of an advantage to using this for you shitty integrated needs?
Abe: Oh everything is stolen nowadays. Why the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached.
music lover since 1969
Okay, I nominate the phrase "iPod Killer" for the most overused tech cliche of 2004. Any seconds?
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Nikon or Canon should make a DSLR that has a 20 or 40 gig hard drive built in. They should also have compactflash cards of course, but a hard drive would be much faster to write to than a CF card, and for trips a hard drive would be unmatched.
I still sortof swear with my Archos ; using it now for over a year, every week I record my mixing session(s) on it and it works perfectly. Sometimes I can rip a part of my mixes and works great.
.wav because of the encoder ; but isn't the CPU fast enough to use your own "encoder" for example in Rockbox? I am using Rockbox, only having 1 prob when recording long files in VBR they seem not to be able to be opened in Cooledit or Winamp.
There are currently not a lot of players on the market and easy to buy in Europe. Bought the FMR20 for 310euro and my soulmate bought one 2 months later a JBR20 for 299euro. They both work like a charm.
One had some probs in the beginning; I needed to revive it before it could be turned on. After a week it didn't show up the problems anymore and since then it works perfectly.
-slightly offtopic-
Now, What I like more, next to the 20gb (that will be extended to 60gb soon) is that it would record Wav. Which is also not possible with this device?
I also wonder why the Archos cannot record in CBR mode instead of VBR; It can't record to
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
On the other hand, maybe they're going about this backwards. I think it would be pretty cool to have a digital camera that had some basic audio playback functions. Would that be more or less expensive to produce than an audio device with a cheapo camera built in?
Parent modded as Troll? Every single thing the parent stated about what the iPod did not have the capability to do was true. I guess the iPod fanatics are trying to silence anyone pointing that out to others.
Funny that an iPod lover makes a post of "Who needs ogg support" and it is modded +5 insightful.
This is proof positive that Apple users are blind to what is really going on.
Anyone care to tell me what the Troll was for? I already know the answer, COMPLETE SILENCE. Not a single Apple defender will respond to this question. Again, it is better to ignore the competition and talk them down then to justify why Apple is better. I do not need that option the other have, the iPod is perfect, it just works, I am too stupid to figure out any other device besides the iPod blah blah blah. Not one of those common excuses is a real world fact or figure and they are all based on personal opinion (with some zealot taint added). Not one single measureable or comparable reason WHY the iPod is better, just opinions and attempts justify and reenforce their own buying decision. Why does it have to be justified? Are you feeling bad about ti or something? Is it some kind of entry into an elite club? Anyone with the money can enter that club ya know. Not much of a restriction. Some people make buying decsions on real world comparisions and on features and options, not just because some specific company happens to make the product or it would be cool to walk around with one.
If you take a look at the GUI you'll see that it's going to be challenging. Just like your typical VCR or digital camera...
The thing that makes the iPod so unique (and popular) is the simplicity. It's about having less, not more.
-ch
I noticed everyone of your reasons noted nothing technical at all and no facts. My mp3 player does exactly what it is designed to do and there is nothing you can show that iTunes is the best there is, in fact, it is the ONLY thing there is for the iPod so I have no idea what you are comparing it to.
You can claim your ease of use all day. I have no problem programming a VCR, using a remote control with 70 buttons, and using a KB with 102 keys. How the hell had is it to use ANY portable music player? Really? I push play select a song/songs and go. Are you really sitting there playing with the unit constantly? Are other devices that had for you guys to use (like a two button mouse for example).
For the same price as an iPod, you can get a device with MORE options and capabilites with combinations of a camera, a video player, FM stereo, input jacks and others. You can not dispute that fact. Your iPod gives you nothing but music you bought from iTunes and a "really cool" scroll wheel. You can play with that scroll wheel all day because with an iPod that is the only other thing you can do with it, wow, loads of fun. To turn your nose up to a device that can do more simply because it can do more makes no sense. If your car came with a stereo that only played CDs and had no FM radio, you'd think that was fucking stupid.
Keep in mind, if the iPod did have FM, heaven forbid, people might buy less music from iTunes because they could also listen to other media on it.
This isn't an iPod killer. Every day, there is a new link on
These whiz-bang multi-feature devices are not going to kill the iPod. People bought into the iPod because it does one thing really well and has a good interface. Simplicity is key.
None of these flimsy plastic, rubber buttoned media players are going to create much of a following.
The only thing that will kill the iPod, is a mobile phone with 60GB HD, 2+ Megapixel camera, MP3/AAC/MWA/OGG playback, and hell, lets throw in an MP4/DiVX decoder as well. Show me that in a form factor of an iPod or less, and I'll hand over my first-born. Otherwise, STFU.
Come on, Olympus has it right on their news release:
Olympus Enters Portable HDD Music Player Market
With New m:robe Brand Products
It's Hard Disk Drive, HDD.
High Definition, HD.
My phone takes useless pictures. My camcorder takes horrible stills. My digital camera takes low-res video (but 5 MP pictures).
Isn't this why iPod (and Palm before them) did well? They concentrated on doing one thing well.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
A lot of times I've wanted an iPod and wanted a digital camera and wondered if there could be a way to use the harddisk in the iPod so I have a lot of storage space without carrying 2 hard disks everywhere. I think this is a good idea, I don't know if it's done well but if it is I'd buy one.
Without an address book or the ability to make phone calls.
Or GPRS.
Seems to me the difference between an MP3 player and a mobile phone is: Storage or phone gubbins.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Nice. Yet another thing that's got a camera. Soon all my gadgets can play MP3 and take pictures. Camera on the Mobile (can allso play MP3, but low on storage), Camera on the Palm (can play MP3 but have little storage), Camera on the MP3 player (Yes, it do play MP3).
So let's scrap BlueTooth and put MP3 and Camera (and the next jippo thingy) into all the stuff we carry!!! That would be sweet......
Screw you guys, I'm going home....