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The Sony/MP3 Saga Continues
Renegade Lisp writes "Sony's rolling out their new line of flash-based music players to the
market these days. More stylish than ever, they surely look like a
serious attempt to regain territory lost to the iPod, and perhaps even
to create the Walkman of the 21st century. And it looks like Sony has
finally given in to consumer pressure: these new "MP3 players" can
finally play MP3 natively, not just Sony's proprietary ATRAC format.
But wait -- you cannot just put your MP3s onto the device, you have to
run them through Sony's obfuscation software first. The obfuscated
files, when installed properly on the device, can be played. But you
can't just move them around, share them with your friends, whatever.
Well, of course the obfuscation scheme has already been broken by a
brave hacker. But is this really the way to create the "Network
Walkman" of the 21st century? Sony, please wake up!"
We don't want something hip and stylish. We want something that works well.
Oh yeah, I've never personally been able to understand the whole hooplah over the Ipod shuffle, or even the Ipod mini? 1 gigabyte? 5 gigabytes? Do you have ANY idea how old the songs get on your mp3 player if you keep hearing stuff over and over again like a radio station?
I suppose for top 40 teenie boppers, that's okay. Not for me.
20 gig and 40 gig are good sizes, respectfully. The more, the better.
Sony's designs are ugly, too. I barely tolerate the fact that my ipod is white. It's bad enough that Bono is pushing the player I own. Now, Sony comes out with Grape, Cherry and Orange flavors. Ugh!
Why can't they make an mp3 player that's like Nyquil. In the words of Denis Leary, that "original green death fucking flavor, but it doesn't matter..." If an mp3 player is green-death nyquil colored, but has a great interface, and does all I want in regards to playability and reliability, that's all I need.
I'm sure everyone else's priorities will be similar after they buy an orange mp3 player, and throw it against the wall in rage when it doesn't do what they want it to do.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Distributed Labels of Reporting Companies Sony Classical Sony Discos Sony Japan Sony Labels Sony Music Sony Music US (Latin) Sony Wonder
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Their CD based MP3 players require no such obfuscation scheme.
Sometimes I don't understand why companies would go to such an extent to come out with some nice products, then hopelessly find a way to ruin it.
But then again, maybe I think too much. All these gadgets are sold for brand rather than technology, most consumers really don't care whether or not they can shares songs with others using this device, they can simply lend CDs out like they've been doing with tapes.
As long as Sony has designed a good GUI that users can (1) pop in the CDs, (2) select songs, (3) transfer to the player, its technical responsibility is done.
The more important job is to make it look and feel cool so that you want one if your friend got one.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Because they always are incompatible in some annoying little way.
I was actually comparison shopping for an MP3 player this week, and I ruled out the Sony 'network walkman' because I don't trust them to play nicely.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
They try so hard, sooo hard becoming what they once were. But oh why, do they have to shoot themselves in the foot by "obfuscate" their player
Is it just me or does the little one look like one of those gold coin condoms? Also, although it does not surprise me that the 'obfuscated mp3' format was broken so quickly, doesn't it seem funny that this scheme, and DRM in general, is so pathetic?
Yup, I hate Sony. They can't possibly think people would be stupid enough to buy this kind of crap? Oh sorry, people do buy Sony products. Because there's "Sony" written on the box...
Instead of using every new mp3 player as a chance to plug the iPod?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
...the iPod is great not just because it's stylish and functional, but because it's as simple as possible wrt DRM. no DRM simply isn't going to happen, but with the iPod (and its *seamless* integration with iTunes) DRM is hidden from the user in 99.9% of cases.
if this Sony DRM stuff even requires a SINGLE extra click, then imo it has failed and has no chance of making me move away from my iPod (even though the designs I've seen look very nice).
DRM is the only answer to protecting Sony's own copyrights, as they have the rights to a lot of music distribution already. What is the alternative? More laws like the FCC Broadcast flag? That is jumping from the kettle to the fire. No, DRM, encryption is the way out. You have your music, in the form of a secure DRM'ized backup. You retain the rights to your original CD audio. What is the big deal here? Oh I get it, your upset you cannot engage in illegal activity, right?
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
I think Sony's butt is getting kicked. It's funny how some divisions of Sony are in cooperation with Apple (Points to the HD camera division) and some divisions aren't (points to the walkman division). Get a clue. Apple owns the mp3 player market for the next forseeable future, until wireless everywhere music comes out. (like a bluetooth pair of earphones or something...)
1. Cheap.
2. No proprietary formats required.
3. No "DRM."
4. Reliable, built to last, long battery life.
5. Connects to my machine without drivers, i.e. acts like an external hard disk.
Please, just that. And I'll buy it. No need for fancy buttons or stylishness. I'm currently using an HD Lyra 20GB--it satisfies most of those. Its damn cheap (costs under 100USD now), it uses plain old MP3s, it doesn't even support most DRM, its built like a tank, and acts like an external hard disk. However it still requires drivers, isn't very reliable, and has mediocre battery life.
The genie is already out of the bottle. He's not going back in. Give up.
Sincerely,
Everyone
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Having to use Sony's software to add songs...isn't that what you do with iPod, add songs through iTunes?
Welcome to the Brave New World.
Free MacMini
I remember about three years ago when I was selling electronics. The MiniDisc players were about the same price as 128MB Mp3 players, but could hold way more tunes (depending on quality settings), had better battery life, and had removable media. It always seemed like an easy sell until they'd ask me how they put their Mp3s onto the MD. I'd then have to describe the awful interface and conversion software and how it's not really using Mp3s. I can't believe they haven't figured this out and finally comply with the rest of the industry (the successful ones anyway)!
5yrs. from now...
Remember the "Walkman" and how it was first to make a quality product using a new format?
You Bet!
Remember the "DiscMan" and how it was first to make a quality product using a new format?
Again, yes!
Remember the "Mp3 Walkman?"
NO. I do remember the ipod though...
The thing that really amazes me about the competition at the low-end of the mp3 market is the way Apple's been able to compete on price! That never happens! I mean, according to Amazon Sony's price for its 1 gig and 512meg models are exactly the same as Apple's. And I don't think I need to specify which player is better integrated with the operating system, is lighter, or looks more stylish.
Crazy times.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Just furthers the case that DRM is bad for everybody. Bad for companies, bad for consumers, bad for artists. Don't get me wrong there is a good motivation behind not wanting free copying of copyrighted media but requiring somebody to encrypt something to listen to it when they have it locally unencrypted on there computer serves no end but to make people less interested in the product. The best way to prevent large scale piracy is to offer a value added product. Pay the money and get good quality music on a CD, rip it yourself and get to keep the pretty pictures. Its all about making something that people WANT to purchase and make it worth the money to do so.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
Not sure how much anyone here cares about the styling of their music player, but I think Sony has leapfrogged Apple in terms of design. The pictures on Sony's site don't do them justice. For one thing, the OLED display is embedded under the surface of the player, so you don't see the display unless it's on (and glowing through the metallic surface). It actually looks futuristic, instead of the chinsy pseudo-futuristic look sony has been selling us for years now.
Again.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
Sony's PSP plays MP3 files right off the memory stick. Just plug the PSP into a USB2 port, copy your MP3 files to it, then listen and enjoy. Of course, I've only got a 1G memory stick, which holds enough MP3 files for my listening pleasure.
You can't re-use code, if you can't find it.
I'm just glad that someone at Sony was sleeping when they designed the psp and it actually does play normal mp3's! Yeah, it's still got propietary storage but that's normal for a game system. At least I can plug it into my pc via usb and the msduo shows up as a drive!
Am I the only one who looked at the pictures and thought, "Sony Network Walkman: Now in hip 'bottle cap' and 'cologne bottle' designs" Ugh.
...and trying to make a device for playing content at the same time in this day and age is that you're always at odds with yourself. Your right hand is dueling with your left hand; the content division won't let the hardware division make something that could aid in (gasp, shudder) copyright infringement, so of necessity whatever you come out with is going to be a compromise.
Not just in music, either. Let's not forget the Librié ebook device and its fabulous expiring bookware...
The more I hear about stuff like this, the more it occurs to me that Sony's just no longer relevant in the personal audio world.
Of course...on the other hand, come to think of it, the company that is the most relevant in the personal audio world these days doesn't make it easy for you to transfer your music back off of their pocket music device, either.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Can't do a damn thing with it without the old (not the new) version of MusicMatch. Makes me want to go back to casette tapes!
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
From the article:
That's a nice...
- Create digital music store (should have done this before Napster taught us all that we could easily get music for free with little risk)
- Establish digital management rules within range of the "Home Use" interpretation of Fair Use (for the curious, your Fair Use rights are established in US Code under Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 106 or 107, I forget which. I think it's 107, 106 is Copyright holder rights; it's worth noting here that "home use" was not originally part of the Fair Use clause, but it has since been interpretted to fall under its umbrella)
- Make use of store convenient and reliable enough to be measurably superior than scrounging p2p networks for uncorrupted files.
- Establish a cost such that the added convenience, legality, and reliability of your digital music store is worth paying for in lieu of the sort of dumpster-diving you sometimes have to do on p2p
- Include some additional benefit for buying instead of stealing, such as a "frequent flyer" type program that rewards you with the option to get ahold of preview tracks earlier than other people (granted, these all just end up on p2p so it becomes moot), discounts on concert tickets and fan merchandise, access to reserved ticketing for popular concerts, and less restrictive DRM for loyal customers
- This part is critical: respect the customer, respect his rights. Do not assume everybody who buys your music is doing so to put in on eMule. Establish that you trust your customer to be a good consumer.
The profit here may or may not be significant, but a combinaton of a revenue stream plus reduced losses from piracy might make it worth the effort.Don't bother telling me that piracy doesn't actually cost them anything, it doesn't matter whether it does or not as long as they think it does. If they think it does, and they want to reduce/eliminate it, far better than they do so by leveraging technology to our benefit than try to get their business model legislated.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
The Boingboing link is just a summary which links to the real thing.
Imagine if the government decides to rule on the side of interoperability http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/entry/123400090 0039337/
If you can hear the sound of all Sony and Apple's R&D money flushing down the toilet with one pass of the government's mighty pen, you might be ahead of the game.
It's true there's a slim probability of the interoperability legislation going into effect, but the saber rattling is always unnerving.
Back in yesteryear, you had walkmans, they played all tapes. They could play tapes you copied off the radio, off a deck, any tapes. You did not have to worry that your friend had different tapes than you. It all worked. The best $200 walkman and the cheapest $15 tape player from kmart, it all worked the same.
Fuck corporations. I ain't buying their shit anymore. Why? So in 2 years the standard can change? So I have to re-buy everything all over again. I am tired of paying three times for the same thing. I am tired of no longer being able to OWN something, but paying a service for it. BUT WAIT, friendly Mr. Hacker fixed the problem... for now. Am I the only one who does not like searching 5 hours on the web, to find some software which defeats DRM, and even then, you are not 100% sure what you're installing on your system? Sure, you could get a old computer, not connected to the web, and download, burn, and instal on that system. But how much trouble is it?
Lets face it. Corporations want one thing, to suck every penny from you. And corporations are learning it does not matter what they are selling you, all they have to do is put a big ribbon on it and enough people will shell out money.
We'll, go ahead. You all spend your money. I'm going to the bar. It is dollar wednesdays.
Oh, speaking about the bar. Did you hear what they got now? And it is from Sony. Remember the big juke boxes they used to have? You get 4 songs for a buck? Some bars even set it up so it's free. Well, the bar replaced it with a small computer sized box that takes dollars and now plays 1 song per dollar, 3 songs for $2. And it is tied in via some internet connection.
I guess people no longer want to own anything.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Personally I want both. Only to the /. world would those seem like mutually-exclusive options.
That said, Sony is such a classic example of interesting design that completely ignores major sore points in implementation, it isn't even funny. I'd have one of their tiny upright-model camcorders right now, if they hadn't required their own special compression format for the resulting movies a couple of years ago. Ah well -- ended up with a different make, which then allowed me to make the choice to grab up a cheap and oh so handy Mac to edit on, and so on. If I'd taken the little Sony it'd have been endless compromises just to stick with their proprietary formatting.
Here we have them requiring me to bend over backwards to implement a sort of personal DRM on my music files. How much more clumsy than Apple's iTunes-purchased files is that? Major, major disincentive to buying for me. Big sore point. That's what they're not "getting." Stylish I like just fine.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
If this doesn't play .ogg files, I won't buy it.
What a great idea!
Sincerely,
NASA
I personally have a Rio MP3 player. Called the Rio Karma. It's small, functional and does something most MP3 players don't. Supports the Open Source OGG format. When comparison shopping OGG was a requirement, since I didn't want to re-rip most of my music collection. iPod, Sony, RCA, and Creative MP3 players don't support OGG/Vorbis, Rio and iRiver do, and Rio has more features on the player, such as the DJ which can play your favorite (most played) songs from any Genre you want. Or have it select songs for you from all genres. It even *Attempts* to go from heavy music, to slightly "lighter" music and then build back up so you're not going from Slayer to Goo Goo Dolls back to back.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Stop thinking that you are going to get away with stolen music for ever its illegal. DRM is the solution, instead of old idiots who know nothing about technology passing laws lobbied by RIAA. If RIAA had it their way we would be denied our MP3 players. Atrac 3 plus gives you better battery life, and enables you to store more songs than regular mp3. It also has the same quality at 48kbs than an mp3 at 128kbs. The new network walkman line is priced at the same as the ipod shuffle. Plus it doesnt have an integrated lithium-ion battery. Don't think that Apple doesnt use DRM because they do with I-tunes, but thats right you would rather steal your music.
The minimum price for one of these is 69 GBP tax included ($130 US). That's for the lowend 256MB version. The high end 1GB model with FM tuner is $300. The iPod shuffle 512MB and 1GB are $99 and $149 respectively before tax.
I wouldn't say that these were any more affordable.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It is ironic that a company which ostensibly should be better at reconciling the competing interests of hardware developers and music distributors is still stumbling with this stuff.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"isn't that what you do with iPod, add songs through iTunes?"
It is "a" way it isn't the "only" way.
I don't use iTunes. I find it clumsy and it tries to manage my considerable collection of digital music.
I personally use XPlay, a commercial solution. But there are similar free solutions.
I wonder if this is generational- I am 26, and even into college, we were impressed by a CD player that didnt skip. And now we are complaining that 10 gigs of music gets repetitive? I cant believe what a difference 5 or 6 years of age makes....
Almost every Harvard student was High School Valedictorian- After a year of college, half are in the bottom of the class
Sony understands PRRFECTLY what consumers want. They just don't want to give it to them.
This is true of most of the media companies. They're all trying to lock-down content. It's their collective "wet dream" to make ALL media "pay-per-view".
Get used to it. I expect that in the next decade, the federal government will mandate DRM on everything. They already tried to do it with HDTV.
Yes, I know Sony marketing read /. every day and appreciate all the great feedback but really if you don't like it don't buy it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I don't care how the music gets stored on these players and is used natively...and if that's where the DRM is, then I can live with that...so long as I can retain my source material in whatever format I choose.
I'd love to see more of the portable players support a transcoding interface. I store all my music as 320k oggs, and if there were something that could convert them to 96k mp3s on the fly as I want to upload them, then I'd be cool with that.
If Apple built that capability into their iTunes/iPod software, I'd go buy one. However, I don't want to do any extra rips or transcodes myself. It seems like this Sony player is already halfway there.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Please renember that the people who pay your salaries do not work for and do represent the music industry. And also, please renember that your consumer division makes way more that your music division. And also, please renember companies like IBM and Apple who royally screwed themselves out of the PC revolution while Miscrsoft made billions because they simply could not hold themselves accountable to the economic forces and realities that drive the bottom line. And also, please renember that while Sony Corp is a multi billion dollar corporation, they are not bigger than the global economy that puts out well over a trillion per month - and will simply beat you to a bloody pulp if you try to force your misguided will on the market rather than obey what the market is trying to tell you. Finally, please renember you are putting faith in a business strategy that requires the ability to restrict the free flow of information at a time when it's never been more free flowing since the birth of human existence. Translation - you are a guaranteed looser.
Sincerely
Consumer and common sense
PS: good riddance and good luck, you'll need it
Screw Sony. I use a Rio Forge and I'm very happy!
Apple sells content through it's iTunes store. Sure Apple doesn't "create" content, but then again, neither does Sony. Apple contracts for the right to distribute music. Sony signs contracts with musicians who create music and with producers who create movies.
Apple's iTunes is hurt by P2P piracy in the same way that Sony's music division is.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
1. Cheap.
The shuffle starts at 99 bucks.
2. No proprietary formats required.
All ipods play wav, mp3, and (un drmd) aac.
3. No "DRM."
Play any mp3 you want.
4. Reliable, built to last, long battery life.
I get around 12 hours out of my 4th gen 20gig ipod.
5. Connects to my machine without drivers, i.e. acts like an external hard disk.
Not sure what os you are using, but (obviously) ipods are seamless with X, and act as a lovely external firewire (or usb2) drive.
Take a look sometime. iTunes changes the filename and distributes your mp3s across hundreds of folders. Try dropping some mp3 files directly into one of the folders. The iPod won't even find them.
I agree it's true with "most media companies." But it is NOT true of most tech companies. Most MP3/portable music players simply allow you to copy MP3s on and off without any impediment.
That's Sony's problem. It's trying hard to protect its content division, while killing its tech division in the process.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
As long as Sony has designed a good GUI that users can (1) pop in the CDs, (2) select songs, (3) transfer to the player, its technical responsibility is done.
A so-called "good GUI" that doesn't even work on the number 2 or 3 home computing platform is no "good GUI".
you obviously dont get it as you say. the ipod shuffle is designed to look and feel like it has infintie capacity.
that is to say I would challenge you to a turing test to see if you cold tell the difference between an ipod shuffle and a 80 gig ipod just by listineing to it in shuffle mode.
I'm not kidding, here are the ground rules. A shuffle holds 150 to 300 songs randmoly selected from the 80gigs on your hard drive. You listen to it for a day or so, and have not listened to all 200 songs. then you jack it in to recharge it and while that is going on the shuffle gets refilled. Then you listen the next day. and repeat.
From your point of view it would be no different than listening to your 80 gig drive drive or a 40 gig ipod. you could not tell the difference by listening.
You see the thing you are not understanding is that the software, itunes, makes this transparent. If you had some piece of shit software like win amp and had to drag files by hand onto the device or run them through a sony deobfuscator then you would not be constantly refilling it. But with itunes, CHARGING = REFILLING. since you can just barely play all the songs on a single charge this basically means that in any practical usage you are constantly refreshing the songs before you hear them twice.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If the players don't support direct downloads, then Sony has not "given in to consumer pressure." They're just fiddling with their recording format -- something Sony engineers love to do.
Sony, please wake up!
Why do you care if Sony decides to play or not? There are many other options out there, support them, forget about Sony if they don't want to catch a ride.
I don't know that I necessarily consider Apple a content company, although I may either be unaware of the content they produce, or may be using a different definition of "content provider."
And, honestly, I don't know that I really consider them to be a "tech" company either. I know they make a lot of products that rely on technology, but I actually prefer to think of them as an "appliance" company.
And, I think this is how and why some of their products are so popular, and have such a fanatical following.
You see, I think that there is a large portion of the population that doesn't want to have to *work* to use technology. They want mp3 players that are simple to figure out and use, computers that they can just turn on and start playing with, and other things that are as uncomplicated to get their hands into as possible. Apple seems to understand this, to some extent, and I think it's served them well.
In fact, it's for this reason that I like having my 3G ipod over the newer 4G versions. The buttons pretty much only do *one* thing each. I don't have to deal with the frustration of what happens if I press too hard on the scroll wheel and accidentally activate one of the other features.
*plunks down two pennies* Just my two cents.
Don't forget in the head to head, that apple also 'Obfuscates' - I mean it's an easily broken obfuscation, and the iTunes platform has become so prolific that hacks to every aspect of it have been everywhere for years now and several parties have duplicated their DAAP protocol - easly the best LAN netradio scheme out there, and others have built clients to undermine it for p2p purposes...
But they do obfuscate.
People are complaining about having to convert their MP3s in order to get them into the Sony device. Apple's iPod Photo makes you do the same thing whenever you want to load your photos on the device. Why isn't anyone complaining about this??
I do not expect Sony to create the best digital walkman in the world no more than I expect Ford to create the best automobile on the market.
Another point worth mentioning - the iPod did not get to where it is today because it was a great product. It's where it is today because of the amazing marketing and advertising done by Apple.
Yeah, and it's even easier to share MP3's that are already burned on a CD, than to have to try to copy them back off using USB/Firewire/Whatever. I don't understand why their new flash and HD players have to be so crippled.
Sony cripples hard drive and flash based MP3 players more than it cripples CD-R based MP3 players because in the United States, the royalty laws around blank CD-R media are clearer than the royalty laws around blank flash and hard drive media.
These Sony players don't look so stylish to me... they look very similar to products in the market.
Love or hate the iPod, you can tell what it is from across the room. The Sony looks like a hundred other far eastern MP3 players.
Now if it could only play MP3's...
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I simply do not understand why music downloads have not been embraced by the people who own the music. They are being extremely short-sighted.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
But nowadays [Sony is] just making low quality stuff for the same high prices. Korean companies like Samsung, LG etc. make good quality products at very reasonable prices. That's why people like me stopped buying Sony products.
Japanese electronics mfr Sony makes the PSP handheld video game system. Korean electronics mfr Game Park makes the GP32 handheld video game system. Even with the well-publicized PSP shortages, why have I never been able to find GP32 units in U.S. retail stores? Which other Korean gaming device should I be considering?
I don't know what this concept is so difficult. Apple has this little project called iTunes. It sells this stuff called music. Music is sometimes referred to as content.
Sony sells content too. But nether company actually produces content. Sony signs a band to create a CD or signs a producer to create a movie. Thank god that corporations CANNOT produce or create content. That type of job still requires a human.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
On the subject of MP3 players, other than the iPod, what are (in the opinions of /. users) the best MP3 players available in the market now? The last player I ever bought was a Diamond Rio; what are the competitive alternatives today?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Yes, but the Sony model has an FM Radio--which most people won't use, but will complain about being absent on the iPod--so that makes it a better value!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
that is all.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Open content formats are the only way to be sure you can access your content, period.
There seems to be a widely held misconception that MP3 is an open format. This may be true in twelve years or so once the patents expire in the United States, Germany, Japan, and other jurisdictions, but it is not true in 2005.
April Fool was almost two weeks ago.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
What I don't get is how anyone could listen to their entire collection on shuffle. Perhaps my collection is more eclectic than most, but I have audio books, Xmas music, weird classical, Jim Morrison reading poetry, and a million other things that don't necessarily play well together with the pop, rock and jazz that make up the majority of my collection.
...No matter, the combo of the Karma and Predixis software is still vastly superior to iTunes and an iPod, when it comes to manipulating a large body of audio.
I love MusicMagic Mixer from Predixis, which uses computer analysis of each audio file to determine which songs play well together. Pick one song, or ten songs, and tell it to make a mix that sounds similar. If only it worked with my Rio Karma. I have to create playlists with Predixis and then load them into the Karma through the awful Rio Music Manager...
From the Sony website: "The players' storage is incomparable: thanks to ATRAC3plus, the 256MB NW-E503, the 512MB NW-E505 and the 1GB NW-E507 can store up to 45 CDs' worth of music, which is almost 700 tracks (when using high quality sound ATRAC3plus audio compression technology)" Corect me if I'm wrong but that's around 60 minutes worth of music per 22mb. Doesn't seam right to me.
Exatly.
In fact, if they didn't, the coorporation as a whole could be found guilty in civil court for lack of due diligence. BEsides, storing the mp3 format encrypted doesn't change the music. It is your music, and in theory you can still access it. Especially considering the scheam has been cracked. Here is the real problem, you cannot get good performance with good encryption on embeded processors.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
DRM is the only answer to protecting Sony's own copyrights, as they have the rights to a lot of music distribution already. What is the alternative?
No DRM. I mean the format the music Industry WANTS us to use, the one they bemoan the loss of sales in, has no DRM whatsoever, *and* is higher quality than any of the DRM-protected formats. I mean if the Industry really thoughjt DRM was anything but a lever to control the market with they'd quit shipping CDs today!
What is the big deal here?
The big deal is this: if you send someone a secret message, and you send them the key to read the message, then they can read the message. Right? Well, that's what DRM does, it sends me the music, it sends me the key to play the music. Do that, and there is NO WAY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH to stop me from listening to the music. And if I can listen to it, I can re-record it, and at that point... hey... the DRM is gone gone gone.
DRM can't keep people from copying music. All it can to is to cause the first person who copies it to lose a miniscule amount of detail that they're never going to hear when they play it on an MP3 player as they walk down a busy street.
And in exchange for that completely irrelevant cost, they force everyone who buys their music to go through some variant of "Mix, Burn, Rip" to ensure that they can still listen to their music when MusicMatch^WNapster goes out of business.
They just resell others content. They have much less to lose when some bands stuff is all over the 'net for free.
Sony, on the other hand, has contracts with the bands they've signed, which no doubt include some clause about them doing whatever is in their power to prevent the stuff from being pirated.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
My examples were tastes. However, while a person may just want a mp3 player, some features on that player may be needs. For example, a person in their 70's might have trouble with small controls, so they would NEED larger ones.
My point wasn't that companies aren't filling my needs or wants, either... it's that the OP was hinting that they should only fill his.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Sony hasn't created much in the way of cool stuff in the past few years (excepting maybe the PSP). What happened? Nowadays there isn't any compelling reason or urge to buy Sony products -- I don't think Sony realizes this. If they can't move into making truly unfettered media systems, they'll never be able to compete.
Heck, I'll keep my cheapo chinese/korean mp3 player...i've already tossed my MD (minidisc? what's that?) into the 'loo....
Buy a Rio Karma
The really sad part is that as the only combination audio hardware/music label corporation, Sony had the chance to totally own the digital music universe. Imagine buying an album of non-DRM mp3s on a memory stick, and playing it in your Sony mp3 player. Sony would have made money both ways -- by selling hardware, and by selling music -- and by the way, they would have made a much bigger cut on the music than Apple currently does as a music middleman, which means they could have shrugged off the paranoia that causes DRM.
And they could have done this in 1999, long before Apple got rolling with iTunes. Sony, you screwed up big time.
I would wager that much of the motivation for crippling their media players is the fear of being sued; Most corporations run internally like little freak capitalist-societies with separate divisions competing economically and legally with each other. Hell, most universities run like this nowadays. Just my 2p
All ipods play wav, mp3, and (un drmd) aac.
Do they play .wav files that use common ACM codecs, or just straight PCM .wav files?
"No 'DRM.'" Play any mp3 you want.
MP3 itself is digital rights management, at least for the next dozen years or so until Fraunhofer's exclusive rights under patent law run out.
Not true, Sony actually owns media content. They have (unsuccessfully) tried to merge a hardware and media company through their of music label and movie studio acquisitions.
Apple is no more of a content company than Best Buy.
Oh wait! Tt says 'incomparable listening experience'... (second picture on the site)
No one seems to realize at this point just how amazing an mp3 player Sony's PSP really seems to be. The quality of the sound, even on the jank headphones that come with the PSP, simply blows the Ipod away. Granted, that ain't sayin much, considering the well-documented atrociousness of the IPod's sound quality. Also, the price of higher and higher-capacity Memory Sticks only seems to go down, much in the same way prices for higher-capacity CF and SD seem to be going down as well. Granted, I don't have 700 bucks to plunk down on a 4gig MS duo right now, but I highly doubt the price will stay up there much longer.
To say nothing of the PSP's video playback and game playing abilities.
On an aside, I'm surprised no one has mentioned the NW-HD5 yet. I can't wait till that thing comes stateside.
As for the actual deobfuscation (what a strange word...) of the encryption, let me be the first to say I'll pay money for a working program that can do this on my XP machine.
I decided after 4-5 years to buy a Sony Product. The 20GB "MP3" hard drive walkman. I will only mention 3 points: Software is sabotaged to crash when tranfering MP3's.And I mean every 100 songs. Google it. Walkmans equalizer doesn't work on MP3's.( = VERY flat sound). MP3's use 20% more battery then ATRAC. And that is why I don't buy Sony anymore. Vote with your wallet.
-- TRUST ME! I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!
Dumb
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
First you say that Apple doesn't "create" content. When I point out that Sony doesn't create content either, you change it to "own."
Sure Apple doesn't "own" content, BUT IT STILL SELLS CONTENT! Thus, it is a CONTENT company.
And like I said before, Apple's iTunes is harmed by the use of P2P and illegal trading as much as Sony. If people used P2P exclusively, iTunes would fail.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Why? Is Sony a buddy of ours, that we are so concerned about its missteps? Do remember that as a heavyweight member of *AA, it (Sony) bears a large responsibility for their actions.
Secondly: it is a Darwinian world out there. If some other company (for now, Apple) delivers a better value and allows the users the freedoms that are rightfully theirs, then that company deserves to win and the others deserve to die.
Does the RIAA plead with the users it sues? Does the MPAA? Then why this pleading with Sony?
Now, I'm living in a fantasy world, but in order for that to happen, we'd have to have a player that did not have ANY copyright protection mechanisms on it in any way whatsoever.
So what I'm really curious about is.....why hasn't someone come out yet with a player that has zero protections on it? Does the DMCA come in to play with this?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
My wife owns over 500 cds. Her 40GB iPod no longer cuts it. I'm going to have to upgrade her to an iPod Photo. Eep.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
You can create a playlist that the shuffle updates from.
In my case, I have a smart playlist that has all my heavy metal, rock, alternative, punk and jazz in (the stuff I like). I'd have shuffle update just from that. I also have smart playlists with just the heavy metal, just the jazz, just the punk etc.
The magic in my case is either done through filtering through artist or filtering by genre.
pronto. Until it does, it's going to continue to have these problems of being under pressure from Sony Music (a member of the Recording Industry Ass. of America) to not innovate.
"Well, of course the obfuscation scheme has already been broken by a brave hacker."
/. crowd?
So why was the guy who cracked the Apple DRM scheme painted as a villian by the
Vote for Pedro
On the other hand since buying an MP3 player last year my music collection has only "ballooned" to about 3 and half gigabytes This because I delete or don't bother with stuff I know I'll get tired of quickly. I've yet to meet someone with 30+ GB of music, of a reasonable bitrate that didn't have 20+ GB of crap. And by crap I don't mean taste-wise. By crap I mean stuff they have that they've never and won't ever listen to more than twice, and occasionally not even once...
*to me
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Filtering by id3 tags is quite primitive in contrast to filtering by actual characteristics of the audio file.
I was quite surprised to hear the similarities that the software found between artists I never would have played back to back, because my mind had them segregated into their own arbitrary genres.
Thats an incredibly obtuse way of looking at DRM. Fraunhofer's patent does not dictate what you, the end user, can do with your mp3s.
Although it would be nice if Apple supported ogg...
Let's make a difference
I have a mix of Xmas, clasical, pop, Wierd Al, and some tax law seminars. Who cares if Ivy is followed by a tax law seminar? Sometimes those can be interesting (really!). And if not - skip! and you are done.
And as the other poster said you can have it fil from smart playlists. When doing shuffle I like to randomly select from all unrated songs, which probably means I've not listened to them much.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not sure if the SHuffle supports it, but the bigger iPods all support "shuffle by album" which is how I like to listen to things a lot of the time as well. It basically selects a random album, plays all the songs from it, then moves onto the next one.
Even if the shuffle does not support it directly, you could probably put together a smart playlist that would get you the same effect when songs grouped by album, then tell the shuffle to just listen to the songs on the device in order. After all, there's no need to randomize twice!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"who finds 98% of british people horribly unattractive?"
When you live on an island, you take what you can get.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Makes me wonder if that could be the IPod killer will be the first MP3 Player that has WiFI, Bluetooth, or UWB USB built it. :)
When you walk down the street it talks to any other P2P Pod and exchanges songs.
All a new band would have to do is walk around a major city or college with a few of it's tunes on their pod
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Fraunhofer's patent does not dictate what you, the end user, can do with your mp3s.
Bands can't sell MP3 files without paying 2.0% of related revenue to Thomson.
I just wanted a hard disk with an audio jack, a volume control and a couple buttons for forward/back/suffle. Can't be that hard.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
No?
Then no sale.
Sorry, Sony.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
The cannot exist, because that would be circumvention of the DRM. You are not understanding what is going on - iTunes acts only as a conduit through which music more easily flows into the iPod. You can put stuff there yourself (more difficult), or copy it off (a little tricky but not hard).
With the Sony the whole point of the software is to turn something the player will agree to play - some twisted nightmare of your original MP3. You are not going to see third paty tools for that beacuse it would entail knowing how to encrypt the music for the device, and Sony would not like that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, that just won't do.
If I have my ipod in my car, or anywhere else where I can charge my ipod, but not be in touch with my copy of iTunes, this is where it breaks down.
Plus, since this is when I'd be listening to my player for long amounts of time, and not be able to swap the songs out.
This is where it becomes apparent.
Also, I sometimes am in the mood to listen to a particular song on the spot. With a shuffle, tough luck, unless it's already preloaded.
This is where it fails the turing test. I don't always play my ipod on shuffle.
The problem with your test is that it fails on the grounds that I want to listen to my music. I'm sure I'm not alone in this respect.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
They've lost the battle. Sony used to mean superior quality, innovative products. Now they're just another crappy consumer electronics company. Apple has stomped them bad. They'll never catch up now if they come to market with such restrictions.
You are REALLY not going to like how much I pay for broadband every month!
I applaud you for giving up all earthly goods to feed some poor village somewhere. Wait, what did you post on again?
Guess it's just another Anonymous hypoCrite.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"But wait -- you cannot just put your MP3s onto the device, you have to run them through Sony's obfuscation software first."
Actually thats no different then the iPod. I had an iPod (which was recently replaced with a Sony Pocket VAIO) and in order to get songs onto it, no matter what formate it was in, I had to use iTunes to transfer them (or some other similar product). My Pocket VAIO now requires me to use SonicStage to transfer music, same thing just a different program (works pretty much the same way as well, plug it in and it automatically transfers new stuff).
There was a firmware update (which is why I finally got one) not to long ago for several of their devices that allowed you to use native MP3s. There is some stuff added to the files while they are being transfered (its automatic, you don't have to do anything) but the overall format isn't changed, its still a native MP3.
I still will agree that ATRAC3 is crap, but I haven't found any form of DRM that I do like (or even find acceptable). But their new line of MP3 players are nice devices overall and really aren't not worse then the iPods as far as easy of use goes (I will say the overall build quality of my new device is better then my old iPod in the sense that this thing doesn't get scratched nearly was easily).
Other tech companies that aren't creating content don't give a rats ass about Sony's video and music divisions. however, the people who run sony are composed of all these competing groups and their interests naturally conflict, because the hardware group has to compete against other tech companies that, as I noted, don't give a fat rats ass about Sony's special IP interests.
As a consequence, in order to placate the Music and Video divisions, the engineers had to come up with a way to allow people to move mp3s to their MP3 player while, at the same time, preventing people fro musing the Player as a transference device for sharing. If it's proprietary, all te better to placate the PHBs in hardware who never saw a proprietary system they disliked (viz Minidisk, beta, ATRAK, etc.)
The good thing about this is: Sony's gear will always be hobbled by having to drag the retards in the Music and Video divisions along, which allows other companies to come in and fill the void without having the 3,000 lb sony gorilla pooping all over the market.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
why do you care how they are stored on the device?
:-)
When your HD goes and your only copy of some digital music is on your player.
Then you care quite a lot.
And yes I have had that happen.
That's the great thing about HD players, they are backup devices for people that don't know any better - and for people that should.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does it come with a stopwatch? That's the dealbreaker, really.
The more people buy into this Scheme Sony is trying the more reason they will have to block the consumer from changing the volume above what the Riaa thinks there artists songs should be heard.
If you've got a Mac, why are you buying a this lame Sony player?
You can't play Lumines on an iPod, or even on an iBook. Multiple use devices such as the PSP are not necessarily lame.
Personally I just use my Shuffle as a glorified pen drive. I'm not really one for music, but in between toting around Damm Small Linux, 200mb of Linux and Windows utilities (now I've no excuse not to have Firefox to give to people :p), miscellaneous files and the odd Battlegar Galactica episode, I still have room for a full album. The fact I don't have to mess with batteries if I do want to listen to an album is another plus.
Good business sense has nothing to do with how music companies operate. Here are two examples where companies are literally refusing free money, not out of fear of piracy, but simply out of fear, because these new obviously profitable ventures are different from their standard way of doing busiiness:
Fiona Apple saga shows Sony's core dilemma
"So nobody wins. Fiona Apple's album goes mostly unheard. Sony gets no revenues from its being downloaded. And all because the idea of selling music online has to be made to fit into the strategies used for 90-odd years. You've adapted your job and your business to this interweb thing. But the record labels still think the Net should bow to their thinking."
Apple Japan 'will' open Music Store
"To date, it's proved very hard for companies to launch digital music services in Japan, thanks to the power wielded by recording companies, most of who fear declining CD sales if this downloading thing takes off. Never mind that digital music actually offers them better margins, they're not at all keen on it."
Now excuse me while load *.OGG files onto my Rio Karma via SHH from a remote SAMBA server...
:-)
I found that when I used the SHH protocol to transfer files, the sound volume was adversely affected. Now I use SSH and it sound much better
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
...but if you try sometimes, you just might find - you get what you need.
Do you spazoids really NEED 40 frickin' gigs? Or are you just too lazy to update your digital music player regularly?
You're not paying the extra cash because you really need it, but for the convenience. I have a 40-gig iPod for regular use and an iPod mini that I got on the cheap for jogging. The truth is that I listen to the same music on both. It's a sad fact I reluctantly admitted to myself when I was going over my finances to consider buying a 60-gig.
I really don't need 40 gigs. I definitely don't need 60, despite having that much music in my collection. But the truth is that so much of that is really just excess. My Allman Brothers collection has about 4 different versions of every song, for chrissakes! A "puny" little 4 gig ipod mini really is more than enough.
The only downside is that I'd have to go through the "hassle" of updating it once every couple of months. Oh, the agony!
Take a look at your own player. Chances are you've had at least half your collection on that iPod of yours for as long as you've owned it yet never listened to it. You don't "need" so much - you're just unwilling to part with your live version of the "best of Celine Dion." Do you really need to always have the normal and live versions of that garbage to compare with one another? Moderation, discipline, self-control - c'mon people! Celine will still be waiting to screech at you on your home computer.
But on the subject of Sony - yes, they do suck in this case. I remember when people would walk into an electronics store and ask for Sony stuff just because they trusted the name so much. Now they only do that with the PS2 - and even then a lot of typical consumers forget that Sony makes it.
(Sorry OGG fans, but that stuff's going nowhere... except /. posts).
I think possibly, you have inadvertantly made a very astute observation. One of the prevalent reasons Betamax "lost", was that early on VHS could record more on a single tape. This was an attractive feature for people using their video cassette recorders to tape 1/2 hr television programs, film home movies or duplicate film. Sony additionally handicapped themselves, as well, by not licensing their technology. They were ensuring that VHS would be more abundant in the marketplace. So to recap; Betamax failed because
a). It offered smaller storage
b). Proprietary format
Sound familliar?
crazy dynamite monkey
This article talks about the demotion of the hardware guy Ken Kutaragi. People thought he might be the next CEO. Instead he was demoted (lost his seat on the board) and one of the reasons is he had the gall to say "Sony also has been hurt by its insistence on making its content proprietary"
More links to same story
Very very sad. Explains what happened to the MD which could have been a great format...
Until they actually use the radio and realize they get inferior reception.
it doesn't matter whether it does or not as long as they think it does.
Hey, I'm sitting here thinking that you're my bitch. True or not, you'd better bend over and grab your ankles because I'm coming home, honey!
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
As long as Sony Music/Movies/Media and Sony Hardware is the same company this will always play out...
As it stands the hardware end would probably be willing to do some nice stuff (remeber they invented the whole walkman and everythign that goes with portable media) but that was before the Media end of Sony was as profitible as it is now...
So till the tables turn this is just business as usual and we really shouldnt be surprised at all.
I have used MusicMagic Mixer with iTunes and the playlists work just fine on my iPod Shuffle, so I'm really confused about how this makes your karma with the "awful Rio Music Manager" superior. Can you elaborate on that?
Its probably just that I'm getting older, but the link in the parent (to Sony's site) contained some of the weakest (read stupid) advertising I have ever seen.
Come ON: "And the crystal-clear one-line LCD display makes it simple to find and play whatever you're after."
Exactly HOW does that make it easy for me to scroll through 50+ songs?
I'd like to plug, for instance, eMusic, a subscription service for non-DRM mp3s ($10 fer 40 downloads per month). Their catalog isn't too bad, although it is heavy on the stuff that, um, doesn't sell well otherwise. But if you like Jazz, or bands like Big Star or Yo La Tengo, it's fantastic.
Most of the stuff comes from small labels, of course.
Now if I could just play it on a decent non-DRM HD based player, with a great user interface, that's also a portable data drive, Earth would be the best planet ever. Hey! That's like something Sony would've made, in the old days...
> and perhaps even to create the Walkman of the 21st century.
0 3& sid=a58iozj_2jXM
It's called an iPod.
56% of surveyed kids (!) have one.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=100001
It's not just the player that has to be beaten... it's the branding too.
Something is very very wrong with Sony these days.
I for one read the bit about the obfuscation and immediately dismissed their devices as useless e.g. "here we go again.. more of their idiot DRM crapfuscation".
Sony just don't get it do they ? They've simply lost the plot. People just want to play/copy etc. what they want when they want. That's what will sell. The original Sony Walkman was great precisely because you just taped something (either from a record, a CD, the radio or a microphone) you popped the cassette it your walkman and you played it. No fucking about with computer formats/DRM or other unecessary shite.
Sony get your heads round this simple idea "The customer should control the device". The device should not attempt to control the customer. If you try this your device will fail.
Mp3 is the "format de jour" of portable devices. People have collections of mp3 files. I for one just want to "copy them to my portable device and go" (something I can do with my cheap "no name" mp3 player). Sorry but I'm not putting up with anything that gets in the way of that. Not one thing. If I have to I'll just go back to a portable CD player with home burned CDs. And I bet I'm not the only one.
On a simiar note a mate of mine has a Sony DVD player that cost him over £ 200 (uk) It's fussy as hell about the discs you put in it and rejects most "home burned" CD and DVDRs - and it should be said here these DVDRs are mostly of home video footage (of his bloody kids and holidays too... arrghh !!!!)
One of my other mates has a Ronin 215 which cost her £ 23 (uk). In contrast to the Sony it will have a go at anything you put in it and so far she's not found a single disc that won't play in it - even some of the ones her 4 year old son has scratched to bits (another good reason for making backups of your DVD collection)
So we got the players together for a "super test" and when they do both manage to play the same disc can you tell the difference in quality ? Only just but it's very, very close (although we didn't test them on a terribly expensive television)
Moral of the story ? My first mate now has a Ronin 215 as well and it's put us off buying any expensive consumer "media playback" equipment for life.
Sorry, Sony have completely lost it big time and are simply not worth considering for portable audio players.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Minidisc players are small enough, have great battery life, have for zillions of years offered better-than-128kbps-mp3-sound, and usually double as a recorder.
Why I got one was because of the format itself: MDs cost next to nothing. Couple of years back, mp3 players were a joke. Qualitywise and capacitywisy.
The only pain with MD players is in making and carrying the MDs. Takes time and space. Usually one converts the favorites into MD's and tugs a couple in pocket - but they're BIG by todays standards. Much easier to keep to collection on puter, then quickly copy some shit on either some portable POS, or keep some stuff on an iPod.
The arguments about bad headphones are null and void. Get good headphones.
Hell, the new Nokia 9300 Communicator with good headphones has better mp3 sound output than a creative MuVo :-D Get a big mem card and off you go, no extra ipods bulging in pocket.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
I seriously doubt you own 40 legit gigs.
Hell, this user has 40 legit gigs tied up in a few live versions of 'Dark Star'
So if someone wants to sell me new fluorescent, HID, LED, or whatever illuminating technology, it would help a helluva lot if its power connector was compatible with what I have in the house.
A marketer may try in vain to sell me some light bulb that won't work in my house. Yeh, it may be technically superior, but if it wants 86 volts at 307 Hz to run, and uses some weird socket I have trouble getting, what use is it?
Likewise, if some company produces something that won't use the standard file formats, its about as useful to me as a 86 volt / 307 Hz light bulb.
If I was really desperate for the light, I would suffer the inconvenience of using power converters to satiate the thing's inability to function naturally as part of my 'team', but it would be first to go when any compatible lighting solution appears.
Or to put it in business parlance, propritary file formats are "not team players" and won't work well with others. Just as the businessman has to reject people who won't work well with others, consumers need to do the same and reject businesses who produce incompatible products which need special treatment before they work.
I would see such a company producing such a thing as just another one of those PHB-led companies using investor-supplied capital to power bobbling marketingheads until they burn through their funding, leaving the PHB's explaining to the investors exactly how their investment monies disappeared - how not only are they not getting their promised phenomenal returns, they won't even get any of their original investment back, and at that time, the fine print on the prospectus will be shown to the investor so they can't even try to recover their funds from the people which were paid with their money.
Personally, I question why people who spend other's money designing incompatible stuff still have a job. And even more so, why do these people who hired these people still have a job? Coining incompatible file formats to me is just about as asinine as teaching students obscure languages in technical schools so no-one but alumni can communicate with them... in essence producing a class of students useless in society.
As long as we have dumb investors out there funding all this crap, this is gonna happen.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Sony does seem to be doing better at creating "the GameBoy of the 21st Century."
There are plenty of excellent MP3 players that work really, really well: they just plug into USB, show up as drives, can read and organize things by MP3 tags (no need to create playlists), and charge through USB. The Rio Carbon is an example of that. For Flash based players, there are lots of them around. My3IA.com makes cheap ones that work well in my experience (you can pick up a 128M one for $35).
I think people who buy the big, popular consumer name brands just haven't done their homework: there are better deals than that around.
I just recently purchased myself a PlayStation Portable (yeah, yeah). As you may or may not know, it also has the ability to play MP3s and (properly-encoded) MPEG-4 videos, as well as display photos. Fortunately, this obfuscation the posting mentions (I haven't read the articly yet, sorry) isn't used on the PSP - I can copy any MP3s directly onto my PSP and play them. Supposedly it also plays ATRAC3(plus) encoded audio streams... though I don't even know of an encoder for the format, so MP3 it is.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I promptly returned the device to the dealer. And I got so angry about it that I submitted a Slashdot story. It got accepted. And rightly so!
I just bought a Network Walkman today, I'm happy to see that I can copy files into it with Linux, but at this point I'd like to know if I can initialize the Network Walkman with Linux. Any help?
If I can't get it working without Windows, I'll just take it back to the store. This is not enough reason to purchase a copy of Windows.
If I cannot initialize a Network Walkman with Linux, what flash-based 1GB players do work with only Linux?
Shae Erisson - ScannedInAvian.com
What about the ogg format, all my CD backups are in this format!
Karma sounds better, and has superior onboard tools for handling playlists, and also handles formats that the iPod doesn't handle, like ogg and flac, so I don't have to base my mixing decision on file formats. Rio Music Manager is an awful interface, but not as bad as iTunes, which has majorly mucked up every computer I've tried to run it on, not to mention its crappy encoding, and non-standard id3 tags.
while im not a crazy audio philie, the psp does have a decent music player (with a very large ability to build on with more updates) but for the long and distant future, nobody will have a memorystick based (or really any other flash card) mp3 player, simply because of memory density/cost. i agree its a good time wasting one, but for most of the time, people will be playing movies for long periods of time.
2 side notes. first off, its confirmed that very shortly, psp's will be able to play mp3s in the background while playing games and second, i have no idea why they didn't give it a micro hdd. even as an add on with an expansion slot, it wouldn't have added THAT much room, and would have made its utility much higher than anything else
You might be the last remaining person on Earth with a working Rio Karma!! I gave up after #4 died and bought an iPod. Techie-loyalty be damned.
I am very impressed with my creative muvo tx mp3 player. It's a pen (flash) drive with an mp3 player built in. If you can mount a pen drive, you can load this player... (no usb cables needed)
I believe the ipod shuffle has a similar interface, but I like my LCD display, FM radio, voice and radio recording. Shuffle might require itunes software, where muvo doesn't require any software once mounted.
Karma sounds better
Bet you it doesn't, the iPod Shuffle is damn good, and has better bass response than any other player I've tried... including the disk-based iPods.
and has superior onboard tools for handling playlists
The point of this exersize was NOT having to fiddle with playlists while you're listening.
I don't have to base my mixing decision on file formats.
Ah, it supports MP4/AAC as well?
NO device, it seems, supports all the possible formats. You always have to include formats in your calculations.
We have a lot of Sony products. I think every major electronic appliance has a memory stick. We're about to take a long road trip, and I'm looking for a music player to take along. I'd *like* to buy Sony, but these new players look like non-products. I mean really -- putting aside the decision to intentionally make it hard to put music on them, why do they use fixed memory? Why can't I pull the memory stick with mp3 files out of my Sony TV and just plug it into the mp3 player? If I have to use some proprietary software to download tunes to it, why not get an ipod instead? I mean, what am I missing here? Ron
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
That sounds like the exact format I want my portable music to be in, so I may be opening an account. Thanks for the tip!
[javac] 100 errors
Since we are talking portable music players:
Does anyone know of any portable players that
support the Ogg format? Two thirds of my music
is in this format and I'm in no hurry to re-rip
it.
"Drug related crime" is a misnomer, "prohibition related crime" is the more accurate and correct phrase.
Coincidentally, Sony and Apple were two of the leaders of the Firewire/iLink push even though the 1394 market was less obvious than the digital music market, which puts both adversaries in the same boat. Nobody can rationally doubt that Apple has beaten it's 1394 partner this time around since Sony is poorly playing catchup in a market that Apple has defined. I also have to say that FP guy is going a bit overboard on his judgment of the iPod. For one, the iPod shuffle has an auto-fill option that does exactly what it says, removing any replay action. And even if you don't have an iPod shuffle with its auto-fill trick there are plenty of ways to make up for it using smart playlists which happen to be database queries based against the iTunes Music Database. (You didn't think iTunes and the iPod were simply music players did you?) There is even a site dedicated to techniques for effective smart-playlist usage (though that's no surprise since there are sites for anything) which directly correlates to heightened iPod enjoyability since you have the ability to sync certain playlists to your iPod automatically. The iPod is a very good front-end to a music databasing system which is robust, easy to use, and works well for the majority of people who want to listen to their music and who do not have esoteric or clandestine old-school technology fetishes or a passionate desire for a dumb (as in feature-poor), manual-update drag-and-drop music player. Even though Sony and Apple pioneered 1394 together it looks as though Sony is only partially (not at all?) clued in as to what makes a whole Digital Music Player solution. It's not just the player.
Just look at videotaped in-theater movies for sale on the streets of New York - the quality is horrible, yet people still buy them. On my commute home, I can't count how many cars I hear blaring a 64kbps MP3 of the latest 50 cent song. I (and probably many slashdotters) have no problem paying for quality music, but there are a lot of people who won't pay if they don't have to.
I just wasted $26 on two crappy CDs - the latest from Judas Priest and Corrosion of Conformity. There are a few good songs on each CD, but overall the complete albums aren't so good. I could have gotten the songs I like from iTunes (if available) but one of my players doesn't know what AAC is.
1. Cheap It's hard to compete with your aftermarket/used price for a new model at the capacity you list, but although non iPod 512MB flash players tend to range from $129-$199, Apple has a 512mb model at $99, 1GB at $149 and 4GB hard disk model at $199. Compared to the other players in the market, those are cheap. Otherwise, shop on eBay or at pawn shops.
2. No proprietary formats required IFAIK, most players support MP3s - even the ubiquitous iPod. These Sony players stick out like a sore thumb with their proprietary format. Of course, MP3 is a licensed format which might qualify it as a proprietary format in the minds of some so perhaps you were referring to open source OGG files?
3. No "DRM."I wonder why so many people seem to forget that iPods play MP3s. It's true that the iTunes Music Store sells DRM'd songs, playable on FairPlay(TM) licensed only players, but iPods play AIFF, WAV, MP3, and all the AAC MPEG4 audio formats. None of those formats requires DRM to play on the iPod. As for WMA players, they play non-DRM'd MP3s as well. So players matching this criteria exist as well, unless you want a pure, untainted player that cannot understand any form of DRM whatsoever - maybe those Pez players scheduled for release later this year? ;)
4. Reliable, built to last, long battery life Once again, most models out there can meet these requirements. I've dropped my iPod mini and watched it bounce about and not had problems with playback. iPod shuffles have no moving parts so they meet this criteria as well, as would other flash players. I've heard good things about iRivers, etc. YMMV, but it all depends on the model, of which there are many to choose from.
5. Connects to my machine without drivers, i.e. acts like an external hard disk. Once again, models exist, such as the iPod. Even the iPod shuffle can be configured to be a USB flash drive from within iTunes. There are plenty of non-iPod players that mount as hard drives as well.
What this means is that your dream player is probably already on the market. Unless by dream player what you want is an anti-corporate, barebones player marketed on price alone. I don't know if you will find something like that without buying from Asia. OR you could build one yourself: http://www.buildmp3player.com/ Then you could stick it into any unfashionable form you see fit.
The Splintered Mind - Overcoming
TeraValue NewGen 5
.MP3 files to .REC if you ever want to get them off again, or install the alternate firmware -- which limits MP3 encoding to 96Kbps to make the RIAA happy. This NewGen has all the features of the iRiver, but no DRM bullshit.
I just bought one over the weekend... acts as a USB mass storage drive (that is, it just shows up and you can copy whatever files, be they MP3 or otherwise, to and from it), no stupid management software that tries to impose DRM.
Direct encoding from 32kbps to 224 kbps, 32KHz to 48KHz (!!) via the line input. FM tuner, voice mic, which can also both be recorded. Expands to 1GB via SD/MMC cards.
Sony, iRiver and Apple all need a kick in the ass. Go buy an MP3 player that doesn't limit our freedom and email these guys why you DIDN'T buy their unit.
I have an iRiver IFP-595T which is good too, but you either have to use their manager software to get files on and off -- and rename your
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
I own 700 CDs. That's about 6000 files or so and doesn't even count the songs I legitimately downloaded. Do the math. It's a lot more than 40 gigs.
I've been buying CDs for twenty years. They add up.
The cake is a pie
I also bought the NW-E407 model.
I wonder if iRiver ships to Sweden?
Anyway, thanks for the info!
Shae Erisson - ScannedInAvian.com
I like iRiver too, except their flash-based players require you to use their stupid manager program if you want decent (> 96kbps) encoding via the unit's line-in. That is: The non-manager firmware is intentionally crippled to limit direct encoding to 96kbps. The 'manager' firmware allows encoding up to 256kbps.
They keep lying on their forums about some 'USB problem' with having USB-mass-storage firmware and high bitrate MP3 encoding at the same time.
Other than this, their units are great. But I found another brand, www.teravalue.com (Nexgen 5) that acts as a USB mass-storage device (no DRM getting MP3s on and off) *and* allows line-in encoding up to 224Kbps, 48KHz. Expandable via SD cards up to 1GB too unlike the iRiver iFP series.
Downsides: no OGG support, and the line-in is a non-standard 1/10" (cell-phone?) jack which needs an adaptor to standard 1/8" stereo in.
There *are* options out there without DRM crap, if you are willing to shop around a bit.
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
They will because Bush uses an iPod. It was reported in my local newspaper (proving that some collumnists really have nothing useful to do with their time) that Bush has the biggest capacity (the one that holds ~10,000 songs) iPod with 250 songs in his playlist. He has one of his aides download music from iTunes
Free MacMini
The wrapping process looks like it makes the player firmware easier: - it strips out ID3 so it does not need to deal with that - it tells the player how long the track time is - it tells the player how many frames the track is The content is still there in the clear. This sounds like very crude player software.
I would assume the hardware portion of Sony could care less what format goes where. I would assume the entertainment division is the big factor in all this.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Yeah, you have to consider formats. mp4/aac bring nothing to the table I don't get through ogg and mp3, except for DRM. Which I won't use. But you also have to consider capacity. Using FLAC, or Apple lossless, you could fit 2-3 albums on your iPod Shuffle.
What music player do you use instead on windows? WinAmp? I can't stand the interface. I practically jumped for joy when Apple released iTunes for PC, not because I had been annoyed by my third-party ipod-syncing tools, but because it mean I could finally stop rummaging through the dumpster that is the windows MP3 player market.
I tried about five different players, and none of them came close to iTunes simplicity and ease of use. I don't care if it takes up some memory - I usually have plenty free anyway. I care about the fact that winamp, the best other player I found, looks and acts like crap no matter how you skin it because no one making skins understands anything about user interface.
iTunes isn't even my favorite player on the mac, or wasn't - the soundjam it used to be before apple bought it honestly was. I still miss some of its random little features. But honestly, I'd like to hear what you would replace iTunes with that is so great.
Yeah, you have to consider formats. mp4/aac bring nothing to the table I don't get through ogg and mp3
ogg and mp3 bring nothing to the table I don't get through AAC.
except for DRM
That's not part of MP4/AAC, that's an Apple proprietary layer on top of it. The same thing could be done with ogg or mp3.
For the record, iTunes does suck ass in my opinion. But, the problem of it crashing or disconnecting you ipod in the middle of a transfer is not it's fault. The problem is due to a faulty battery. If your luckly, the iPod wont unmount correctly and you will get a BSOD screen (at least it did on my XP Pro).
At first I though the issue was with my firewire (IEEE 1394) ports and known compatibility. But, this issue happend when I tried using the port on my Audigy 2 card. This did not make a difference. It finally got so bad that charging the iPod for a few minutes helped a lot before I connected it to my PC. That's when I started to get suspecious of a fauly battery.
Because of the on-going issue with my iPod, I decided to cash in on my extended 4 year warranty plan I got from Best Buy. After having to deal with customer-no-service, the finally submitted my unit for repair. To make a long story short, Apple replaced the battery and I got my unit back.
End resault: I haven't had a problem with file transfers and a quickly draining batter life. I can only suspect the fauly battery was not supplying the peak current needed by the unit due to the hard drives requirement during data transfer. Hence, it shits the bed after about 5 minutes of file transfers in iTunes.
Life is not for the lazy.
The iRiver flash models seem excellent, especially with the long battery life by virtue of using AA batteries.
However, they lack one feature that I consider important - the ability to plug into a USB port without a mandatory cable.
In effect, I'd like the MP3 player to double as a USB key, something that the Creative Muvo TX FM or the MPIO FY400 can do (unfortunately, these players take a AAA battery).
The closest I found so far is the Samsung YP-MT6Z, which comes with a short USB attachment that can be used instead of the cable.
Having SD card expandability (a la Diva Gem) is also a nice-to-have feature.
If I can find a flash player that, in addition to being a good player, has Long battery life (AA battery), USB 2.0 High Speed interface (doesn't need a cable) and an SD slot, I will no longer need a USB key or a card reader (for the digicam).
Unfortunately, I doubt such a beast exists.
Just so the record is straight on this, all of the above are pretty much true of the ipod shuffle:
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Bingo! And I am happy to have chosen iRiver H320. It does not lock me down with iTunes, and has more features than iPod. What it lacks is the 'cuteness', and I ain't complaining about that..!
I recall this from the other year, tis why Sony took so long to release a HD player. But Sony also needs to do more then offer basic MP3 playback on their devices.
I can Play MP3's on my 2 year old Clié also, but like the PSP Sony didn't give me anyways to manage my non-A3 music. I can't even change the order or rename my MP3 music once it's on the memory stick. If I do, then the internal audio app tells me it's corrupt until I change it back to the way it was.
Needles to say, I moved to an iPod which doesn't care if I'm using AAC or WAV. It is everything I had expected my $600 Sony to be and much more. I found out the naive way that Sony had only mislead me about MP3 playback and had intentionally crippled my music options. They wanted to control every aspect of my digital audio, even though I owned it on CD. Sony actually expected me to check-in and check-out my songs from the Clié. I and many of my friends encountered this and dumped Sony for audio. They just don't get it. Sonic Stage also didn't help, this software definately does not carry Sony's great design. It can only be described as a steaming pile of shite.
Sony needs to make a device that has the same level of hardware/software integration that is found with an iPod, along with fixing their internal disputes. Until this happens their audio products only merit nice design, but nothing else. They could've owned this market, but instead they made it quite easy for Apple, which does understand our needs to come in and even out-sell the Walkman big time. I doubt Sony will ever get it, so I'm sticking with my iPod and CDs.
From the link you provided:
Note: No license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with an annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00.
MP3 itself is digital rights management
Could you try and be a little more ignorant? "Digital rights management" controls what the end user can do with the content. Does the MP3 format do this in any way, shape or form? No.
how many bands do you know, that sell MP3 files, make more than the $100,000 required for the license fees to kick in?
The $100K minimum wouldn't apply to an individual band but rather to the band's e-label, which is more likely to have more than $100K in related revenue, for a sufficiently broad definition of "related".
Foobar is the greatest windows audio player. I wish there was a *nix equivalent. No bloat, lightning fast, supports global hotkeys, nearly any audio format, tabbed playlists, dynamic folders, and a ton of other neat features with just a little tweaking. It is simply the best.
Tell me about it. I bought a 40GB Neo Jukebox back in 2001 for my car, and I am still always changing the music in it, making new playlists, etc. Control is important as music is best when it fits the mood. If I am in a philosophical mood, the music should be, too. If I am in an angry mood, the music should be able to match!
I can't afford a sig!
I like Audio Lunchbox for a la carte, subscription-free, DRM-free music downloads, complete with artwork.
You can also get entire indy CDs (actual physical media - remember that?) from CD Baby. CD Baby artists may not get the same airplay, but there's a lot of good stuff on there. I highly recommend that you try browsing by flavor.
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
j&r
"But wait -- you cannot just put your MP3s onto the device, you have to run them through Sony's obfuscation software first. The obfuscated files, when installed properly on the device, can be played. But you can't just move them around, share them with your friends, whatever. Well, of course the obfuscation scheme has already been broken by a brave hacker."
Wait a minute. Why are they bitching about this? Apple PIONEERED this technique with the iPod. You cannot do this with the iPod so why are they trashing the sony players for doing the SAME LIMITATION? This story has BIASED written all over it.
Even with the iPod, brave hackers have figured out a way to share the MP3's loaded onto an iPod with iTunes.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
From the looks of it (and from the looks of the typical iPod owner) this shouldn't be too difficult of a problem...
heh
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
I recently bagged an iPod Shuffle, which is the greatest mix-tape delivery system I could possible imagine, especially since I've made a few purchases from the iTunes Music Store.
That said, it links itself to a certain Mac's library, and -- afaict -- I'm not able to move files around with it either. In fact, when I plug it into my iBook after sync'n with my iMac, it forces me to erase its contents before filling it up with songs from my mobile computer. Sure, they're mp3s, but Apple has still trapped them and placed another barrier to entry or, in this case, copy.
"But is this really the way to create the "Network Walkman" of the 21st century?" Apparently so.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
1. Would you get the option to turn that off? Because I wouldn't want it randomly selecting songs from the 100GB on my HDD. I'd be picking what I wanted and only updating the list when I felt like.
2. 1GB is nice for a day or 3 when you can change the songs every night, but doesn't help when you're going for a 4 week driving tour of the country and you've got the thing hooked to the car stereo. At that point give me a 60GB iRiver or Zen.
1. Would you get the option to turn that off? Because I wouldn't want it randomly selecting songs from the 100GB on my HDD. I'd be picking what I wanted and only updating the list when I felt like.
Yes you can turn random fill off. You can also load what you want (select playlists) and have it random fill in the remainder. You can also have the random fill pick what you tell it you like more often. The shuffle can play songs in order or randomly. It's all pretty painless and easy not to mention elegantly done. I have a iPod shuffle and love it.
2. 1GB is nice for a day or 3 when you can change the songs every night, but doesn't help when you're going for a 4 week driving tour of the country and you've got the thing hooked to the car stereo. At that point give me a 60GB iRiver or Zen.
Yep... or a 60GB iPod. If you can't update, you're stuck with about 20 hours of music for the 1GB shuffle. Of course that 20 hours of music is about 240 songs or 20 CD's which is more than most people take in their car on a road trip anyhow.
But... You'd need to recharge the shuffle anyhow and as far as I can tell, recharge and play are mutually exclusive on my shuffle (at least when plugged into a computer).
However, there's no reason an iRiver or Zen HD playerswould be better than an iPod 60GB. As far as brand experience, I had an iRiver flash player and the DRM MP3 program to transfer files to it sucked compared to iTunes.
The iPod Obfuscates in its own way too (you can't just put files on, they have to run thru iTunes (or other app) to be renamed/database updated.
My sister bought a 40gb mp3 player by Archos that doesn't do this type of stuff however.
The random fill thing does sound useful then. If you have the opportunity to control it to some extent. As for the iRiver (or an Archos - meant that not a Zen), I'd buy them over the iPod because there is already a project out that has created an alternative firmware for them - Rockbox.org. Adds a lot more power to the things.
they look like dikes, so what do I care? :-)
The PSP isn't an iPod killer, but then again it's a much better music player than the iPod is a game machine. I'd been thinking about getting an mp3 player and this feature in the PSP sealed the deal for me. One device that does, games, music, movies and who knows what else for $249. Steal!
I've only got a 256MB card in mine though. The PSP is increasing sales of Memory Stick Duo media, that's for certain.
I was surprised about the lack of an HDD too. Perhaps they were worried about how much more of a hit to the battery life that would cause.
Oh Well perhaps a "PSP2" will have one.
Funny thing is, you CAN drag and drop mp3's into the Sony PSP. Yeah, in some ways the PSP is a better mp3 device than Sony's dedicate mp3 players.
Nokia 6230.
Transfers are by Bluetooth instead of electric string. MMC for storage.
My only problem so far has been Windows XP won't use my Belkin Bluetooth Dongle on any given machine more than once...
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Let us get this straight. You:
1. Take data that works great in the global standard format
2. Break it to work in different units to fit you corporate culture
3. Watch as your hardware and millions of dollars turn into a flaming fireball that crashes to the ground in a smoldering crater
What a great idea!
Sincerely,
Sony
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Establish digital management rules within range of the "Home Use" interpretation of Fair Use (for the curious, your Fair Use rights are established in US Code under Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 106 or 107
It's section 107.
Fair Use was NOT established by that section. That section was added in 1976 but Fair Use was in fact established in the early 1800's by the courts on constitutional grounds. Copyright law was found to come in conflict with the First Amendment and other parts of the Constitution and Fair Use was invented to RESCUE copyright law from being struck down as unconstitutional. The 1976 congressional record explicitly states that section 107 was not intended to expand, diminish, or alter existing Fair Use in any way. We could in fact strike section 107 from the law and absolutely nothing would change. Fair Use is a judicial contruct on Constitutional grounds and superceeds copyright law.
Companies cannot choose what they think is 'fair' and offer what they feel like offering as supposedly 'fair use'. Fair Use is a legal term with a fixed legal meaning. If something is legally Fair Use then it is not copyright infringement, no matter what the copyright holder would like to say about it.
It is impossible to create any sort of DRM system that is actually compliant with the legal range of Fair Use. Not unless you have a telepathic DRM system that can read the users intent and which is also precognitive to predicting the legal status of never before imagined uses and technologies.
An excellent post aside from item 2 and its advocating DRM and the fuzzy view of Fair Use. Had they opened such a store selling MP3 downloads *before* Napster and with the other consideraction you mention, they would have been extremely sucessfull. Not only that but we wouldn't have had the P2P explosion we had. The reason for the P2P explosion was that the music industry imposes an online market vacuum for over half a decade. There was a huge demand for music downloads and they refused to serve that market. Nature, and markets, abhor a vacuum. P2P exploded to fill this vacuum. The RIAA effectively CREATED P2P as we now know it.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
One good idea I've heard bandied about is to have a wireless HDD. I'd certainly get one.
I just took back my NW-E407 and ordered an iRiver, much thanks for the advice.
Shae Erisson - ScannedInAvian.com
So do you work for them? It's kind of unrelated to what I was saying. I was not saying the smart playlists were the greatest thing ever, just pointing out how the Shuffle could do what was wanted.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. Only slightly better than VHS, and only at the fastest speed (which was too short for movies on Betamax, but not on VHS).
2. Much more expensive initially because Sony refused to license it and priced it too high, leading to strong initial popularity for the competition.
3. Used only proprietary formats.
4. Uninteresting to studios as a release medium for movies because Sony refused to license it.
Basically, what killed Betamax is that, while it might have had -slightly- better picture quality at the fastest tape speed, it was very much like every other Sony product in my memory---ignoring the customer's needs and delivering a weakened consumer product to protect their other divisions, particularly their high-end video products (at the time, 3/4U). That explains almost all of the really major design defects I've seen in their consumer products. It also explains their dogged resistance to MP3.
Basically, over the past decade, Sony has repeatedly shown us the best reason for companies of a certain size to divest themselves of unrelated interests. As long as Sony Music is under the same hood, Sony's electronics division will never be free of its influence and will likely never be able to ship a decent portable music product without asinine kludges like 'obfuscating the MP3s'.
Just my $0.02.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
My iRiver plays Ogg and Quality-based VBR WMA (which has, to my ears, the best quality-based VBA sound per bitrate available).
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
2) Most car stereos these days support MP3 CDROMs. I don't know about changers, but at least single-CD players do, because it no longer costs money to add the feature.
Most car stereos also support an Auxiliary Input, though most car stereos as installed by car dealers don't make it reachable and the fscking things don't have it on the front plate where it would be easy to reach, so you've probably got to drill the holes and then wire it yourself. However, once you've done that, it's easy to plug in your MP3 player.
And while an iPod Shuffle doesn't have the most *powerful* interface in the world, it's definitely something you can run while driving, because all you're going to do is hit the "pause" and "skip" buttons, and you can set it to play playlists in order if you don't like randomness.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks