Slashdot Mirror
MP3 Player Shoppers Guide
An anonymous reader writes "Says this three-part rundown of the latest DAPs "When Sony execs crowed a few weeks ago that their latest MP3 players were THE iPod Killers one thing was obvious. They were oblivious to the fact that the term "iPod Killer" had already gone from clever market-speak to running joke." Still, quite a few neat players here and I bet most don't scratch up as bad as iPods do."
"Sony execs crowed a few weeks ago that their latest MP3 players were THE iPod Killers"
What we didn't know, is that the Sony MP3 player actually DOES kill you if you copy non-DRM music to it. Look it up, it's in their EULA.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/PortablePlayers
They won't put a dent in the iPod sales, either.
This issue is user experience. You can add all the gadgetry you want, but it becomes a complex tool. People want their music device simple, easy to navigate and elegant. They don't want the kitchen sink thrown into the tool.
...a website which, when most seem to think über-long flash intros, banners everywhere and convoluted stylesheets are acceptable and good, chooses to use plain old-fashioned HTML?
High-fives to whoever designed the website. The layout is nice and clean, and is pretty much guarenteed to load in any browser. If we had more websites like this, the web would be so much more tolerable.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Do any of these support gapless playback, or do DAPs still suck for albums with transitions, like Abbey Road or Dark Side Of The Moon?
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
Yes, I think the iPod killer will be something twice as expensive and twice as bling-bling.
Maybe they will include headphones that glow and light up to let everyone know you are using the iPod killer. Also, the headphones will include a big subwoofer so as you walk by or at the library everyone will know you're listening to an iPod killer.
I'm sure it will come with clothes and jewelery too as you can then integrate it to your look - the goth with the iPod killer look or the nuMetal kid + iPod killer look.
after the two stories - one about the rootkit and two about Sony's EULA i think i will not buy a Sony product when it comes to an mp3 player...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Looks like sony wants to have their cake and eat it too. If its not legal to rip their music. Then how is their MP3 player supposed to be filled? I guess its ok to rip OTHER peoples music.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
rename iPod $sys$ipod
I briefly looked at the list, and I didn't see any player supporting AAC format (Of course, I guess that apple don't license their format for other players). All my music collection is managed by iTunes, and most of my files are AAC. If I wanted to buy a portable player, what choices I have other than iPod?
The iPod Killer must come with an iTunes Killer!
perception is reality
HD-based players are still too pricy for the average consumer. Yet the price of them hasn't changed significantly in years. Surely the drives in them are cheaper and easier to produce than they were in 2001 - so why has the price not come down significantly?
Instead, the consumer is forced to make ridiculous compromises like "will you pay $100 less and get 1/10 the storage?" Or, "How about $200 less, and you don't get a screen or any control over the playlist either."
I look over that list, and pretty much all of them, within their subclass, are IDENTICAL. The only difference is the brand name and the particular shape of the player. And, in fact, it seems like the entire industry is becoming LESS innovative, not more, especially with Rio leaving the market. I couldn't even tell you the difference between most of those.
And then people wonder why Apple has all the market share. It's the only brand name most people can name, the only one they've heard of, and none of the other models offer ANYTHING substantial to recommend themselves over it. And in the meantime, no one seems willing to try to open the market up a bit by making good players available at affordable prices.
It seems like, once again, an example of the music industry collectively shooting itself in the foot, and then whining about why no one else lives in the same world they do.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Is it seen as a USB mass storage device ? If not, you have failed. I do not want to see any kind of your proprietary software on my PC to get access to your device.
I believe the grandparent was using the term Trojan Horse in the classical sense, rather than the malware sense. iTunes is used to sneak in QuickTime. A lot of people now have QuickTime installed as a result of iTunes requiring it who would not have installed it as a stand-alone download. It does not imply that anything underhand or illegal was done.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I noticed that iRiver's line of MP3 players is (mostly) absent from this listing.
I recently got an iRiver IFP-899 and absolutely love it. I don't have any particularly overwhelming urge to store my entire music collection on a portable MP3 player, so a very expensive iPod or any of its very expensive clones are pretty much overkill for me.
Simply put, the iRiver is a great middle-of-the-road MP3 player. Rather than copying and pasting the specs from the corporate web page, I'll just list a few things that I particularly like about it.
With prices on the unit dropping to almost $150, even Apple would have a hard time beating that. At $50 more, the iPod nano has double the storage but still only half the features.
I've got an iPod killer for you...
/.
MP3 player, that runs Linux, plays back Vorbis, Flac, Speex, and of course Vinyl...
Add in a 3D 16:9 ELED screen for playing back Divx, Theora and Tarkin videos.
For navigate, throw-in a "buckling spring" scroll-wheel.
That'll be an iPod killer... at least on
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Today it runs the open source Rockbox firmware and supports virtually every major audio format in use today: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, A/52, AAC (experimental), FLAC, Shorten, Apple Lossless and WavPack. It even has a 33 shade greyscale JPEG viewer.
You can bet that when the musc player industry comes up with Audio Pills, Apple will have a cherry flavored chewable version while everyone else will go with suppositories.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No mention of the MobiBlu cube player? I got one and I love it, has FM and voice recording and equalizer, not to mention SRS WOW and an OLED screen. It's tiny and and the only clue people have that it's some kind of player is the headphones, and they come over and ask about it. Everyone is amazed by how small it is.
One main thing kept me from buying an iPod when I was MP3 player shopping.
The fact that you need to use an app (like iTunes) to load music onto it that you want to listen to.
To me, a hard-drive based digital audio player should be able to play music copied to it via Windows Explorer or Konqueror or whatever file manager you prefer to use, on whatever operating system you prefer to use.
Making it so that the iPod will ONLY play music loaded onto it via iTunes frustrates me and makes me feel restricted, like they want me to ONLY use it the way they want me to.
I don't like paying that kind of money for a device and feeling restricted.
Which was why I took my $300 and went with a different player. What I ended up with actually does more, as it turns out, than the iPod, and does it cheaper and it works the way I want it to.
Drag, drop, play. Simple. No annoying applications necessary, no annoying and unnecessary compulsory synchronization with my computer.
Personally, I think the iPods are pretty slick, but that one thing is enough to make me unwilling to shell out my bucks for it.
And the circle of life continues to spin, occasionally wobbling on its axis thanks to the weighty presence of dumb.
Also noteworthy, listening to ogg vorbis files on my iRiver H320 does chow up battery faster than listening to mp3 files.
Powerful is he who overpowers his temptations.
I disagree.
/Ex
Case in point, I spent a month of this summer in Europe, and had access to a computer twice, let alone access to my mp3 collection at home. I had about 8 gigs of music/podcasts/lectures, and managed to listen to about 2/3 of it while I was on the road (just the flights over and back were 35 hours in airports airplanes)
I also used it as a portable hard drive for my digital camera, as I could connect them directly, and thus never ran out of space on my camera (well, except the day in rome where I grabbed the wrong memory stick, and forgot the adapter in the hotel...)
Granted, this is a "once in a while" type thing, but it was worth the $400 I spent on 30g ipod photo + adapter to not have to buy a bunch of gig sticks and hope I didn't run out or lose any of them.
Now that I'm home, my main computer's m/b freaked out, and so I've been without my music collection except for the music I have on my ipod and on cds. Do I need the 30 gigs? no, but it makes this stuff a whole lot easier.
Making it so that the iPod will ONLY play music loaded onto it via iTunes frustrates me and makes me feel restricted, like they want me to ONLY use it the way they want me to.
You might have missed the point of the iPod. Remember that computers are great at handling large amounts of tiny pieces of information, and great at performing rule-based actions. Managing your MP3 player manually is like editing your web site using a text editor. Sure, you have 100% control. Sure, your HTML looks exactly like you want it to. But it just doesn't scale. Have more than N pages, you need a content management system. iTunes is your content management system for music. Stop micromanaging, give up control, gain command.
--Bud