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Portable Mp3 player for $99
Andrew Konkol sent us
another portable MP3 Player, except
that this one has 64 megs of memory and costs only $99. And of course,
its not available until mid '99 (which by my math is only a few weeks
away...
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mid '99 is more than a few weeks away. It's
the first of July (not June). By my math,
that is.
Why pay for that shoddy POS when the 32 meg Rio
is currently $70???
Price of $118 off of Buy.com and there is a $50 rebate available from Diamond until July 5.
Everyone's all excited about these stupid mp3 players as if they're some sort of breakthrough.
Get a minidisc player... much higher quality than these mp3 players and blank minidiscs are $3-4 (and how much do spare memory cards cost for those mp3 players? Too much!). If you like mp3 so much get a SB Live and an optical wire to connect to your minidisc recorder.
Did you note? The /player/ is only $99. The /software/ to create files for the player is another 50 bucks!!
Its about wether the device has a digital out, witch would allow easy perfect duplication. Or in the case of mp3 players, the ability to copy the file.
Of course, any PC can be seen as a mp3 player with the ultimate digital out/in, the net.
Witch means all PCs are illegal as well.
Hmm...
I agree that it's probably legal to make MiniDisc players. And I think MiniDisc players are overhyped. But the following comment:
"Sony made CDs!"
I'll presume you mean to say that Sony *invented* the CD. Which, IIRC, Philips (yes, the Dutch company) did. Sony has hardly ever *invented* anything. They just make it smaller and market it better, and crap like that.
All I want is a cdrom mp3 player that I can pop
in a cd with 150 songs on. Right now I have
5 cds with mp3s and store them on a 8GG harddisk
about 3GBs of mp3's. I've been waiting and waiting
for a device like this and have checked out some
prototypes, etc. but what's the delay RIAA??? those dicks
Ummmmm no shit! Of course you can put one on the other... we're talking the recordable media itself. Yes they are competing technologies being that mp3 *recorders* and MD recorders are both recording devices.
This is why I love /.
Not to give anybody ideas, but...
I would buy a portable CD-based MP3 player from Professor Harold Hill himself!!
So when do the laws of supply and demand start to kick in anyway? I guess too many people are satisfied with toy MP3 players to demand the more useful type. I can't believe they think this will send the message that what people really want is players with MUCH more capacity.
Jesus H. Christ, why is this starting to feel like waiting for broadband?! Did the RIAA dispatch thugs to firebomb the startups (*cough*NAiAM*cough*) who attempted to create these things or what?!
There wouldn't be much of a market for one, most people don't have a cd burner.
cough, sure, at $800 in Australia, yeah great
value NOT, sony proprietry ripoff shit
Whats wrong with just a $20 tape walkman? it has 400 hrs battery life.
Seriously portable mp3 players arent worth to memore than $60
MPEG4 is kickass, its so cool
I mean seriously, video encoded at 900kbit/sec
(enough to fit a movie on a normal single CD)
can look as good as DVD.
MPEG4 will make DVD even less desireable.
Pirates will reap, now we can copy/re-encode DVD to normal CDs in MPEG4, and it would be nearly identical to original. OFcourse you need a mpeg4 player (any computer) until someone makes a new H/W box that will doit.
Any serious mp3 user is going to have a CD-R burner or would be willing to buy one if the price was right on a decent portable mp3 player!
"the more things change the more they stay the same"
I might be wrong here, but the only MPEG4 codec I've seen is the one in Microsoft Media... (hate to say it, but it's better than RealVideo because (a) it's no less portable than Real G2 :) and (b) the tools, SDK specs are 'free')
But I'd much rather have a nice free (if slower) Linux codec than even 'free' MS binaries. Oh well.
the encoding DOES take alot of cpu, but the encoding still takes a fair amount. it just depends what you're comparing it to. on a Pentium II the decoding won't take much, but try playing an mp3 on a 486/66 while doing other things :)
Why is there no photo of the finished product? If it was really going to be available in "mid '99", don't you think they would have a photo of the (almost) finished product?
Plus, the website is shite. = a lie.
yes, i agree. The website is shite, for a start. If they were a serious business, i think they might at least have a half-decent web presence.
I don't think so. Play up to 64 minutes of mp3 songs. Standard model has 32 MB built-in memory (32 mins).
I downloaded the software, and the good part is, that having the CD/mp3 player integrated rocks.
Bad news is that this is the most annoying eval version I have ever had the displeasure to suffer through. Annoying dialog boxes EVERY time you click a feature say "buy buy buy, or else suffer suffer suffer".
Plus, the thing I was excited about was having the ripper, encoder, and both players all together. But the RIPPER DOESN'T WORK! I dont know if this is more eval-version hell, or if they couldn't do the math on getting the ripper to work.
The web site is suspect. The software (like the hardware) shows good ideas, but no evidence of implementation. And the greedy, annoying crap in the software just pissed me off. I don't know how they expect to create buzz about their stuff (assuming it's legit), and therefore demand, if they dont let people get a feel for what it can really do. bah.
As a final note, the mp3 player portion of ZipAudio is a hunka poo compared my current favorite (winamp). If everything else about Zipaudio worked, I wouldn't mind giving up the other cool features... but it doesn't seem to. At least not in the eval version. And winamp is free... *shrug*
(sorry for the essay, but I know you kids are above winDOHs, so I thought I would make myself useful and pass on as much as I could)
Look guys, I'm sorry, but this mp3
player looks and sounds fishy.
While it may in fact be a garage start-up
akin to what Apple was in their dawn, this
smells like a scam.
Clues:
1) Cheezy graphics on website
2) The website is a *user* account on
a foreign(Singapore) isp.
3) Their price is half of diamond's and
CL's with more features
4) Few technical specs available
If I'm wrong and they are legit, more power to
them, but beware.
It's not that vapor attempt at a Windows replacement with a bunch of emulation layers, though. It's a to-spec (limited support for undocumented features) implimentation of DOS (written in C) that works quite nicely with dosemu.
Be sure to dis the right product... (or are their names really the same? Rather confusing)...
If they pay Fraunhauffer for the patent use, how is making a hardware MP3 encoder more illigal than a tape recorder?
Tape recorders have no copyright protection. Does that make them illigal?
Posted by Fleeno:
Maybe they can't afford a 30 second TV spot, but anyone can afford a domain name and a spell checker
Posted by Open Matrix:
The decoding part takes a pretty small amount of CPU but encoding takes lots.
It says it is bundled with the software.
I interpret that to mean that the software comes free with the unit.
They have a mid-year "release date", but only a dodgy artists impression of the unit on the site...
I suspect a certain amount of bull*cough*...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
I get ~12 hours our of my Rio with a single Duracell AA...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
They'reprobably just a small startup company, but check them out first before you buy.
But, more to the point, do they have Linux software?
Deleted
Get a player that uses CF disks rather than hard wired memory. CF disks are getting cheaper and cheaper and bigger and bigger. They're hitting 128Mb at the moment and are rapidly getting larger.
Deleted
This is probably a bit off-topic... if someone announced plans to make a portable MP3 encoder, a device capable of taking audio input from, say, a microphone or a line input, MPEG encoding it and storing it in a file on a Flash card or Clik disc or what have you, it would be more interesting. It could be useful for taping concerts, sampling and a lot of other things, and you'd get nice, convenient MP3 files out of it too, unlike MiniDisc systems.
(Then again, MiniDisc (ATRAC) compression yields better quality, though you have to decompress it and convert it, as it's a proprietary algorithm.)
For those who are saying this mustn't be real becasue they don't have their own domain - they have:
http://www.zipaudio.com/
Details of their product are at: http://www.zipaudio.com/hardware.htm
Of course that's not a definite indication they are genuine but you can draw your own conclusions.
--
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
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Powered by 2 x AAA Alkaline batteries
12 hours of continuous mp3 decoding on 2 AAA batteries? I don't think so....
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Shut your trap, dorkwad. I seriously doubt that MiniDiscs are proprietary(sp?), as other people such as Kenwood and others make MiniDisc players and recorders.
OMG, Sony made CDs! They're proprietary!
The one and (thankfully) only,
LafinJack
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
Look at the responses here. Every post seems to say (I paraphrase) "Their page looks like crap, and it's on a user account, therefore they must be scam artists"
Have we all been brainwashed by the mass-marketeers to the point where we are no longer capable of believing good things can come out of a small startup company? It's no wonder the computer industry is becoming monopolized if we are afraid to buy from the upstarts. What the dominant OEMs seem to have done is ingrained in our minds that a slick public image and a top-of-the-line web site = a reputable dealer. They have succeeded in making a huge barrier to entry into the harware market. Web design costs money, something these guys probably don't have a lot of. I for one would rather see them put all their money and time into developing a better product.
0 1 - just my two bits
The 'net - in fact this very forum - make this sort of speculation unnecsesary. All we need is a couple of rich optimists to front up the dosh, and report back as to whether they get a product that works. Then we slashdot the place.
Duh,
Kris.
Win a Rio (or join the SETI Club via same link)
Apparently the Empeg fellows have been doing some website revisions since last I visited. It's still true that when they started, they were just a bunch of photos and technical details, but I guess by now they've come into enough venture capital to start marketing. I wish them the best of luck (and if I ever get a car, I may even buy their product!).
-josh
Aren't you dead?
You're pissed that while some people complain that the "glory days" of computing have "ended" (I tend to disagree; the grassroots manner in which free software is taking over the world can only be described as a glorious revolution), people will write off a new face in the computing world because they seem to be marketing their product quite badly. Thus, the computing world of the 70's and 80's has been twisted into the corporate mess of the 90's.
While I too lament the dominant force which media, marketing and corporations wield in our consumer society, I think in this particular case the naysayers have it right. Why do I think this? Basically one word: capital. Mass-producing a piece of hardware requires vast resources, and even constructing a prototype (which looks as nice as this one does) requires a decent amount of cash. Now, I'll accept that this could be a labor of love, the prototype painstakingly constructed, squeezing every penny available for what it was worth. But in this case, I would expect that the inventor would be proud enough of his invention to post information on his site. For an example of how I would expect such a project as this to happen, look at the Empeg. The site is not as squeaky-clean as, say, Diamond, but it is full of pictures and tech specs. The love is clear. With the fellow linked to above, I'm not so sure the love is there.
Hardware (especially consumer-grade hardware) has traditionally been made by companies with many resources to speak of. Think IBM, Intel, Sun, Apple, DEC, AT&T, Microsoft (in recent years), and so on. Occasionally people break onto the scene, but their products are almost never as polished as those produced by the big companies. Not that that is a bad thing necessarily, just that the polish of this product in particular is incongruous with the lack of polish on his web page. Also, why go to the trouble of drawing the thing when purportedly the real thing is sitting next to the computer ready to be photographed?
Now of course, software is a totally different issue. Writing a piece of software requires no tools other than a computer, persistence, ingenuity and programming experience, altogether not requiring much capital at all. In fact, it is precisely this low cost of entry that got all of our favorite geeks on their way to fame and (for some) fortune: Richard Stallman, Bill Gates, Marc Andreesen, Linus Torvalds, and all the rest. And in fact, you can expect shitty marketing from a programmer (in fact, shitty marketing probably means the product is better). All I'm saying is that you can't look at hardware the same way.
-josh
Aren't you dead?
You doofs. I put MP3's on my MD player, I put tracks from my MD on my MP3 player. They are not competing technologies.
Buy.com has it listed for $150, not $118.
He said, "You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you helped assemble the first NT supercomputer," and I cringed.
Well, the next step is taken towards public portable mp3 Hope they will soon make shoutcast available on it
Well, quite often small companies can't afford an ecommerce system, and don't have thee cash to set up to accept credit cards. They just timeshare on someone else's system. So while it might be bogus, there may be good reasons for what they have done.
-c
"Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin,
Are you sure anyone can afford a domain name? Say (for example) they've spent all their limited funds on R&D. And they don't want to sell out to some big multi-national, who'll steal all the glory/money; not to mention completely trash the products intended image/etc.
Anyway, I'm not going to debate my point. I was being theoretical(sp?).
--- "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?"
I'm going off on a tangent here so, bear with me.
I've read a few articles along the lines of, 'where have all the {can't think of the right word (but if I could the guys who founded Apple, Microsoft(pre-'90) and GNU/Linux would be described by it)} gone'. And I've wondered myself, why can't someone come along with something wonderful and great and new; that will change the world (as we see it).
With responses like these it's not hard to see why no one's able to make revolutionary products in their garage. Everything's marketing. There's no such thing as a better mouse-trap, just a better marketed one.
Ahh, hell I had a brilliant point to make. Some of you who read this will get the gist of what I'm trying to say. And others won't. I've completely lost my train of thought trying to hash out my point into words. Bugger it.
--- "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?"
uhhh... 99 dollars, no actual pictures, isp web page, no specs besides the RAM... anyone else see this as sketchy?
i happen to know andy konkol in real life... this article is obviously B.S. so is anything else he says.
There's a lot of really cool stuff happening out there. One of my favorites is incubating down in Huntsville Alabama. If their stuff does what they say it will, then Time Domain will revolutionize wireless communications and a bunch of other stuff too!
Hmm. Odd feature:
I guess it's $99, then you have to buy a super expensive 32 mb memory card. (from the picture, it looks rather proprietary... not even CF/SM).
Is it possible that what this page was about is an old page referring to a planned but never followed-through hardware device (the ISP page seems to be an old version of their website)? Perhaps its to judge the market (i.e., willing to release it, but want to find out how popular it is before actually starting production)? Speaking of which, I have no idea how to get to the link of the page from their main website...
Correction: I found a way to get to the page, but not the one at the ISP, but at the domain.
www.zipaudio.com, click on MP3 hardware. my bad.
(http://www.zipaudio.com/hardware.htm, is what it leads to).
Interestingly, no link to pre-order on this webpage...
I concour .. if they can't afford to hire a non-colour blind web designer how can they afford marketing, distribution etc...
I can't see them making anything anywhere close to a profit if they have this form of apporach.
Allright here we go again. Minidisc uses a method along the same lines as MP3 does to compress audi0, it removes "in-audible" sound. On top of that it does it a set standard, you can't make a better mini-disc. Admittedly most of the MP3's currently available on the web are recorded and 128 KBps and 44.1 Mhz, you can record them at higher rates, in fact 160 KBps and any higher Mhz you can get better than CD sound. At the studio I work at we use MP3s to archive older sstuff and to send back and forth through e-mail for approval from artists. As for the problems with mini-disc and MP3 it's all in the midrange, they both blow goats on midrange sound. You want bitchin' sound buy a portable DAT.
_ ________
Mini-disc vs. MP3
Artist Support
Mini-Disc=none MP3=smal but growing
Sound Quality
Mini-Disc=median MP3=median-very good
Downloadable media
Mini-Disc=no MP3=yes
just to name a few differences
So before you go slamming MP3s get the facts right and maybe talk to someone in the sound industry.
_______________________________________________
Can We trust the future - Flesh99
Scam ... enough said. ;)
But it is a nice attempt to at fraud
You've got to love the graphical representation of a product that's supposed to be on the market in a matter of weeks. Oh, and GET A DOMAIN! It's only a drop in the bucket for a company that's sooo technologicaly advanced that they can create an mpeg player with more features than the Rio at half the price.
The company does have a legitimate company URL, www.zipaudio.com, and some company info, but the contact and ordering info is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Hmmm ... It looks as if someone is diverting traffic and sales of the software using the posted URL.
The contact and ordering info on the ad page and on the home site (www.zipaudio.com) should AT LEAST be the same. Whether or not this is a poor company that can't afford the basics of an internet business, they should at least have consistent information across web pages. This is an accepted and EXPECTED standard. This doesn't cost a developer a cent. These little things we point out are trademarks of attempts at fraud.
From the looks of this website I would not buy this product, but some of these products could make some decent money if you were to invest in some stocks. Take a look at www.empeg.com, I'm considering putting some money into them if it is possible. I have read they already have a ton of people on a waiting list to purchase the player when it is manufactured.
any product with a homepage this poor, you should be weary of. they're running their page off some ISP, which doesn't speak to highly of them. how can a company afford to pay the R&D for a portable MP3 player and not have at least their own web address? also, their page is fucking horrible. it was automatically generated with Netscape's editor.
anyway, all i'm saying is don't be surprised if this thing doesn't actually turn up in the market. it sounds kind of sketchy to me.
I think the graphic representation of the MP3 player could have been done better in MS Paint. I also can't imagine why the product would look like that. it more closely resembles a Caller ID that anything else.
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