remove commercials on other OSes from other stream
on
The Trouble With TiVo
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· Score: 1
I know you can flag commercials and skip them from within MythTV, but I was wondering if there is a way to do a similar thing so I can flag a commercial from another video source, like say from a TiVo that I downloaded the show from.
Before someone tells me to just get a MythTV box, let me just say that I bought a lifetime subscription TiVo before MythTV was adequate and I don't have any spare computers lying around or enough money to build a new one for this purpose.
My end goal is to automatically download shows from my TiVo to my Mac, remove the commercials via a MythTV port, and then convert them to play on my iPod. I can get everything to work automatically except for the removing the commercials part.
MS has a way of announcing products way in advance of when they will actually ship. From what they have stated, it is not even clear that they expect this to be available before Christmas. They stated on their website that it is due in Winter '07, which officially starts on December 21st.
I totally agree with what you said, but I would change it to the one who can polish and ship it.
At that point, I told her to wait a few minutes. I stepped to the side, got my PDA out, checked to see if they had public wi-fi available and they did. I made the purchase with my PDA in front of her, then showed her the confirmation number and asked, "can I pick it up now?" She thought it was funny as hell:) Did it work? She thought it was funny, but could you pick up the keyboard right away?
Usually when I am *online* and want to look at the news from a site... I don't grab their RSS feed, I just go to their site... You seem to be missing the idea of RSS feeds. You shouldn't be grabbing the RSS feed, your application should be and displaying the information to you so you don't have to go to their site to see what has changed. I have about 20 different sites that I pay attention to. It takes a noticeable amount of time to go to all twenty sites. So, I subscribe to their RSS feeds and when they change the content, I will see that I haven't looked at an article. Without even going to their site, I can can look at the headline and a brief summary to see if I want to read more. Many times, just a headline and a summary is all I want. I can glance through the summary in a small fraction of the time it takes to open up all the sites.
Another way of thinking about it is for sites that don't change much. Imagine I have 50 friends who have websites that I want to check. Most of my friends only update their pages a couple times a month, but that means that on average, two sites are updated a day. I don't want to load them all every day, only when they change and RSS gives me the ability to know when they have changed.
5 years ago, I could surf for hours at a time. Now, I have read all the aritcles I want in about 30 minutes a day and still keep up with stuff just as much.
I like the concept - it's kind of like open source patent issuing. As of a little over a year ago, MS had 5000 patents. Finding those and finding prior art is a reasonable task given the size of the OS community. Now, we just need someone to start it and host it somewhere....any takers?
Computers would be safer if there was not a dominant OS. If there were equal shares of Windows, Mac OS, and Linux/Unix, then none of them would be as subject to attacks. They would all have flaws, but each one would have different flaws, so viruses and malware could not hit all of them. There would be less attacks per OS and viruses would not be able to spread.
The problem with security is that computers are such a mono-culture entirely based upon Windows. Many viruses attack every version of MS OSes from Windows 95 through XP. That is the problem with security. It's the same issue in biology that genetic diversity is a good thing. Computer do not have it since 80+% of computers run Windows. The best thing that could be done to improve security is to diversify the operating system of all computers. Relying on one company to produce a safe experience has proven to not work.
This is exactly the reason that Battlestar Galactica doesn't have any networks on board. If a a virus (or Cylon) does attack electronically, they can only take down one system. Diversity and separation are good things, even in terms of computers.
This setup would drastically reduce the cost for anyone who has more than one computer to serve more than one person.
Home: I have wanted something like this for years. I would love to have a central server in my house and then have dumb terminals in various rooms. My wife wants to look at recipes in the kitchen while listening to her music that is on her computer. At the same time, I could be in the den writing email on the same computer. This avoids synchronization issues and allows all the data to be available at the same time from anywhere.
School Labs: Shared computers would be great for computer labs. Most of the kids are writing email or documents or surfing the web and using less than 10% of the processing power. Just add a little more RAM to the computer and hang 4 monitors/keyboards/mice off it and you just cut the price of a computer by 1/4th (plus a little extra for the memory). The software costs would even go down since they are per machine, not per user.
If you want to use the metric system in your research, then use the metric system. What's stopping you? I have tried to use only metric for my Ph.D. thesis, but the problem is that many mechanical parts only come in imperial units in the U.S. So, when I build a device, I could either write 1 foot or 0.3048 meters, but I don't actually have the significant figures to write it that far, so I get stuck writing.30 meters (11.8110236 inches), which is not the right measurement. If I could have just bought a 3 cm version to begin with, then this would not be an issue.
What's stopping me is that the conversion factors inherently cause a problem and I cannot buy the parts I need in the measurements I need without going overseas and paying an unjustifiable amount for a simple part.
I've heard a similar thing from many people - they are trying to use a Mac like a Windows machine. Often, I or someone else will tell them to think about what they are trying to and think of a simple/logical way to do it. Often, instead of trying the several step solution in WIndows, they just drag their item where they want it and it works or they find the option in the menu bar. If you can get people to break out of the mold of the Windows way, they begin to realize that there are different and often better ways.
This Christmas she's getting a Dell with Vista. Are you talking about Christmas '06 or '07 cause Vista isn't coming out for another month and a half.
No MS office, and the converting to Pages was far from perfect They make Office for the Mac.
What is blend?
You said that "Apple has just lost its UI advantage" but everything you talk about is software that runs on top of the OS. I think that is a perfect example of why Apple still has the UI advantage - nothing there bothered you in your rant. On the other hand, Apple does have some problems with software compatibility, but that is largely because you are looking for the same software to run on both platforms. There is a lot of good software for the Mac, but it will be a little different than on Windows.
I hope all goes well with Vista after you upgrade it with your coupon in February. By the way, please reconsider getting a Dell, recently they are not good machines.
I agree. From the article: '"DRM is not where it should be," said Mr Gates.' He said that because Bill wants DRM to be in Microsoft's control - he is frustrated because he wants control of it, but can't get it.
I'd be just as concerned by an Apple monopoly over the PC market as I am by the current Microsoft one I totally agree. There should not be a dominant OS. I'm a huge Apple fan, but I wouldn't want them to dominate the market with 90% market share, like Microsoft has now. With one dominant OS, all computers are susceptible to those bugs that let viruses spread like wildfire. If MS had less market share, none of those self-propagating viruses would have been able to do the damage they did. They would have been slowed down massively since a larger proportion of the computers would have been immuned. All software will have bugs, but different OSes will have different bugs and very few will overlap. Given this, I can't believe some companies have standardized to using the exact same OS for everything. Very scary. Diversity is a good thing.
Without a dominant OS, issues of compatibility would be a thing of the past. Even different versions of Word have incompatibilities. If different OSes ran different software, they would all have to decide on a common format, like ODF, and the documents would be interchangeable. As it is now, MS changes things around in it's proprietary Word format and doesn't let anyone else in. MS stifled web development over the past 5 years because they stopped developing Internet Explorer. They beat the competition (Netscape) and then had nothing to push them (or copy from). Now that Firefox has revitalized the browser wars and Google is fighting on the internet front, we are suddenly coming upon Web 2.0. Applications online are the beginning of an OS agnostic web, which is should be.
MS has been declared an abusive monopoly by the US government. Yet, they are still continuing the same business practices pushing their way into markets based on power, not good products. This is the main reason I stay clear of all MS products. I will not give my money to a declared abusive monopoly. I try to push alternatives in every case I can in the hopes that one day, MS will not be able to abuse it's monopoly because it will no longer be one.
Since MS has such a regular release schedule for updates, it makes sense that the virus writers have a schedule too - relase it the day after all the security checks. Expect a hole to be announced and exploited within the week.
Or, I could be wrong and the numbers are too low to make it worth the effort. Or, just maybe, Microsoft actually did build a secure product....
There is no better way to figure it out than just try it. Set up a few computers with Linux on it and see how easy/hard it is. I'd start with Ubuntu and add the Edubuntu software on to it - it's some educational games. Once you have them set up, try to get a few kids to try them out and see what they think.
The total cost of trying this on a few computers would probably be your time. Try it on a few older computers that aren't being used much. You could try it in any number of places, the computer lab, the server room, the classrooms (might be the last place to try), etc.
Once you have a few of them working exactly the way you want, you could expand and ghost those images to a few more computers until you have a sizeable chunk of computers running Linux. Then, the next time the budget is reviewed, you can say that the incremental cost to upgrade to Linux as opposed to Vista will be far less and you'll have access to a lot more software - Edubuntu games, OpenOffice, Gimp, etc. - which would cost a lot of money to buy outright.
I replaced about 5 Windows machines with 8 Linux computers at an after school program (http://asianyouthservices.org/) and it is working quite well. I have half of them setup to dual boot in case they need it. The one computer that was booted into WIndows worked fine for about 6 months, but then it got really bogged down. The kids just tend to mess with all sorts of things on the machines and tend to mess things up after a while. I have found that Windows is harder to completely lock down than Linux. I have it setup for them and it resets all the settings back to the normal settings each night. It saves their documents and that is all. They can mess with anything during the day and the next day it will work. I've had several of these machines running for two years and have not needed to touch them since day one. Granted, they are pretty much only surfing the web and writing documents, but the Windows machines couldn't deal with that for more than 6 months.
I am not saying that it is impossible to set up the Windows machines to run the same way and have it reset all the settings each night. But, given that this is a non-profit organization, none of the software to enable this is cheap enough to justify. Everything I did was completely free. It did take a fair amount of my time to set up, but seeing as how I am a volunteer there, I feel good about it. I would much rather donate a few days of work time to get a solution that works than pay for the software that would have it work the same way. This may not be true of everyone, but in my case it was.
So, I agree, Linux can be set up to work just fine in a average person's environment if the person is not hard set in their ways and is willing to try something new. Will Linux work just like Windows? No, but then why should it - it's different, better in some ways and not as good in others, but perfectly able to be used for productive work.
I just tried the Live Image Search and Google Image Search links you provided and found little difference between them. The biggest difference was that Live Image returned one of Gore throwing a football and Google did not, but it was the first on the second page. From that example, I couldn't tell much difference.
Also, I failed to understand what you mean by the infinite scroll - at the bottom of the page on both was a link to more pages of pictures. Live Image had five numbers listed and Google had 10 pages listed with a next button.
Consumers expect software to have new versions. They don't expect iPod videos to have new versions. They certainly don't expect to have to buy the same video for the same price to get the new version.
I sure never expected to be able to get free upgrades to CDs/DVDs/iPod videos for the tapes/VHS/iPod videos I bought years ago. I view all those formats the same way. I fully expect that there will continue to be improvements in what Apple and others offer. Why would I expect them to not have new higher resolution versions? Is this the end of progress?
Consumers don't have to buy the new version. Their old versions work just fine. Just because a new version comes along does not mean the old version is worthless - it's just as good as it was.
"Yeah, I'll remember that next time they [add a new feature] and force me to buy the [software] again if I want that new [feature]."
What's with having to buy a new version of software that comes out. I already have a license to the software, so why can't I just upgrade the new version for free.
Deal with it. Was it worth it when you bought it? You bought it, so it must have been. Just because a new version came out does not mean you should get a free upgrade.
My lab bought 4 Dell machines a couple years ago and for various reasons we reinstalled XP. It was an unpleasant experience for many reasons, one of which was that there was no ethernet card driver installed. This was on the XP CD that shipped from Dell with the computers. There was no ethernet driver on any of the CD's - XP only said that it would like to try to download the driver. See the irony? This and the rest of the problems I had with this installation is here: http://kylereed.com/opinions/Dell/Dell.html
The one that looks almost exactly the same as Safari?
I am pretty comfortable using IE6, Firefox, and Safari. When I tried IE7, it took me about 30 seconds to figure out how to add a bookmark. Longer to figure out how to add an RSS feed and I still haven't been able to figure out how to load multiple RSS feeds in the same window. In Safari, I can see all of the RSS feeds aggregated together with one click. It even tells me how many articles I haven't seen yet. IE7 is a great upgrade, but it's still way behind.
I'm sorry but as a developer myself I see this as extremely irresponsible. Admiting your faults is a core fundamental of software, you acknowledge and adjust. You don't finger point or make excuses for your own blunder, that's what amateurs do.
Are you talking about Microsoft's software? If so, I agree. If you are talking about Apple's software, then I fail to see your point; there was no Apple software involved in this process.
Apple did not write any of the software involved in this process. Some hacker wrote a virus that attacked Windows. Apple's iPod was simply a carrier. Most likely there was a Windows machine used to test some of the iPods and it got a virus that was passed along. Apple admitted that they messed up in the QA, but were also noting that they deal with the same issues that IT companies around the world have to deal with on a daily basis - viruses that attack and harm Windows machines.
Why is everyone missing the fact that Apple did actually fess up to this?
Not necessarily. I've had people ask me if it is okay to type in a password for various things. Anytime I help someone with OS X, I tell them to think about what they are doing whenever it brings up a dialog box asking them to do something.
I helped one of my friends who was very scared of computer a couple years back. I setup a limited access account in OS X and told them to try to mess it up, change the background, mess with all the preferences and just click on things and see what happens. I came back a week later and all the settings were changed. She didn't necessarily like all the settings, but when I actually setup her permanent account, she was much less fearful of changing settings. At this point, I told her to think twice about typing in a password when it asks. She has done very well and I haven't had to help her out with a computer at all in three years. She went from being scared of changing anything to pretty independent and safe at the same time.
So, my point is that there are a lot of people that do actually pay attention to these dialog boxes. I'd much rather have a few dialog/password boxes that are actually relevent than none. At least there is a chance that the person will think about it. Assuming people will click through the dialog without thinking is a rather negative view of users.
Look on eBay for a used iPod. Get a third generation or earlier. It won't have a fancy screen and should pretty much be what you are looking for. If you look around, they can be found for about $100-$150 for a 30gig model, cheaper for a 20gig. All the new ones are going to come with fancy screens cause the color LCD's have dropped drastically in price and a black and white hard drive based player will look massively outdated.
I've been using my third generation iPod daily for over three years. It's a very nice device. Plays music and great for backup.
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I know you can flag commercials and skip them from within MythTV, but I was wondering if there is a way to do a similar thing so I can flag a commercial from another video source, like say from a TiVo that I downloaded the show from.
Before someone tells me to just get a MythTV box, let me just say that I bought a lifetime subscription TiVo before MythTV was adequate and I don't have any spare computers lying around or enough money to build a new one for this purpose.
My end goal is to automatically download shows from my TiVo to my Mac, remove the commercials via a MythTV port, and then convert them to play on my iPod. I can get everything to work automatically except for the removing the commercials part.
MS has a way of announcing products way in advance of when they will actually ship. From what they have stated, it is not even clear that they expect this to be available before Christmas. They stated on their website that it is due in Winter '07, which officially starts on December 21st.
I totally agree with what you said, but I would change it to the one who can polish and ship it .
Another way of thinking about it is for sites that don't change much. Imagine I have 50 friends who have websites that I want to check. Most of my friends only update their pages a couple times a month, but that means that on average, two sites are updated a day. I don't want to load them all every day, only when they change and RSS gives me the ability to know when they have changed.
5 years ago, I could surf for hours at a time. Now, I have read all the aritcles I want in about 30 minutes a day and still keep up with stuff just as much.
I like the concept - it's kind of like open source patent issuing. As of a little over a year ago, MS had 5000 patents. Finding those and finding prior art is a reasonable task given the size of the OS community. Now, we just need someone to start it and host it somewhere....any takers?
Bingo!!! Mod up the parent.
Computers would be safer if there was not a dominant OS. If there were equal shares of Windows, Mac OS, and Linux/Unix, then none of them would be as subject to attacks. They would all have flaws, but each one would have different flaws, so viruses and malware could not hit all of them. There would be less attacks per OS and viruses would not be able to spread.
The problem with security is that computers are such a mono-culture entirely based upon Windows. Many viruses attack every version of MS OSes from Windows 95 through XP. That is the problem with security. It's the same issue in biology that genetic diversity is a good thing. Computer do not have it since 80+% of computers run Windows. The best thing that could be done to improve security is to diversify the operating system of all computers. Relying on one company to produce a safe experience has proven to not work.
This is exactly the reason that Battlestar Galactica doesn't have any networks on board. If a a virus (or Cylon) does attack electronically, they can only take down one system. Diversity and separation are good things, even in terms of computers.
This setup would drastically reduce the cost for anyone who has more than one computer to serve more than one person.
Home: I have wanted something like this for years. I would love to have a central server in my house and then have dumb terminals in various rooms. My wife wants to look at recipes in the kitchen while listening to her music that is on her computer. At the same time, I could be in the den writing email on the same computer. This avoids synchronization issues and allows all the data to be available at the same time from anywhere.
School Labs: Shared computers would be great for computer labs. Most of the kids are writing email or documents or surfing the web and using less than 10% of the processing power. Just add a little more RAM to the computer and hang 4 monitors/keyboards/mice off it and you just cut the price of a computer by 1/4th (plus a little extra for the memory). The software costs would even go down since they are per machine, not per user.
What's stopping me is that the conversion factors inherently cause a problem and I cannot buy the parts I need in the measurements I need without going overseas and paying an unjustifiable amount for a simple part.
I've heard a similar thing from many people - they are trying to use a Mac like a Windows machine. Often, I or someone else will tell them to think about what they are trying to and think of a simple/logical way to do it. Often, instead of trying the several step solution in WIndows, they just drag their item where they want it and it works or they find the option in the menu bar. If you can get people to break out of the mold of the Windows way, they begin to realize that there are different and often better ways.
What is blend?
You said that "Apple has just lost its UI advantage" but everything you talk about is software that runs on top of the OS. I think that is a perfect example of why Apple still has the UI advantage - nothing there bothered you in your rant. On the other hand, Apple does have some problems with software compatibility, but that is largely because you are looking for the same software to run on both platforms. There is a lot of good software for the Mac, but it will be a little different than on Windows.
I hope all goes well with Vista after you upgrade it with your coupon in February. By the way, please reconsider getting a Dell, recently they are not good machines.
I agree. From the article: '"DRM is not where it should be," said Mr Gates.' He said that because Bill wants DRM to be in Microsoft's control - he is frustrated because he wants control of it, but can't get it.
Without a dominant OS, issues of compatibility would be a thing of the past. Even different versions of Word have incompatibilities. If different OSes ran different software, they would all have to decide on a common format, like ODF, and the documents would be interchangeable. As it is now, MS changes things around in it's proprietary Word format and doesn't let anyone else in. MS stifled web development over the past 5 years because they stopped developing Internet Explorer. They beat the competition (Netscape) and then had nothing to push them (or copy from). Now that Firefox has revitalized the browser wars and Google is fighting on the internet front, we are suddenly coming upon Web 2.0. Applications online are the beginning of an OS agnostic web, which is should be.
MS has been declared an abusive monopoly by the US government. Yet, they are still continuing the same business practices pushing their way into markets based on power, not good products. This is the main reason I stay clear of all MS products. I will not give my money to a declared abusive monopoly. I try to push alternatives in every case I can in the hopes that one day, MS will not be able to abuse it's monopoly because it will no longer be one.
Since MS has such a regular release schedule for updates, it makes sense that the virus writers have a schedule too - relase it the day after all the security checks. Expect a hole to be announced and exploited within the week.
Or, I could be wrong and the numbers are too low to make it worth the effort. Or, just maybe, Microsoft actually did build a secure product....
There is no better way to figure it out than just try it. Set up a few computers with Linux on it and see how easy/hard it is. I'd start with Ubuntu and add the Edubuntu software on to it - it's some educational games. Once you have them set up, try to get a few kids to try them out and see what they think.
The total cost of trying this on a few computers would probably be your time. Try it on a few older computers that aren't being used much. You could try it in any number of places, the computer lab, the server room, the classrooms (might be the last place to try), etc.
Once you have a few of them working exactly the way you want, you could expand and ghost those images to a few more computers until you have a sizeable chunk of computers running Linux. Then, the next time the budget is reviewed, you can say that the incremental cost to upgrade to Linux as opposed to Vista will be far less and you'll have access to a lot more software - Edubuntu games, OpenOffice, Gimp, etc. - which would cost a lot of money to buy outright.
I replaced about 5 Windows machines with 8 Linux computers at an after school program (http://asianyouthservices.org/) and it is working quite well. I have half of them setup to dual boot in case they need it. The one computer that was booted into WIndows worked fine for about 6 months, but then it got really bogged down. The kids just tend to mess with all sorts of things on the machines and tend to mess things up after a while. I have found that Windows is harder to completely lock down than Linux. I have it setup for them and it resets all the settings back to the normal settings each night. It saves their documents and that is all. They can mess with anything during the day and the next day it will work. I've had several of these machines running for two years and have not needed to touch them since day one. Granted, they are pretty much only surfing the web and writing documents, but the Windows machines couldn't deal with that for more than 6 months.
I am not saying that it is impossible to set up the Windows machines to run the same way and have it reset all the settings each night. But, given that this is a non-profit organization, none of the software to enable this is cheap enough to justify. Everything I did was completely free. It did take a fair amount of my time to set up, but seeing as how I am a volunteer there, I feel good about it. I would much rather donate a few days of work time to get a solution that works than pay for the software that would have it work the same way. This may not be true of everyone, but in my case it was.
So, I agree, Linux can be set up to work just fine in a average person's environment if the person is not hard set in their ways and is willing to try something new. Will Linux work just like Windows? No, but then why should it - it's different, better in some ways and not as good in others, but perfectly able to be used for productive work.
I just tried the Live Image Search and Google Image Search links you provided and found little difference between them. The biggest difference was that Live Image returned one of Gore throwing a football and Google did not, but it was the first on the second page. From that example, I couldn't tell much difference.
Also, I failed to understand what you mean by the infinite scroll - at the bottom of the page on both was a link to more pages of pictures. Live Image had five numbers listed and Google had 10 pages listed with a next button.
Good point. I agree that voicing opinions is a good thing. We both do, which is probably why we write comments on Slashdot.
I sure never expected to be able to get free upgrades to CDs/DVDs/iPod videos for the tapes/VHS/iPod videos I bought years ago. I view all those formats the same way. I fully expect that there will continue to be improvements in what Apple and others offer. Why would I expect them to not have new higher resolution versions? Is this the end of progress?
Consumers don't have to buy the new version. Their old versions work just fine. Just because a new version comes along does not mean the old version is worthless - it's just as good as it was.
"Yeah, I'll remember that next time they [add a new feature] and force me to buy the [software] again if I want that new [feature]."
What's with having to buy a new version of software that comes out. I already have a license to the software, so why can't I just upgrade the new version for free.
Deal with it. Was it worth it when you bought it? You bought it, so it must have been. Just because a new version came out does not mean you should get a free upgrade.
My lab bought 4 Dell machines a couple years ago and for various reasons we reinstalled XP. It was an unpleasant experience for many reasons, one of which was that there was no ethernet card driver installed. This was on the XP CD that shipped from Dell with the computers. There was no ethernet driver on any of the CD's - XP only said that it would like to try to download the driver. See the irony? This and the rest of the problems I had with this installation is here: http://kylereed.com/opinions/Dell/Dell.html
The one that looks almost exactly the same as Safari?
I am pretty comfortable using IE6, Firefox, and Safari. When I tried IE7, it took me about 30 seconds to figure out how to add a bookmark. Longer to figure out how to add an RSS feed and I still haven't been able to figure out how to load multiple RSS feeds in the same window. In Safari, I can see all of the RSS feeds aggregated together with one click. It even tells me how many articles I haven't seen yet. IE7 is a great upgrade, but it's still way behind.
Are you talking about Microsoft's software? If so, I agree. If you are talking about Apple's software, then I fail to see your point; there was no Apple software involved in this process.
Apple did not write any of the software involved in this process. Some hacker wrote a virus that attacked Windows. Apple's iPod was simply a carrier. Most likely there was a Windows machine used to test some of the iPods and it got a virus that was passed along. Apple admitted that they messed up in the QA, but were also noting that they deal with the same issues that IT companies around the world have to deal with on a daily basis - viruses that attack and harm Windows machines.
Why is everyone missing the fact that Apple did actually fess up to this?
Not necessarily. I've had people ask me if it is okay to type in a password for various things. Anytime I help someone with OS X, I tell them to think about what they are doing whenever it brings up a dialog box asking them to do something.
I helped one of my friends who was very scared of computer a couple years back. I setup a limited access account in OS X and told them to try to mess it up, change the background, mess with all the preferences and just click on things and see what happens. I came back a week later and all the settings were changed. She didn't necessarily like all the settings, but when I actually setup her permanent account, she was much less fearful of changing settings. At this point, I told her to think twice about typing in a password when it asks. She has done very well and I haven't had to help her out with a computer at all in three years. She went from being scared of changing anything to pretty independent and safe at the same time.
So, my point is that there are a lot of people that do actually pay attention to these dialog boxes. I'd much rather have a few dialog/password boxes that are actually relevent than none. At least there is a chance that the person will think about it. Assuming people will click through the dialog without thinking is a rather negative view of users.
Look on eBay for a used iPod. Get a third generation or earlier. It won't have a fancy screen and should pretty much be what you are looking for. If you look around, they can be found for about $100-$150 for a 30gig model, cheaper for a 20gig. All the new ones are going to come with fancy screens cause the color LCD's have dropped drastically in price and a black and white hard drive based player will look massively outdated.
I've been using my third generation iPod daily for over three years. It's a very nice device. Plays music and great for backup.