Where are the non-SDMI MP3 Players? 550
"So far I have narrowed my search to 3 choices. I want it to sound very good and be able to play music encoded at 128kb or higher.
The Rio Volt 250 is a CD based player so the SDMI thing doesn't really apply. The Creative Labs Nomad II" proudly displays this as a feature. The Samsung Yepp doesn't use SDMI, but something called SecuMax as stated in the Nomad II technical specs on Amazon. And this little tid bit on the Samsung Yepp homepage confirms that SecuMax is just like SDMI.
Now I'm not looking to download any illegal music from the Internet. I simply want to listen to my CD collection on the train to work or while working out. And there is freely downloadable music out there. If I were to download a song at work or a friend's house, put it in my MP3 player I then wouldn't be able to transfer it back to my PC at home to add to my collection. Where is 'fair use' when the artist is giving away their music for free? And I don't have the link, but what of the recent surges in so called 'secure' CD's that one can't rip into MP3's? Where is the 'fair use' there? Or are we supposed to purchase multiple copies of the same music in different formats?"
iPod? (Score:5, Interesting)
Memory on handhelds (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think that word means what you think... (Score:4, Interesting)
C'mon people, we won't be taken seriously if we can't even learn the jargon.
Re:archos jukebox (Score:2, Interesting)
Cheers,
Timo
Re:I don't think that word means what you think... (Score:2, Interesting)
Frag the jargon.. they'll take us seriously when we don't buy their SDMI 'enhanced' crap and instead go around/through them.
There is no encryption that cannot be broken
There is no hardware that cannot be hacked
But there is no way to remove or restrain my desire to exercise the rights guaranteed to a U.S. citizen under the U.S. Constitution - and Fair Use does mean the ability for me to make a back-up copy of the material I have lawfully purchased. Too bad for the corps if it is in a format they do not approve of.
Nomad Jukebox (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I like the CD option personally (Score:3, Interesting)
The CD option is great if you have a burner and just need it for your daily commute. This is not at all an option for highly-active people, however. The solid state ones are smaller, more rugged, and skip-free.
Automotive MP3 Head Units (Score:3, Interesting)
In addition to the subject at hand--are there any recomendations for car-based mp3 head units?
The Empeg was quite nice--but expensive. Aiwa makes a unit [aiwa.com] that plays MP3's from
CD-R's, but I've heard horrors about it. Has anyone had experience with an mp3 head unit that
isn't rumoured to suck?
-Kris
Creative Nomand + SmartMedia Card Reader (Score:2, Interesting)
Head to eBay and pick up a.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Additional features are an FM tuner and a voice recorder.
Here's the link [ebay.com].
And of course since they are a couple years old, you can pick them up cheap!
Iomega HipZip (Score:3, Interesting)
The player itself is of good quality; it sounds great both on headphones and plugged into my car stereo. It includes an equalizer and a backlit display. Unfortunately, the OS itself is a bit spartan; there's no way to save the playlist through a power cycle, and the random play function resets itself on every powerup. I suspect these issues may be resolved with a newer version of Dadio [iobjects.com], and for now I just randomize the playlist before loading it onto the player, as tracks are sorted in load order.
There are several interesting features of this player. The first is that it takes Iomega's 40MB Clik! (now Pocket Zip) disks, which run about $10 each retail. It acts as an ordinary USB mass storage device, which means you can copy any files to/from it without restriction, and also use it to exchange ordinary data files. (Unfortunately, as always with Win98, you can't just plug in the player and copy files; you have to install the drivers first, despite its being a perfectly generic USB disk drive. Completely plug-and-play in Linux, though.)
The 40MB size of the Clik! disks is a little annoying, but the ability to carry 5 or 6 of the disks around in the media wallet without significant expense makes up for that, and I'm able to store much more music (with the hassle of changing disks) than I was with my Rio 500 expanded to 128MB. Additionally (and this is the reason I bought the player), it will support Ogg Vorbis as soon as the format reaches 1.0. (There is a beta firmware that supports it now, but it won't play files encoded with >beta4.) Ogg Vorbis will let me easily degrade bitrates without re-encoding, and at 96kb/s .ogg I will be able to store quite a bit on 1 disk.
One interesting problem: When hooked to the line-in of my car CD player [sounddomain.com], there is an audible hiss if I have it simultaneously plugged into the charger. As soon as I disconnect it from the charger, it disappears. I don't know if I wired the stereo strangely or what, because it's not there with headphones. Weird.
The enemy controls the hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why having hardware specific for each task, which is often discussed as something good, must be something we cannot allow to happen. Instead, we have to continue to ensure the existance of systems like PCs where things are done in software, which WE can control. We even have to look into moving more PC functionality into software, now that we have processors strong enough for it, as I worry that things like graphic accelerators and sound cards will be future platforms for entertainment industry UHT (User Hostile Technology). The more that is done in software, the more freedom is had by all.
In the short term, it might still be possible to find dedicated MP3 players that are not UHT (such as the burned CD ones), but in the longer term I think handhelds with strong general purpose CPUs running Linux (preferably decoding OGG of course) is the only real choice. In the longest term, there is a real risk (see for example the "SS"SCA), that general purpose programmable hardware will simply not be allowed, and we will have to hope that an illegal underground market for hardware that is not user hostile will appear...
Pocket PC's Work Great (Score:3, Interesting)
I get 12 hours of battery life playing MP3's and you can purchace 512 megabyte CF cards for it. Makes an *awesome* player, and can do videos as well as all the PDA stuff.
A bit expensive, but a neat toy.
--
Ian
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not build your own? (Score:3, Interesting)
Links to site on building your own custom built in hardware player. Check out the links to the other sites too.
Re:iPod? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:archos jukebox (Score:5, Interesting)
What about Ogg files? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Rio 500 (Score:2, Interesting)
[1] Hmm. I never have a problem with the switch on mine.
[2] Most players come with crappy headsets, but that's ok. I would much rather use my headset-of-choice that I spent $ on than the cheap earbuds most suppily as an afterthought.
[3] Yep. Gotta love the battery life.
[4] Right now they only take up to 64M cards, Rio did come out with a firmware update not too long ago. I bet if there was enough demand they might update it again. I haven't seen 128M cards at prices I would consider buying but I haven't checked around in a while. I'm happy with the cards I have now (2x 32M and 1x 64).
[5] Has to be your player. I've done everything from dropping mine to having it accidently ripped off of me (watch those headset cords) and it kept on going and going and going.. It's built like a tank AFAIK.
Should also be mentioned it has a good backlight, very customizable settings (repeats, bookmarks, a simple EQ) and nice display which will scroll ID3 tags. Only complaint is if you have all tags visible the font is rather small (if you have less tags visible it will use a larger font).
With the relatively low prices for used ones on eBay it wouldn't be a bad buy for someone's 1st MP3 player..
Terapin Mine Handheld (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The enemy controls the hardware (Score:3, Interesting)
Back when they proclaimed it illegal to sell police scanners that let you listen to cell-phone frequencies in the 800Mhz range, people came out with a slew of modifications to re-enable the missing frequencies.
When they sold the Playstation so it wouldn't run copies of game CDs, they released hacked chips to solder in the unit and fix the problem.
When Apex was forced to quit selling DVD players with the "loophole menu" in them to disable Macrovision and region codes, hackers created custom firmware to flash into them to restore these capabilities.
As long as individuals remain interested in the inner workings of hardware, control will always be regained from the industry. Keeping control in software just means a larger percentage of the population has the knowledge and ability to make the changes needed.
Re:What about Ogg files? (Score:1, Interesting)
Two Words: Rio Volt (Score:3, Interesting)
Item [Price]
Latest RioVolt [$180]
Nomad Jukebox(20GB) [$350]
1 CD-R (700MB) [$0.40]
1 CD-RW (650MB) [$0.80]
So, it costs you $350 for 20GB of music-memory from Nomad. Lets see how much you'd have to spend for 20GB if you used RioVolt:
Assuming 20GB of CD-RW's:
$180 + (20GB*1024MB/GB / 650MB) * $0.80 = $205.21.
Assumng 20GB of CD-R's:
$180 + (20GB*1024MB/GB / 700MB) * $0.40 = $191.70
Thus, you save from $145 to $158 dollars by choosing RioVolt over Nomad. Its a no-brainer, regarding which product you should buy. Yes, Nomad allows you to alter the contents of your collection...so does RioVolt, if you use CD-RW's: and you'll still save 145 bucks.
Put another way, if you wanted to spend $350 dollars for an MP3-playing device and the memory/CD's to store MP3's on, you get:
(a) 20GB of storage space from Nomad
(b) 134GB to 290GB of storage space using RioVolt and 213CD-RW's or 425CD-R's, respectively.
This is not a practical comparison -- as few people want to carry around 425CD-R's, though some of the larger CD-booklets would let you do such. This is simply cost-analysis.
Lets go back to the analysis of how much you save by using RioVolt and an according # of CD-RW's to get to 20GB. If you use RioVolt and 32CD-RW's to get 20GB of memory, you save 145 dollars. But lets be a bit more accurate -- you can't carry around 32CD-RW's in your pocket: you need a CD-folder. A Steel CD case capable of holding 60CD's, costs 20 dollars. So you actually only save 125 dollars by choosing RioVolt and buying CD-RW's to get to 20GB. Now, would you rather walk around with one Nomad Jukebox, or with one RioVolt, one steel 60CD case, and 125 extra dollars in your pocket? Your choice.
P.S.: 125 dollars is enough to buy you one GeForce2 MX for your laptop.
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Go with a handheld (Score:2, Interesting)
And soon it will play my PocketNES [retrogames.com] Nintendo emulator
Re:OT , command lines (was Re:iPod?) (Score:3, Interesting)
-jon
MPW (was Re:OT , command lines) (Score:2, Interesting)
I use MPW to invoke DASM to assemble my Atari 2600 projects... it actually strikes me as more "VMS-y" then "UNIX-y", since it has that move the curser to where the command is writen and press enter (not return) kind of thing going. Of course, that could be because the only VMS app I ever had to use (on UVMVM, which I think UVM still uses) was a horrible calendar program called... shoot, I can't remember the name. It was horrible, though. Anyway, MPW isn't that horrible, but the mechanics of the user interface reminds me of that VMS program for some reason. Oh, and Mac mice have several buttons, it's just that all but one of them are actually on the keyboard.
OBiPod:
For those complaining about the price, I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that the bare hard drive used in the iPod would cost about $400 by itself (retail). It may not be big (in GB), but it is small (physically).
Re:Consider getting a MiniDisc recorder/player (Score:1, Interesting)
I look forward to a time when these issues are sorted out, and of course they're not problems for everyone, but for now and for me MDs are by far the best solution.