Interesting stuff

[legman]

http://www.sigmadesigns.com/news/press_releases/020109.htm

Nots it says second quarter this year.

[poopity poop]

WHOO HOO!!!...DVD players with DivX capability comeing soon to a home near you!

[Doom9]

actually.. I have to burst your bubble here. sigma has been making simple mpeg4 profile decoders for a bit already.. and what's even more important is that divx3 is NOT fully MPEG-4 compatible so these chips won't be able to decode it... divx4 might work (though afaik it's not fully standard compliant either but it may be so in a future release)

[diji1]

Hi,

LOL, reminds me of my friend - he bought a new onkyo dvd player/dolby amp recently based on the fact that it had an mpeg4 logo on it ( more money than sense ;) )... well, nary a divx/mpeg4 movie has been played on this machine - and not for lack of trying either.

You would have to think that any company that had ideas about releasing a hardware divx player would come under immense pressure from "the powers that be"... still, i do remember ppl saying that mp3 players would never become a reality - i guess anything can happen!

[Doom9]

but.. these mp3 players are still far from being perfect.

and also the portable players are not that good either. I really like the Ipod if it were 1) available for the pc and 2) would allow you not only to transfer regular files between computers but also the stored music.. it should be like any removable drive with a player like winamp on it... guess why most portable players dont allow you to copy mp3s from the player to a computer... can you say RIAA?

[Bugs Bunny]

I've a DIVA MP3 player and it allows straight file copying, so it can be used for file transfers as well as MP3 playing. It's made by some outfit in Bulgaria, so may be the RIAA's reach hasn't extended that far yet.

The Achilles' heel on all of the hard drive based players is that they're still stuck on USB. It's not too bad for flash players, since their cap is small (my 256M flash takes 20 minutes for xfer over USB). For multi-gig HDs, it'll take hours. I'm hoping the IPod gets noticed, not because I like it or would I ever buy an Apple product, but because I want FireWire (or USB 2.0 even) to get incorporated into these devices.

[evilhomer]

i believe a company already has beta software available to use the ipod with windows. i think i read the article at www.zdnet.com, if you can't find it i might be able to look it up again.

[Doom9]

I know about it.. but it will 1) cost 40 bucks (euros I think.. now all the german mags have changed from dm to euro, a fact which I first have to get used to) and 2) it is still beta.. we'll see what happens with the final.. if it works properly I might consider getting an IPod.. I already have firewire on one of my computers and I can easily switch my sblive 5.1 against an audigy card on the other

[wmansir]

anandtech did a little writeup on the ipod in the last couple of weeks. It focused on using the ipod with a PC, and included a review of the software that lets you upload songs. It's probably still on their front page.

One thing I remember about the writeup is that the PC software will not allow you to download files from the ipod, not because of technical reasons, but just because Apple is using that as a form of anti-piracy protection and the software company wanted to respect apples decision. Which is odd since it sounded like apple didn't help them out much in creating the program. I think they had to hack the device, and didn't even get a pre-release unit.

[legman]

I ahve portable mp3 player i got for christmas this year. Plays from cd's, not for a solid state chip. I burn cd's and play as mp3. I love it. I have been known to throw away several disks at a time. % mins and i have 2 new ones with different music for the next few days.

[diji1]

Hi,

Plays from cd's, not for a solid state chip

Playing mp3's from CD is the way to go - 700 megs sure beats 128 - 256 meg flashram or whatever they use. I looked at the creative "jukebox" mp3 player in the shop which has a 6.5 gig hdd but imo its just a little too heavy to be convenient for truly portable listening - be great for the car tho. I very much doubt you could use this for transporting files tho w/o some ( hc ) modification, if you could do it at all.

The bummer about the jukebox is that sposedly the codec, whilst not being total rubbish, is noticeably worse than some other codecs.....
i guess it's gonna take a pretty special standalone to beat pc anyway..... just on sound quality grounds anyway. So - i wonder, with these issues with mp3, would a standalone divx player even come close to a pc from a quality perspective ?? I mean theres some vcd standalones that definitley look better than others and thats using an older format with stricter standards ( ie. res, br etc )

[Bugs Bunny]

I think the Creative Jukebox moved up to a 20 gigger already. Most other HD-based players have as well, other than the IPod--and that's only because they've stuck with Toshiba's 1.8" drive rather than the larger 2.5" units. Now that Tosh has announced 10 and 20-gig units, I think the IPod will have some expansion in its lineup soon.

Anyway, CD units aren't necessarily better or worse than flash-based; it depends on the amount of portability you want. Flash is more portable (but less storage) than CD-based is more portable than HD-based (except for the IPod). For instance, when you're listening to music while jogging, a flash is much better than the other two, as you don't want to have any more weight jostling against you while you're running. If you don't believe this, just clip a CD player onto your belt and run a couple of blocks and you'll see how annoying it is--note that this is apart from skipping.

Initially I was going to get a CD unit (one of the Rio ones), but then I saw the small size of the flash ones and since I do a lot of aerobics, then I bought that. My next buy will be a HD-based unit with Firewire or USB 2, or--and this is my pipe dream--Wi-Fi connection.

[Bugs Bunny]

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-818661.html

I wouldn't buy one just yet, but it'd be really neat to test one out.