I’m starting to look for a hard drive based mp3 player. I was just wondering what various Dopers have purchased and how they felt about their purchases.
I would prefer that people who have purchased players with 20+ gigs of hard drive reply, but if you find a smaller one or even a Flash-based one that performed above expectations, feel free to tell about it. If there are other threads about it (I’m on a poor connection right now), please link to those as well.
Depends on what you want.
I recently purchased an Archos AV320. It has an screen of about 4 inches and it plays back video as well as records it. Its a very functional gadget, honestly and you can buy one with a 40 GB hdd if you want to, I believe. Problem is that the firewire port is sold seperately if you are into that. It can play movies with a resolution of up to 640xsomething and it encodes into divx format on the fly but only up to 320 or so resolution. Batterylife is around 3 to 4 hours playing video and longer playing music. It also records MP3 on the fly with a built in mic and it can display digital pictures with a buyable attachment. It has a remote as well. All of the cables you need to input and output video are included as well as headphones. Its pretty cool all in all. If you need some more help just ask and I’ll be glad to answer questions. I usually commute to school on a train, so its nice to have. I normally download Curb Your Enthusiasm and watch it on the train!
I just bought a 6 gig Creative Nomad Jukebox for 160 bucks Canadian. It was open box, but the plastic film over the display panel was still there and it wasn’t used at all. Once I bunged in the newest firmware it worked like a charm, and talk about ultra cheap!
The other neat thing about this model is that it used 4 AA sized batteries, but it comes with 2 sets (8 batteries total) of rechargables which can be charged in the Nomad itself.
I have a 10 Gig Ipod and I love it. I especially like the ease of use of Itunes and the Apple Music Store. Everything runs really smoothly and it is quite easy to re-organize your music in many different ways. I am running the PC versions of the software. I was using Windows Media Player stuff and the horrid Musicmatch jukebox thing that comes standard on Dell’s before. Ack.
I still think Mac’s are silly, but I love my Ipod.
My 30G Nomad Jukebox Zen works fairly well. The screen is easy to read and navigate. The only downside is the software isn’t all that great, but it does work.
I’ve got a 60 GB Creative ($350), and I’m happy with it. It stores and plays back mp3’s, which is pretty much all I want it to do.
I’ve got a 20 gig iPod and I love it. I would marry it. I’m never buying another CD again, and I intend to donate the ones I have as soon as I’ve got them all stored electronically. My car has been broken into twice in the past year and a half (different states), and the first time, in addition to taking my $50 CD player, they took my entire CD collection, including very rare radio bootlegs by Melissa Etheridge and my German Sailor Moon album. Grrr! I can now carry up to 3000 songs in my pocket stored in something as light as a feather.
The battery IS very iffy, and probably will get moreso, but I could buy a 4 AA battery portable pack to carry with me that would give 12 hours of time. I use the iPod mostly in my car, plugged into my cassette player with the same adapter I used with my portable CD player, and have no problems with navigating the menus or skipping. iTunes is extremely easy to use, and I already had firewire with my Mac.
My uncle also got an iPod for Christmas, but since he has a PC, we had to go out and buy a PCI FireWire card, and that was a little more traumatic (I had problems seating the card).
The biggest advantage of the iPod over other HD-based systems (they all have the same size and mostly easy nagivation now) is weight. My iPod weighs nothing. I don’t even feel it when I have it tucked into my pants or jacket pocket. Otherwise, 20 gigs one place is probably as good as another. I’ve dropped it a few times with no consequences, and the sound quality seems to depend solely on the stereo system it’s plugged into (sounds like crap in my car, but beeaautiful plugged into my iMac.
I currently have 320 mp3s and I use a random rotation, so there’s lag sometimes while the HD spins up as it goes to the next song. I’ve got music, stand-up comedy, and audio books. I don’t know if this is a consideration, but my iPod allows me to use it as an external hard drive, which effectively doubles my hard drive capacity.
Merkwurdigliebe makes me want to get something that plays video. Wah!
http://www.archos.com/img/products/290x230/av_320.en.jpg
There she is!!!
But Apple is going to come out with one soon, I hear. Archos was actually the first company to come out with a HD based MP3 player, its just that Apple did it a little better and later. Sure it is heavy, and the battery is a permenant Lithium Ion type, but its still pretty cool. But I think you have to be in a situation where you commute alot to need it. And even then you can’t really watch it while you are in the car unless you made some kind of special display or something.
I have a 40gig iPod that I’m in love with. I chose one that big because I have a large CD collection and I encode at a fairly high rate (VBR.) iTunes is very easy to use, even for a dummy like me. The apple music store is ok, be aware the mp3s are all encoded at 128, too low imo.
I haven’t had any battery problems yet, but mine’s only a month old so far.
I have the older model of the Archos Multimedia player - I’ve had it for a couple of years now. It has a little screen so I can watch MST3K at work when it’s slow. It has a 20 gig drive, and I love it to death. I use it nearly every day, and usually have it on long enough to drain the battery. I’ve dropped it a couple of times, once hard enough to pop off one of the panels, and it’s still working perfectly well. Highly recommended.
I have a 20gig Nomad Zen. The thing is a joy! The menu navigation took a few minutes to get used to because of the thumbwheel, but it’s second nature now. The unit sounds very good and the battery life is awsome. I’ve heard some folks grumble about the PC interface a few times, but I’m really not sure why. I can easily manipulate my files and do what I need to do. I don’t need a lot of bells on my interface since all I want it to do is load my MP3’s. I do all of my cd ripping and MP3 encoding with other programs.
I LOVE my 40gb iPod. I keep 5000 songs on it (alt_preset_extreme) and I couldn’t be happier. My only gripes would be the shortened battery life (not a problem since I top it off every night) and that my first one just wouldn’t turn on one day (but my Best Buy PSP took care of it)
30 gig iPod. 2300 songs and only using 12 gigs. I love it but I find it a bit glitchy, and not just the battery. I listen to it while walking the 1/2 hour to work. I find it sometimes stops playing or jumps to another song without finishing the one it’s currently playing. I try to let the battery run completely down before recharging.
My 15 gig iPod has undoubtably improved the quality of my life. In addition to the great music functionality, I also use it to store digital photos (with the addition of a Belkin media reader box) direct from memory cards. This results in my not having to shlep a laptop along on vacation and never having to buy another memory card.
Finally, Audible.com audio books are wonderful. The iPod allows you to retain your bookmark in place even if you then play music or put the device to sleep. For a commuter like me that sure beats dealing with CDs and cassettes.
The only thing I would recommend is purchasing a better set of headphones. The stock white Apple ones are barely OK, but a pair of Sennheisers will make a huge difference in your enjoyment.
I have a 20 gig iPod, that I love. I have about 2100 songs on it, and I play it on random roughly 6 hours per day. No problems whatsoever.
It displays digital pictures with an attachment, or it *takes * digital pictures with an attachment? Having a digital photo album would be kind of neat for the holidays… Also, can you describe actually using the DVR features a bit more? The web site is a bit ambiguous on that…
I’ve got a 10 gig iPod. It’s great. I’ve had no problems with it, and frankly am a little confused by all the iPod bashing I hear. I’ve never had any problem with mine in the six months I’ve had it, two of my friends have had iPods for about four months with no problems.
Anyhow, the storage is enough for the time being; the interface is probably the best, most intuitive I’ve ever used for anything; battery life is enough for the two to three hour drives I do several times a month and I’ve got the AA battery pack for longer stuff.
The one I have will store and display pictures out of the box. You can buy an attachment that will take pictures. Since mine is an older model than Merkwurdigliebe’s, I’d suspect it’s the same.
Mine doesn’t function as a DVR - it can’t record video - but it does record MP3s off a line-in port. I haven’t done it myself, but I hear the quality isn’t great. But again, mine’s an older model. They may have improved it. As far as video goes, mine can only play video files that are in a specific resolution, but it came with a very easy to use program that converts just about any file to the format it needs to be able to display it. You just select the source and destination, hit start, and come back in a few minutes to upload your new video file to the Jukebox.
20GB iPod. Excellent. Listen to music jogging, plug it into the car stereo, plug it into the reciever of your stereo system; it avoids all the problems of CDs.
There are threee generations of iPods, in case anyone was confused by going to the Apple site and only being able to buy 15 GB, 20 GB, and 40 GB models, as well as the 4 GB iPod mini. Mine is the 20 GB model of the second generation, the top-of-the-line of three years ago. It is still excellent, despite its chipped and worn look from my constant banging on it.
The current generation of iPods are identical, except for hard disk size. I’d suggest buying whichever one is immediately larger than your music collection.
BTW, Apple’s preferred method of sound compression is AAC (Advanced Audio Codec, a variant on the MPEG-4 standard), and iTunes Music Store delivers its songs in 128 kbps AAC. It’s about as good as 160 kbps MP3, and in standard-quality speakers it’s unintelligible from music from a CD.
I have the same one as Smeghead by the sounds of it - the Archos Jukebox Multimedia. I love it - it has enough space for loads of tunes, a few full-length movies, and - the real clincher for me - you can download photos off digital camera memory cards and view them on it. It was a godsend on a 6-month trip round the world… I came back with about 8,000 photos stored on this little baby 