Personal Music Players

[Yaads 1]

Hello,

I have been thinking about getting something portable (home and car) to put all my music on so I can stop lugging around all these CD's. What type of devices do you have? What is the best out there within a decent price range? Everyone seems to push the Ipod...is it as good as they make it out to be?

Also if you do have an Ipod or something similar do you buy music online or just download your CD's? What sites give the best deals?

Any tips/insight is greatly appreciated

Jamie

[GaryC 7]

Hello,

I have been thinking about getting something portable (home and car) to put all my music on so I can stop lugging around all these CD's. What type of devices do you have? What is the best out there within a decent price range? Everyone seems to push the Ipod...is it as good as they make it out to be?

Also if you do have an Ipod or something similar do you buy music online or just download your CD's? What sites give the best deals?

Any tips/insight is greatly appreciated

Jamie

I bought an iPod 30gig for when I traveled to PI. I have since given it to my son, Robin. It is very cool because it plays music, displays pictures and plays movies. There is a never ending supply of accessories to go with it. I just got Robin a docking station that is an alarm clock, FM radio and plays his songs through larger speakers. I had a large number of CD's and MP3's that can be sent to the player via Itunes. It's very easy to use. I caught it on sale at $200 and it is worth the cost. It seems the HD is bottomless. I had 1500 songs, 40 music video's and 6 full length movies on it.

[SteveLaura 0]

We have an iPod. There's some flak about how long the battery lasts, we're happy with it. Easy to use. Got a in-car charger and transmitter to the radio. Even dropped it in a cup of coffee and it still works.

As to finding tunes to fill it, the library is your friend!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

After dropping my old iRiver H-140 that I'd had for 3 years I wouldn't personally buy any HD-based player. If you drop it - the HD is knackered, and even the new HD-players are not shockproof in anyway whatsoever.

I would never buy an iPod, for the main reason that you need iTunes to sync your music files. There’s no reason why MP3 players should be any more than drag and drop – anything else is a complication, and with iTunes specifically, synching your music library on an older computer without too much memory is asking for trouble. Similarly the newer iPods don’t work if your PC doesn’t support USB 2.0. Many older PC’s don’t – so its worth checking that out before you buy anything.

The iPod is also grossly overpriced IMO. Even the flash based nano is a rip – for about $10 more you can get one of these (I bought one last month) which plays video has an SD-Card expansion (new High Density SD Card are coming out which will offer upwards of 32 gig capacities), supports USB drag and drop as well as synching and has a rated 50 hour battery capacity.

Then there's the new iRiver Clix - also better reviewed than the iPod and around the same price. Also plays video. The ipod nano doesn't.

Do yourself a favour and check out cnet.com and read up on some of the reviews. There are plenty of MP3 players out there that offer more than the iPod, for the same price or lower.

[JVKn'CVO 11]

I'm a loyal Sony customer, so I have a Sony network Walkman.

Good: charge last a very long time

The sound quality is excellent, great definition (much better than Ipods in my opinion)...I discovered sounds in songs I've never heard before!

Bad: volume level is not too high (it's fine for personal hearing but if I plug it to external speakers it sounds a little low)

Saludos,

Caro

[pedroh 21]

ipod video 30gb here... i download a lot of videos online, specially from youtube (there's a firefox script for that)

yeah battery life is not the best, specially if you're watching a movie, but it rules...

and yes, get a service plan from wherever u buy it, that hard drive can be tricky sometimes...

[Mononoke28 137]

I had my iPod here at my desk, turned around and it dropped on the floor. It wasn't a hard fall but it messed up the hard drive pretty bad. The other bad thing about it is that you can only use iTunes tpo manage your music files, and new music is MP4 which means you can only load it to your iPod and you're not able to burn it onto a CD.

[pedroh 21]

I had my iPod here at my desk, turned around and it dropped on the floor. It wasn't a hard fall but it messed up the hard drive pretty bad. The other bad thing about it is that you can only use iTunes tpo manage your music files, and new music is MP4 which means you can only load it to your iPod and you're not able to burn it onto a CD.

u can actually burn it, but they allow u a certain number of copies

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

ipod video 30gb here... i download a lot of videos online, specially from youtube (there's a firefox script for that)

yeah battery life is not the best, specially if you're watching a movie, but it rules...

and yes, get a service plan from wherever u buy it, that hard drive can be tricky sometimes...

The video thing is a bit of a rip too – you can only buy stuff from iTunes store, with most movies costing $9.99. Amazon has a similar service that costs (a lot less), but the iPod is of course incompatible with it. No real reason why it should be – they just want to lock you into their service. That’s enough reason for me to object to it. With my current player I can rip DVDs to it and watch them that way. Battery life is rated for 10 hours video…

I downloaded an episode of The Shield over iTunes (just to watch on my PC) and it was “jerkovision”. Didn’t have any problems with Amazon Unbox.

The best video player out there was the Toshiba Gigabeat S – series, but that model was discontinued after Toshiba designed the Zune for Microsoft.

[pedroh 21]

ipod video 30gb here... i download a lot of videos online, specially from youtube (there's a firefox script for that)

yeah battery life is not the best, specially if you're watching a movie, but it rules...

and yes, get a service plan from wherever u buy it, that hard drive can be tricky sometimes...

The video thing is a bit of a rip too – you can only buy stuff from iTunes store, with most movies costing $9.99. Amazon has a similar service that costs (a lot less), but the iPod is of course incompatible with it. No real reason why it should be – they just want to lock you into their service. That’s enough reason for me to object to it. With my current player I can rip DVDs to it and watch them that way. Battery life is rated for 10 hours video…

I downloaded an episode of The Shield over iTunes (just to watch on my PC) and it was “jerkovision”. Didn’t have any problems with Amazon Unbox.

The best video player out there was the Toshiba Gigabeat S – series, but that model was discontinued after Toshiba designed the Zune for Microsoft.

mhh negative my friend, u can download videos from anywhere, u just need the converter to make it ipod format

i've downloaded tons of videos from youtube in tv quality, and played them on my tv

[GaryC 7]

There are conversion programs to make almost any movie compatible with iPod. I can put my DVD's and movies I get from the internet on there for free.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

ipod video 30gb here... i download a lot of videos online, specially from youtube (there's a firefox script for that)

yeah battery life is not the best, specially if you're watching a movie, but it rules...

and yes, get a service plan from wherever u buy it, that hard drive can be tricky sometimes...

The video thing is a bit of a rip too – you can only buy stuff from iTunes store, with most movies costing $9.99. Amazon has a similar service that costs (a lot less), but the iPod is of course incompatible with it. No real reason why it should be – they just want to lock you into their service. That’s enough reason for me to object to it. With my current player I can rip DVDs to it and watch them that way. Battery life is rated for 10 hours video…

I downloaded an episode of The Shield over iTunes (just to watch on my PC) and it was “jerkovision”. Didn’t have any problems with Amazon Unbox.

The best video player out there was the Toshiba Gigabeat S – series, but that model was discontinued after Toshiba designed the Zune for Microsoft.

mhh negative my friend, u can download videos from anywhere, u just need the converter to make it ipod format

i've downloaded tons of videos from youtube in tv quality, and played them on my tv

The problem with video conversion is that you get that lip synch problem between the video and sound streams. I just object that the commercial services deliberately ham-string their device to force you to into buying their content.

[pedroh 21]

man what converter do u use lol? my converter is fine! and free!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

man what converter do u use lol? my converter is fine! and free!

The one I use is proprietary. Which one do you do use?

BTW - had the same problem with DVD-ripping software. Works ok on the PC - but the sound gets ahead of the picture on a regular DVD player.

[pedroh 21]

for pc movies, videora Ipod Converter

and for youtube clipss.. free dvdvideosoft free youtube to ipod converter ( u need greasemonkey script for firefox and youtube to me script)

Edited June 4, 2007 by pedroh