posable ipod killer is released

well i prefare it to ipod but opions very and since yesterday there has been rumers it is at t target ive heard it from a few people realy look at the features. removable storage and battery life is very c0ool to me
Sony MZ-NH600D
Portable Hi-MD Recorder/Player
Description


Hi-MD - Store 45 Hours of Music or 1 GB of Data on one Hi-MD MiniDisc
Compatible with Standard MiniDisc Media - Store 13 Hours of Music on One Standard 80 minute MiniDisc
Record your MP3s or CDs at up to 100x Speed
Up to 27 Hours Continuous Battery Life Using 1 "AA" Battery
Easy Jog Dial Navigation
3 Line LCD Display
6 Band Equalizer
Data File Storage - Store and Transfer Presentations, Documents and Spreadsheets
Music Transfer Powered by USB
Plays Back in ATRAC3 Audio, ATRAC3plus Audio and Supports Multiple Audio Formats (MP3, WMA, WAV)
Music Management Software Supplied
Skip-Free G-Protection Technology
Group/Folder Function
Inputs: USB
Outputs: Headphone (1/8" stereo mini plug)
Special Notes:

No line, mic, or optical input (USB upload/download only)
No AC Adapter input
Supplied Accessories:

MDR-027SP Headphones
(1) Hi-MD media blank disc (HMD-1G)
SonicStage® Software CD-ROM with MD Simple Burner Application
USB Cable
Dimensions:

3 3/8 x 1 3/16 x 3 1/8 (83.6 x 28.9 x 77.0mm)
3.5 oz (99g) without battery
Battery Life (approx.):

PCM/Hi-SP/Hi-LP Play Record
AA x 1 10/21/25 hr 3/5/6 hr
SP/LP2/LP4 Play Record
AA x 1 20/24/27 hr 7/9/11 hr

i think this is Sony's attempt at for ipod killer.

http://www.i4u.com/article1529.html

geoff

They are a bit late with this product. Apple are rumoured to have a movie-capable iPod update due for release later this year. I hope Sony decide to include MP3 support on all their Walkmans in future, the DRM for ATRAC3 is a real pain in the behind.

I've always thought that the mini-disk was potentially great. I've almost bought one on several occasions. But while doing research they have always fallen flat somewhere or other and I've not done it. I think it would be great for them to have a viable competitor again. But I think I don't want to carry disks around as well as the player. But I'll check it out when it's available for playing with at a local store. It won't "kill" the iPod though /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

The screen on the thing in that picture is really a postage stamp. Not much use for movies. If Apple would do a color screen capable of playing mp4 movies or something, now THAT would be killer. But, how would you handle that legally with the film folks? They certainly can't advocate ripping DVD's to some other play friendly format. So they would have to build something into the software to do that for you that was OK with the movie guys. The legal part of that negotiation is probably whats taking so long. The technology has been capable of playing movies in something that size for quite some time.

i still loved my ipod but that darn batterylife was horible since im mostly walking or not at a place where i can recahrge easly and hecy i always forgot to do so i was always walking and the battery would go out .but i got a first gen minidisk and man ive been useing that same battery for a very long time and when it goes out i get a 20 vent battery out of pocket and replace it. but i did want a lot more storage and i do admit this new minidisc gave me what i wanted but it will be a few years before i get one this one i have now i had a while and it was cheap.i also love the atrac 3 plus codec when i encoeded it corect it sounded decent but not great at 48 k..but i still love ipods.there amazeing.if they had morelike 14 hours a batery life they would rock.but for those who just plug it into there car power source there the best way to go. now i miss my ipod a little

Apple probably won't come out with a video iPod. The man Jobs keeps saying "It's all about the music." But then again it's Apple, so I reserve my final word on the subject until the 4th gen iPod is out /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

That minidisc player does have some very respectable specs. Like James though, I want my whole music collection (Now just a hair under 10 gig and growing) and I want it to go. I don't want to have to swap discs around. That and I hear the Sony software leaves something to be desired...

10 gig Mini Discs and iTunes compatibility, now (for me) that would be an iPod killer.

To each his own though, so it's always nice to have decent options /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif

i can see that point sabby.i had that same view for a while then i realized sometimes id only listen to 30 or 40 songs that i had on ipod.matter fact on my minidsick player i got the old type that dont hold much at all but i was happy with the songs i had on it and the disk are so small that ya can put one in pocket if ya want.but ne ways the disk i had i forgot i had 3 folders so i had 3 times the music i thought. the battery life is my fav though,i realy think ive been listening to tunes with this battery for around 40 hours maybe more.and at 20 cents a pop it is cool.plus mine is like a tank i bet i could drop it 10 feet and it would laugh i got the s2 model water resiatant to.o id love 10 gig mini disk /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gifcause ya can use the new 1 gig mini disc to store pc files to so that is always cool not sure about apple files though

I think I will get the Sony MZ-NH1. I really like MiniDisc.
Okay so some MP3 players have mini-harddisks but the MiniDisc portables such as the Sony E10 and now the NH1 are miniture mechanical marvels and are so much more classy and cool!

Al

Ah, the MD - evidence of the disconnect between the Japanese and US markets.

In Japan, CDs are horrendously expensive, but MDs aren't. There's also a big market for singles, which the MD is excellent for.

So Sony keeps pushing the MD stateside, hoping against hope that it will miraculously take off, in spite of its high cost and inconvenience relative to media-independent MP3.

We'll see. It took over a decade to push HDTV in the 'states, and it's finally been accepted as a standard.

Re: posable ipod killer is released *DELETED*

Post deleted by BruiseLee

Hmmm... I think Iriver released an Ipod killer (cheaper with longer battery life and a radio) but due to poor marketing it never made a dent in Apple's sales. Sony has an advantage of transfering images from their digital camera memory cards directly into the hardrive. This is an incentive that would buy me over. But like with most stuff, Sony has been little too slow and this product should have been available six months ago. Now with new Ipod out on the horizon Sony is an old news. Now perfect MP3 player? Here you go:

-hardrive size doesn't matter but 10 gigs to start
-build in FM radio
-used lithium batteries (interchangable) but you can put in 4 AAs when nowhere near the outlet.
-life on lithiums should be at least 20 hrs
-size no bigger than Ipod or Iriver
-support for memory cards (flash media, memory stick, etc etc)
-possibility of making playlists from the player

Is above so freaking hard to achieve?

Matt

There are 2 different adaptors (that I am aware of) for the iPod to transfer digital images to it's HD. One that provides a USB port for any camera that uses USB that will copy the images from the camera to the iPod and another that provides various digital media slots and can copy between them and the HD in the iPod /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Course, they are both a bit overpriced in my opinion. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I think it would be useful to have some slots in the iPod, but not at the price of compromising the integrity and strength of the case. Mine is about 15 months old (and I still only charge it once a week) and in great shape. I do agree that I wished they could have put a little bigger battery in, but oh well, nothing is going to be absolutely perfect for everybody,

I researched the IRiver thing quite extensively, but it didn't stack up. The competition is getting better but not enough to make me regret the decision to purchase an iPod yet...

Matt, I think it is a little hard to achieve all that currently. And certainly not without a big price hike. 4AA batteries are quite large and if you couple that with memory card reader slots, the HDD, screen, etc it cannot remain that small. The Li-Ion batteries used in the iPod are about as efficient space-wise as you can get as they are rectangular instead of round.

Also, hard disk drives, being mechanical in nature require far more power to run than memory chips. So, that large capacity comes at the cost of battery life.

I believe that you can buy a 4AA external battery pack for the iPod as well as a memory card reader. They aren't made by Apple but they work fine apparently. They make the thing quite a bit bigger though.

I remember when I bought my first Sony Discman. It barely ran through 2 CDs before the 2AA batteries went flat. When it died, my much cheaper replacement would last for 50 hours from 2AA and they have ones that last for over a 100. Give it a couple of years and your wish list will be granted.

Jeff.

it will all be flash memory in the future.i realy think flash memory will inprove vastly in capacity

There is 8 gig flash card for only...





$4000...

Heh.

Matt

the 4 gig one is like 500 but it is in a mp3 player that only cost 200 so a course people buy the mp3 player.take it apart get the 4 giger out and throw away player lol

A few months ago I was looking for a digital voice recorder that would record in an 'open' format that could be accessed by FreeBSD, Linux and of course, Windows. The VIVA mp3 player not only records in WAV, but its flash memory is easy to access with ANY modern OS.

Aside from different internal memory options it also accepts the full sized FLASH memory cards, which are getting hidiously cheap below 512MB. The prices on the full size cards really beat the newer, smaller, thumbnail sized MM cards, and the price of the big cards will just continue to fall. Out of the box the unit also functions as a FLASH drive and a FLASH card reader with any modern OS.

It's a great deal.

Although it would be more handy to have all your songs on one disc/chip/whatever, there is a potential loss that is not needed. Say for instance you have a big memory chip (say the 4 GB if one could afford it) and your card becomes corrupt (it happens from rapid insertion and removal of cards) that you would be out of luck. However if you spread out your songs on several media, if one fails you don't lose your whole library.

I am a bit of a minidisc user. I have one, my dad has one. IMHO it seems they have outstanding battery life on one AA, and if listening to the music with the supplied earbuds I really can't tell the difference in quality. Therefore I can put 5 hours of music on to 1 minidisc, and sound quite decent (by decent I mean that I usually listen to AM radio stations, so it would be better than this). Comparing prices for media, it seems cheaper in the long run to buy blank minidiscs than to buy memory chips for MP3 players.

My other gripe is I can't figure things out like the iPod. Sure you would have over 1000 hours of music on hand, but would be redundant if the battery life is closer to 6-10 hours max, and devices like that use proprietary batteries that are hard to change (if ever).

Stephan,

Since the iPod is a firewire or USB2 connection, it's a very fast and reliable backup disk for your music or your data or whatever. I used to have a system installed on mine and could actually boot my powerbook from it! But I have since removed that for more space /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif I keep a backup of all my projects on it, in an encrypted disk image so that if I loose the thing it won't just be out there.

If the disk were to become corrupted, you'd only loose your songs until you got back to your computer. this is true of any player I think. Nobody loads their songs onto the player and then deletes them from the computer do they?

I don't quite get the problem with the your last question. You can store 1000 hours of music, therefore you want the batteries to last 1000 hours? After a year of good use I do get between 8 and 10 hours on a single charge, sometimes considerably longer if I don't search very much, like when listening to an audio book, and it doesn't have to spin up the HD very often. For me this is no hardship, as when I get home at the end of the day I can just plug it into the computer to sync everything and recharge the battery. There are people in a position to need much more than that between recharging, perhaps they should look at a different machine that they can get regular batteries for or something. i would call those people the niche market rather than those that can get their iPod plugged for a few minutes every few days.

We've had very long winded discussions around here about the apparent difficulty of changing out the iPods battery. I've done it for a friend, it wasn't all that bad. even popular science published a 4 step procedure for doing it in their magazine, so it can't be all that bad huh? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif So you'll have to spend $50 on batteries for it every 18 months to 2 years depending on your usage. Thats not so bad, it's just all in one chunk so it sounds like more. (and the price of those batts will be cheaper each time you do it) so, over the life of the unit (which realistically, how long am I going to keep this one as it gets older and new ones come out, 3 years? 5? I might spend $100 in batteries for it if I kept it for 5 years. That doesn't seem so bad and is cheaper than buying AA's for the same length of time)

MOST of the music players out there are very similar in their usefulness and what they can do. So it comes down to preference of form factor and peripheral features. If you don't like the peripheral features and form factor of the iPod, then you don't have to have one /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif But the issues of battery life and whatnot else are really non-issues when you do the math.

Hard drives seem to have a worse track record than flash memory simply because they require tight-tolerance moving parts.

I'd much rather have a 4GB flash-based player than a 40GB HDD-based player just because I know I don't have to worry about exposing the flash player to excessive shock. I imagine flash players have substantially greater battery life as well.

Flash and magnetic media are not long-term storage solutions. If your entire MP3 collection resides exclusively on your MP3 player, you will invariably lose everything someday.

Due to the ease of moving data to/from flash media, one doesn't need a great deal of it. It's temporary, and can be changed at will, since ideally your MP3 collection lives ona desktop computer (and has been burned to CD/DVD/etc). You should only need as much media as you ever plan on listening to continuously.

Any decent MP3 player should be able to act as a generic removable harddrive if it's worth anything. I don't care how amazing that Apple, RCA, iRiver et al think that their "jukebox" software is - every app I've ever seen is irritating and detracts from my using the device to listen to music. There's also the irritating tendency to embed dumb DRM into such apps and deliberately limit the use of the device as a removable harddrive because of the record/movie business's insane paranoia about piracy.