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iPods & MP3 Players
What's
The Evolution of MP3 players?
by my-tech-guide.com
Despite highly publicized legal wrangles involving
MP3.com and Napster, recent understandings between these music-distribution
sites and some major record companies suggest that even the
music industry realizes Internet music distribution is here
to stay. So odds are you'll continue to find plenty of online
music to download, though it's likely less of it will be free.
To
keep up with the demand for a little Net music, electronics
firms are developing new personal digital audio players. For
this Update, we looked at five players: the Compaq iPaq Personal
Audio Player PA-1, the Sensory Science rave:mp 2300, the Iomega
HipZip, the Rio 600, and the Creative Nomad Jukebox Player,
one of the first high-capacity portable jukebox players.
These new players are noteworthy for their diverse storage
options. So far, portable players have been hindered by their
inability to hold more than an hour or two of CD-quality
music, and by the high cost of removable flash-memory cards..
Only one of the new players takes the conventional approach
of strong music on internal memory, removable memory cards,
or a combination of both. The other players introduce new alternatives:
low-cost removable disks, snap-on memory modules, and a miniature
hard drive.
Low-cost
disks. The tiny PocketZip drive used in the rave:mp
2300 and Iomega HipZip works with removable 40-MB rotating
magnetic disks that sell for $80 to $100, depending on how
many disks you buy. Price is the big advantage: You can store
music for as little as 200 cents per megabyte, compared with
about $20 per megabyte for memory cards. The drive, an Iomega
product formerly known as the Clik! Drive, is also used by
devices such as digital cameras and laptop computers.
One drawback is that the disks have moving parts and are more
fragile than solid-state cards - hence the plastic cases used
to protect them from dust and damage. Also, each disk can hold
only 40 minutes or so of CD-quality MP3 music rather than an
entire hour-long album, which 64-MB cards can generally hold.
Snap-on
memory modules. Taking a different
tack, the designers of the Rio 600 have taken the removable
memory out of the player
and housed it in a "backpack" that snaps on to the
back of the unit. The backpack contains the battery for the
player and varying amounts of memory. The "outboard" approach
allows room for further expansion: A 340-MB backpack with a
hard drive is expected this year. One concern is that the backpack
is awkward to remove and replace, which you need to do to change
the battery.
Miniature
hard drive. The Creative Nomad Jukebox Player is
one of the first portable jukebox players to arrive on the
market. With a 6-gigabyte (GB) hard drive, high capacity is
the Nomad's obvious advantage. It can hold 90 hours or more
of MP3 music, or roughly 90 albums - a real feat, considering
that most players can hold only one or at most two hours. You
can't directly compare the cost per megabyte since the Nomad
uses an internal hard drive, but any way you cut it, it's a
small fraction of the cost of other media. The downside: It's
hefty compared with other portable players - a bit larger than
a CD player. It's also noteworthy that the Nomad has line inputs
and outputs, so it can record and play music using a component
sound system.
Other portable jukeboxes are appearing as digital music becomes
mainstream. MP3 players are also showing up in other types
of home and personal electronics, including component systems,
portable CD players and boom boxes, personal digital assistants,
and even wristwatches and cell phones. We'll test some of these
products for future reports.
The design of these new players acknowledges that MP3 - currently
the most popular format for compressing digital music files
- may eventually be overtaken by other formats. Four of the
players support Windows Media Audio (WMA) as well as MP3,
and one is also compatible with Advanced Audio Coding (AAC).
All five can be upgraded to accept future formats that may
emerge.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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