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Yeah, I really shouldn't have put in the bit in about MD, because like you said, it's apples to oranges. Right now the MD players are quite small, being just a few MM beyond the MD itself on each side, but there is a limit to how small that they can become.
The HD mp3 players have sure made a lot of design progress in the last few years. Remember when the Nomad Jukebox was the only model out there?
That's why I made it clear to state that if it did have a remote, it wouldn't be nearly as useful as browsing on the interface. (And I say that of all players like this, iPod included).Quote:
Originally Posted by sphere79
Let me clarify a few of my gripes. First, the interface just feels kunky to me. Yes, that isn't something I can back up with hard facts - that's just a feeling.Quote:
Geez, it's not THAT bad. It just uses a tiered folder system ( Artist>Album>Songs ), with arrows to navigate in and out of the folders, and up and down ( or volume and ff/rw while playing ). Then there's Play, Pause, Stop, all standard stuff. If my wife and mother can use it daily, it ain't TOO complicated. Maybe it's no Ipod interface ( and I haven't played with one beyond a store display ) but it works.
Facts that I can bring up, however. First, the tiered folder system is a horrible way to handle things. You are basically just using a dumbed-down folder borwser. On the opposite end, you have something like the iPod, which uses ID3 tags so that you can instantly sort through everything by Artist, Album, Song Name, Genre, Playlist, etc.
Another gripe - and this is a huge one for me - is that the three interface buttons CHANGE depending on where you are at in the browsing system. That is absolutely unacceptable. From what I remember, one button that was Back or something like that most of the time, at certain times, suddenly becomes Record. I got used to hitting that button for back, so all of a sudden, when I was trying to go back, out of nowhere I find myself recording audio.
Unless my friend's is just a bum unit, the screen's pixels have a pretty bad amount of noise in them, never consistently staying one solid color. This happens no matter what you are doing - not just while watching video on the unit.Quote:
The color screen on mine is quite nice, imo. Are you refering to the resolution that's ass.
*snipped extra things you can do*
As I said, I'll give the units credit for being able to do all of those things. Except for the hard drive feature, which the iPod can do as well (except it can be a USB 2 or FireWire drive, one step up from the Archos, which can't do FireWire so far as I know).
What? Noooooooo. The multimedia Archos, the current one, isn't close to any current MD units out there, cheap or otherwise. Maybe units from like 5-6 years ago, but nothing at all nowdays. Current MD units, ones that only play are typically only 10-20% bigger than the MDs themselves.Quote:
The newest Archos unit ( the AV300 ) looks pretty big, but the Multimedia Archos is smaller than a cassette Walkman, and around the same size as some of the cheaper MD units ( though heavier with the harddrive ).
I love my MiniDisc. The only issue I have is that the ones with built-in USB transfer came out just after I got mine :(Quote:
Originally Posted by Tones
That guy has the same car stereo as me. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Tones
Kenshin: You should get the MZ-N505, it's the one I have. I bought mine off of eBay earlier this year for $85 or so new (buy it now). It looks like the prices are a little higher now, since I believe they're discontinued, but they are very good for the money. I'm just mad that stores never stock up on the small packs of minidiscs. It's better than the other "value model" that Best Buy sells for about $130, because the newer one doesn't have a line-in, so you can only use netMD.
I don't use it much (at all) around the house, but for traveling, it's great because it can fit in a standard jean pocket and you don't have to worry about batteries dying out every 5-10 hours. I just wish that there weren't the limitations of Sony's stupid ATRAC format. I need to download that Real add-on...
I've got an MZ-R700.
I like it just fine. I get past the "manual recording" inconvenience by just making a playlist, setting blank spaces between tracks, and letting it record while I'm out or something.
Plus, its design is much nicer than the current models:
http://www.fischerhifi.ch/Images/MZ_R700.gif
Yea, and that thing was about the size of a portable CD player. It did play and record .wav's however, but it had proprietary software for music management. The new Nomad is pretty small ( it's what they're using in those Buymusic.com Ipod-esque commercials ) but I haven'tQuote:
Originally Posted by Tones
checked out the details.
The best use for the remote is when you have the unit plugged into a TV, whether it be while playing audio OR video. On my wife and I's last trip to Cape Cod we got back to the hotel room after a long day, kicked back and checked out the pictures and video's we had taken while chilling in the bed. After that we watched a movie, and then later on in the evening fooled around whilst Dark Side of the Moon played ( albiet through crappy TV speakers ).Quote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
There is a loading delay when fliping through the folders, I don't know ifQuote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
it's the harddrive speed rating or a general lack of RAM in the Multimedia 20 model, but you're right - it is there.
All of my MP3 CD-R/RW's that I'd been ripping and burning over the years had been organized as artist/album/01-songs.mp3 so it wasn't a huge jump for me to just dump all these discs to the Archos. It's how mostly everything I had was already organized. That's one of the gripes even with the newest Archos ( in one of the reviews I read ) the reviewer was upset that no ID3 tag searching was supported. I really only have maybe two folders with various stuff in them, everything else is organized so that I know right where it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
Yea, it's the three ( unlabeled ) buttons up top that sometimes switch functions depending on the mode ( it tells you what the function for each is on the screen itself ). That is a legitimate complaint, as it took me a week or so of regular use for the interface to become second nature, it isn't the most intuitive setup - that's for sure. If you did use it regularly you'd pick it up though, I jump around the thing with one hand while I'm driving without even looking having been use to it for so long.Quote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
That's called "pixel shimmering", and yea my unit does it too. It's notQuote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
really noticable so much while playing videos ( to me ), it's when you're in the menu and have sharply contrasting colors ( I use the blue on black option ). Even then, you have to get close to see it but it is there. Apparently the AV300 model has a completely different type of screen and has none of the shimmering.
There is a firewire cable available for the Archos, but it comes with the USB 2.0 by default. USB 2.0 is a hell of alot faster than USB 1.0, but it's still not quite firewire. I might pick up the Archos firewire cable afterQuote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
I get my DV camcorder, cause I'm gonna have to pick up a FW card anyway.
I was in a Circuit City maybe 6 months ago, and there was a display unit MD player which I held my Archos up next to, commenting to my friends on how it wasn't too much bigger than the MD unit. I honestly haven't really kept up on MD technologies since the DCC vs. MD argument ( remember that? ), but I've found out the MD player was the "Audiophase" unit pictured below. The online spec.s I've found have the units size at 3x3x.7 inches, and the Archos Multimedia is 4.3x3.1x1.1 - so it's basically an inch or so taller and a hair thicker and wider than that particular unit, which is impressive to meQuote:
Originally Posted by shidoshi
consididering how much more music/data/pictures/video the Archos can comparatively hold.
http://pages.cthome.net/resistance/5260/mdp1.jpg
I've also done more research on the new Archos series, and while they are certainly more expensive ( they usually drop signifigantly within 6 months to a year ) - people are loving them. You can see from the
pictures the build quality looks better, and the reviewers have all commented on the quality feel of the new models. It's also not quite as big as I first thought, as you can see from the comparison picture
below. There's also a link to a website with a review and more pictures, as well as a 10 MB Divx movie file that was encoded with the unit ( and looks way better than what my Archos can do ). I'll wait for the 40 Gig model to be released and drop in price and then I'll snatch one up.
http://www.hotmp3gear.com/AV300review.htm
http://pages.cthome.net/resistance/5260/comparison.jpg
By the way, this thread made me go buy an Archos Jukebox Recorder 20.
I'm loving it so far... and I'm having a really hard time filling it up. :)
I haven't messed w/ recording yet... but I'm looking forward to running a line off the mixing board at the next show I play and recording our set.
Only gripes I have is mine is glitching up and crashing. Its only happened twice, and the unit had been playing songs for about eight hours straight each time.
Great purchase.
Yea, they do that too - it's the buggy firmware. There's new firmware released usually every few months or so ( though some say the newer ones sometimes end up introducing new bugs ) they are up to v1.31 right now - which fixes and adds a ton of stuff ( the camera can be used in B/W mode, etc. ). I'm currently using v1.22, which I don't think has frozen up on me at all. I guess those French aren't known for thier programming skills?! Anyway, try the Archos Yahoo Group ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/archosmultimedia/ ) for more help with the firmware, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by 88mph
Update: Whoa - v1.31 is apparently the anti-christ. Stick with v1.22 ( which is only two versions previous to 1.31 ) is what most are saying, some even say 1.16 is the best ( but there's no remote support ).
Mine shipped with 1.28, thats what I'm using.
Found another gripe. My 20 gig HD is actually 18.6 gigs. :(