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New Media Player
Asiriya
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm looking for a new MP3, and the obvious choice is an iPod. I've never owner a proper mp3 before, always using a phone with only a gig or two of space. I'm attracted to having more space then so as to not be restricted in the way I have been before. 8Gigs therefore sounds like too little to me, if only to give me more choice in what I have to listen to. I'm lazy in that so far I've only ever put full albums onto my phone rather than picking the best tracks.
That excludes the cheapest touch, and so I'm left wondering if it's really worth paying more for the larger capacity versions. Most of my friends have touches, so I know how fun they can be, but I'm not sure I can justify the increase in cost, especially if I would rather spend that money on pc upgrades.
My eye is caught on the 160GB classic, mainly because it provides so much space for the money, at least in comparison to Apple's other products, or else the 32gb touch.
Trouble is I have no experience of other brands and so don't really know what to look for.
Basically, what is my best choice for my money, should I buy something cheap and wait for new product lines in september?
Any new rumours about zunes coming over to England also? I can't find anything, but with Windows phone I thought someone might have heard news.
That excludes the cheapest touch, and so I'm left wondering if it's really worth paying more for the larger capacity versions. Most of my friends have touches, so I know how fun they can be, but I'm not sure I can justify the increase in cost, especially if I would rather spend that money on pc upgrades.
My eye is caught on the 160GB classic, mainly because it provides so much space for the money, at least in comparison to Apple's other products, or else the 32gb touch.
Trouble is I have no experience of other brands and so don't really know what to look for.
Basically, what is my best choice for my money, should I buy something cheap and wait for new product lines in september?
Any new rumours about zunes coming over to England also? I can't find anything, but with Windows phone I thought someone might have heard news.
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The Cowon D2 has up to 16 GB internal storage, and this may be expanded using an SDHC card - a 16 or 32 GB card should give you a nice amount of total storage. It has a built in FM radio tuner (some models have DAB as well) and you can record from radio, line in or microphone.
I like this player a lot because I can get a relatively large amount or storage without using a hard drive, thus getting great battery life. The D2 has 40-50 hours of battery when playing music, and it's the only player I've seen that also has useful battery life when playing videos (~10 hours)
It plays some of the more esoteric audio formats such as OGG and FLAC, which is pretty cool if you're a geek. The built-in amplifier is powerful enough to drive fairly large headphones, it supposedly does a much better job of this than the iPod. Most importantly, you don't have to use iTunes (which I hate with a passion), I am free to organize and transfer my files manually just using Windows Explorer. On the player itself I can select songs by navigating through the folder structure on the player rather than the music database thing that the iPod does. (The D2 has the option of using a database as well but it doesn't force you to like the iPod)
The user interface is a bit clunky compared to the iPod though, the general design is definitely not as slick.
Ultimately you have to decide what fits your needs best. For me, the ability to organize files and folders as I please counts for a lot, as does OGG and FLAC playback; I can never go back to using an iPod after having owned the D2. If you like iTunes though, an iPod may be the best choice. If you like the app store and want to use lots of third party apps, you should definitely get the iPod Touch. If you prefer the huge storage capacity available in hard drive based players, you should look into some of those.
Don't buy the iPod just because it's "the default choice". If you decide that the iPod fits your needs the best then that's great, just research your options first.
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I used to use Songbird to sync to the nano, but third-party solutions are inelegant and sometimes buggy. So if you can tolerate iTunes, I would recommend any of the iPods (except the shuffle).
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I love the 2nd gen Shuffle though. I love listening to stuff on shuffle
and also a very small mp3 player that I can clip to the belt loops under my shirt and control with quick movements without looking.
I never use my Ipod Touch for music on the street for that reason.
Amazon has a 16 gb Zune HD on sale for 160 bucks, if price is an issue, and I've heard nothing but good things about the zune software.
So I think you need to decide if the apps are really that important. If they aren't, I really think you could go wit any solid state memory based player that appeals to you. I have a touch, and while I love it, if I could, I'd go back and buy a Zune HD.
Today, if I were buying a dedicated player, I'd choose either an ipod touch or a zune. Zune pass is subscription + free songs every month and that's awesome. But the ipod touch has access to the app store and all the games that go along with that which is better imho.
Honestly, I couldn't make myself carry separate devices for music, calls and gaming. It's the reason I could never get in to my DS or really use a PDA back in the day. I need convergence.
Could get Spotify on an iTouch but thats £15 a month which I'm not a fan of. The apps aren't that important to me, but I feel that I'm paying a premium for the iTouch to get the apps, and I'd want an alternative to be significantly cheaper.
Friends have suggested Creative for the audio quality, though I don't really think I'm that fussy as long as I can hear what I'm listening to.
Archos sound great in principle but the quality seems crap, I've had three friends have theirs break alone, plus all the plug ins to make it work as youd want it to doesnt sound worth it.
I'm looking at Cowon now, and the S9 sounds ok but there's a £100 jump between 16 and 32 GB versions, compared to the touches £70, and that's providing more for the money.
What would people expect to see added to the touch in September? Camera/ video?
On a side note, I have a £50 iTunes card that I got for Christmas. I've emailed Apple and they don't want to let me use it to actually buy an iPod, which I'm not a fan of but I can see why, they already have my money. Don't suppose anyone would like to trade it for cash, would selling it on ebay be ok alternatively?
The big selling point for the apple players, if you have a big music collection, is the Genius feature. Basically, you pick a track you want to listen to and tell the player to give you a genius playlist, which is 25 songs that it thinks will go well with it. For me it's proved really useful at digging into my library and finding songs i've forgotten I had.
On the other hand, iTunes is, well, it makes you fit IT, instead of adapting to fit YOU.
If you're ok with waiting until September anyway, keep in mind that Apple does a buy-a-laptop get-a-free-iPod promotion every summer, so a lot of people wait until then to buy a computer and then immediately sell the iPod to offset the cost - so you could probably pick a brand new player up at a bit of a discount from retail.
So does the Zune. And it has mixview to look at artists that influenced the band/artist or artists that were influenced by them. Even album to album. It also has marketplace picks for other artists based on your likes and dislikes. It's also getting on the fly smartDJ (The genius feature) with your ZuneHD.
That and the zune software > itunes. I agree that the itunes software is the BIGGEST headache ever.
Sigh, the deal seems to be US only, normille. Shame because I want a new laptop for uni and getting something for free out of it would have been lovely. I think I just need to think about what it is I want. I think if Zune had an active development team for apps then it would be a done deal. What I'm scared of is buying one for £200 from ebay then Microsoft announcing the HD2 a month later.
If you are waiting till September-ish, then that's when the first Windows Phone 7 phones'll be starting to pop up, anyway. I expect the Zune HD2s will show up around then.
Additionally, it seems to like to decide that a select few songs I've downloaded through their service are suddenly only a microsecond long in that program, and stutter like crazy for exactly 25 seconds per file after trying to switch it over to Quicktime. After mine dies, I plan to avoid the damn thing like plague.
And I don't want Quicktime bundled in, dammit.
At least in the US, while they advertise the heck out of it as being "get a free iPod Touch!", it's really a "get $229 off an iPod, any iPod!" deal.
I used it to pick up a 120GB classic for 20 bucks with my new laptop.