Which Portable Media Player should I go for?

RMS Oceanic

The thread title is my question, but I'm going to flesh out some details.

I want to get a pocket-sized media player for work, but I'm not keen on an iPod, because I like organising my media library myself. My media is in the following formats:

Audio: MP3, WMA
Video: AVI, DivX, XviD, MP4, H.264

I'd like to be able to reliably play these, a size of at least 64gb and possibly higher, it can fit in the average pocket and has a decent battery life. I'm currently leaning to the Zune HD or an Archos 5.

What would you guys recommend?

Sangheili91

Zune 120

Seriously the best PMP I've ever owned. It'll play most video file formats and will play both MP3s and WMAs (including WMA lossless), and it's built like a tank.

Of course it's discontinued now, but if you can find a refurbed one or something, you won't regret it.

RMS Oceanic

That one looks good, but an initial sweep of eBay shows none available to me - I'm in Northern Ireland - without extortionate shipping. I'm still leaning to the Archos 5 or Zune HD, as Wikipedia says their Video Battery Life is better than Zune Classic by a few hours.

Natheo

My roommate has a zuneHD. It's held up to abuse very well. It's probably not as open ended as something like an archos5, since it requires the zune software to sync and that software will mess with your library. If you just want to go drag and drop, I'd advise steering clear of the zune as much as I would the iPod, unless someone can prove me wrong.

billwill

Zune HD is great. But you pretty much want this:

http://www.amazon.com/COWON-160-MP3-Player-Black/dp/B0048BPI7C/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1302673670&sr=8-2

It's not the easiest to use, but it's durable, will play anything, and is priced very well. Also videos look astounding on it.

RMS Oceanic

That one does look pretty great. However, the internet says it doesn't support the H.264 format, and neither does much of the Cowon product range.

This is hard.

billwill

RMS Oceanic wrote: »

That one does look pretty great. However, the internet says it doesn't support the H.264 format, and neither does much of the Cowon product range.

This is hard.

Is there a media player that can play H.264? That might be something you'll just have to convert.

Also, concerning Archos, they're fine. My friend had one, and while it wasn't anything fancy, it got the job done.

Essee

RMS Oceanic wrote: »

I want to get a pocket-sized media player for work, but I'm not keen on an iPod, because I like organising my media library myself.

What exactly do you mean? If you're talking about "needing" to use iTunes to put music on your iPod... that's not actually necessary. There are plenty of programs that can add files to your iPod that aren't iTunes, and don't need to manage your music at all. Heck, even Winamp has the ability to handle that. I even personally used it to do that a few times, although since it was a couple years back I seem to remember that was a little buggy.

I only have an old 4th-gen iPod Nano (got it for free), which doesn't play video or anything, so I can't really help with recommending alternatives, sorry! I would definitely try to find a cheaper alternative if you can, but the one thing I can say for the iPods that I've personally used is that they have got a pretty good interface. That's part of the reason they became so popular.

RMS Oceanic

Its like, with a cheap MP3 player, I can drag & drop my files onto it like it were a memory stick. Is there a more sophisticated player that does this?

Conroy Bumpas

i have an old archos av500.

the its really good iv had a few old arcos things.

one thing to bare in mind is most players are a bit funny with video codex and stuff like that.

also to put vids on the archos you cant just drag and drop, you have to go into windows meadia player salect the video then sync with player. if you just drag and drop it dosent show up on the player. you can just drag and drop pic and music.