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Television Media

Flipster Portable Plays MPEG-4 134

Posted by CmdrTaco from the its-so-cute dept.
An anonymous reader says "Pogo! Products has released a mediabox called the Flipster that plays MPEG-4 video and MP3 & WMA tunes. The unit's screen can display JPG and GIF graphics as well. What is interesting is the decision to go with flash memory for storage. Capacity is limited to 128MB plus whatever MMC card you put in the expansion slot. While it allows the Flipster comes in at 3.7oz, I would prefer to see something using the 10GB Toshiba drive found in the iPod. Maybe I'll wait for the Archos Jukebox Multimedia, but I'm beginning to wonder if that portable will ever appear."
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Flipster Portable Plays MPEG-4 More

Flipster Portable Plays MPEG-4

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  • Woohoo! (Score:2, Funny)

    by awx ( 169546 )
    The unit's screen can display JPG and GIF graphics as well...
    More ways to carry pr0n round in my pocket! Yay for technology!
    • It's sad, but that's also the first thing that I thought of for it. Hmmm. Seems /. readers share the same one-track mind.
      • Dude, it's not just /.ers man, it's all men. /.ers are just a small subset of men. I really doubt women read /., at least I think this is a safe assumption....
        • Actually, a poll a year or two ago revealed that Slashdot's readership is something like 80% male, 4% female, and 16% Cowboyneal.

    • Re:Woohoo! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Subcarrier ( 262294 )
      More ways to carry pr0n round in my pocket! Yay for technology!

      The words of Alanis Morrisette seem appropriate to the occasion: "I've got one hand in my pocket and the other one is giving a high five."
      • But if one hand is doing the deed and the other is self-congratulatory, whose hand is holding the *cough* reading material?
    • You're right! Portable porn! that's exactly what we need! I mean, who wouldn't want to watch porn while you're sitting on the bus or subway on the way to work. Or in your car stuck in traffic. Or while you're doing groceries.
      • I think the useful time to use this is when you're hooking up with a not-so-attractive chick and can't get up. Just whip out the pocket porn. Keep some stuff on there she might like too in case she needs help getting turned on as well.

      • Re:Woohoo! (Score:2, Funny)

        by jx100 ( 453615 )
        Tell me, if you're already "doing" your groceries, would you really need any pr0n?
    • Is that a Flipster in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
  • 128 MB of movies!!

    wohoo!!

    • The release mentions using this device during your one hour commute to Manhattan; 128MB is enough for the trip once. During the return trip you'll have to listen to the same mp3s, and change them every night. This is just dumb.

      The cool features are what's coming: "digital camera, a TV tuner, and wireless connectivity." So you can play games with your friends while taking upskirt pictures and changing people's channels as the train drives past?
      • I will admit that Windows Media format is really good for audio in comparison to MP3 for holding music for a trip. I started ripping my music to 96Kbit WMA for a while, which let me take around 2-3 hours of music on the go with me whenever I took my iPaq 3135 with a 128M cartridge in it. With a 6-8 hour battery life depending on volume I play things at, the $150 monochrome iPaq was probably one of the best tech purchases I've made. So even though MP3 might not get you 2 hours of music on 128M, this device does give you a chance to play just enough if you use WMA.

        WMA for all it's origins, does sound about as good as 128Kbit MP3 audio.

        Of course, I'm now debating what to do about my music since I got an iBook that only plays Windows Media one file at a time thanks to MS's player on it. Oh well.

        • Well, if you have an iBook that you're using to listen to music while on the road, you could always use this nifty new thing called iTunes that came for free with your iBook, and is fully functional as opposed to Microsoft's half-assed port of a player that plays non-standard files.

          Even the older iBooks have plenty of space for several hours of good quality MP3s.

          • Uhh. The issue isn't whether or not I have a player, it's whether that player can use the 96Kbit WMA files I encoded my stuff into so I could get the most efficient use out of the iPaq with only 128M of storage before I got the iBook.
            If I want my music efficiently on both machines, I now have to keep it encoded twice which is a pain in the ass. That was the entire point of my post, which most people who actually know how to put 2+2 together without equaling 3 probably understood.

            If you're going to be a smartass, at least be a halfway intelligent one.
            • I guess it comes down to this...

              If you don't want to have problems using audio files between the two machines, use MP3. If you wanted more files than 128 MP3 will allow for, don't buy a machine with only 128MB of memory.

              Getting locked into Windows Media formats so you can stuff a few more songs onto an over-priced chintzy plastic Swiss Army knife of a digital appliance is a very poor decision.
              • $150 is too much? :)

                Gee, and I thought it was a bargain for a monochrome iPaq I could listen to MP3's, handle my contacts on, and maybe put Linux onto someday. Gotta love the 3135 models. :)
      • 28MB is enough for the trip once. During the return trip you'll have to listen to the same mp3s

        Seems to me that if you simply use the standard 128 kpbs encoding, 128 megs is enough for more than 2 hours of music...
      • I guess I should say that I can't stand any mp3s encoded at less than 160kbps with very high veriable bit rate encoding. It literally hurts my ears (yes, pain!)
    • Yup, I agree. Products like that really piss me off. Kewl features and form factor but just enough storage to make it utterly fucking useless. Hell, 128 isn't even enough for music IMO. That is unless you like the swirling hiss of 64K overly compressed tunes. That and changing your playlist more often than our shorts ;-)

      • That is unless you like the swirling hiss of 64K overly compressed tunes.

        If you cut out all the stereo separation, MP3 audio at 64 Kbit/s mono sounds halfway decent over the noise of a moving vehicle.

        That and changing your playlist more often than our shorts

        I ought to write a program that lets users design pairwise transitions between songs, randomly chooses a playlist, mixes the songs, and then calls lame/oggenc to compress the audio.

  • Why isn't this a phone? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cyborch ( 524661 ) on Saturday June 08, 2002 @02:45PM (#3665518) Homepage Journal

    I would like to only have to carry a single handheld device. And there is no way I'll stop carrying a phone around. Therefore I would like to see the kind of features this device has in a phone rather than in a device that does not obsolete my phone.

    • Re:Why isn't this a phone? (Score:4, Funny)

      by delta407 ( 518868 ) <slashdot@nosPAm.lerfjhax.com> on Saturday June 08, 2002 @02:56PM (#3665556) Homepage
      Easy -- call Qwest tech support. If you can ignore the periodic "All representatives are busy" and "This call is monitored for quality" notices, you'll have free, portable music on your cell phone for hours at a time.

      Just be careful not to use up all your minutes.
    • I would like to only have to carry a single handheld device. And there is no way I'll stop carrying a phone around. Therefore I would like to see the kind of features this device has in a phone rather than in a device that does not obsolete my phone.

      Because it would only add to the complexity and expense of the device.

      For those of us who already HAVE a cellphone, or do not WANT a cellphone (or at least do not want to pay a few hundred for one. . . .), the addition of a cellphone to this device would merely turn us away.

      Besides, doesn't some line of PDAs or another have a cellphone built into it? Or at least an add on modual to enable cellphone functionality?

      (good question, I -think- MPEG4 plays on one model or another of PDAs, not sure)

      • For those of us who already HAVE a cellphone

        I am among those of us who already have a cellphone, that is why I would like to not carry a second handheld device - hence my original question.

        • I am among those of us who already have a cellphone, that is why I would like to not carry a second handheld device - hence my original question.

          And so am I, and I do not want to pay for another one.

          (well actually I didn't pay for this one, prepaid plan so the phone is the razer, heh.)

          I want my PHONE to do ONE THING and ONE THING ONLY.

          Make calls.

          Hell I find it easier to carry around an address book then used the damnable system that most of these devices have in them.

          Not to mention that a lot of phones are hardwired into ONE carrier service plan, (or at least you have to hook it into their plan by buying it from them in order to use it with them at all, without using 'alternative' means. ::grins:: ) do you REALLY want to have to choose your phone carrier based upon your desire for an MP3 player?

          Not to mention that depending on the carrier (and especially for a high end device like this) odds are that you would have to sign some sort of long term contract in order to keep on even BUY the phone.

          Which would significantly cut the potential user base down. Who the hell wants to sign a long term contract just to get their hands on a MP3/MP4 player?
          • Not to mention that a lot of phones are hardwired into ONE carrier service plan, (or at least you have to hook it into their plan by buying it from them in order to use it with them at all, without using 'alternative' means. ::grins:: ) do you REALLY want to have to choose your phone carrier based upon your desire for an MP3 player?

            Don't you guys have SIM cards in America?
            The telco that I work for (outside America) lets customers use their own handset if they want to.
            As long as it supports SIM cards.
            • Don't you guys have SIM cards in America?
              The telco that I work for (outside America) lets customers use their own handset if they want to.
              As long as it supports SIM cards.

              Uh, no. Telcos in america would HATE that idea, they LOVE to sell you a new phone whenever you move over to their service.

              An extra few hundred $$$s there way.
          • I want my PHONE to do ONE THING and ONE THING ONLY.

            Make calls.

            Heh - me too. Unfortunately the damn thing has a habit of also receiving calls. :-(
          • I want my PHONE to do ONE THING and ONE THING ONLY. Make calls. Hell I find it easier to carry around an address book then used the damnable system that most of these devices have in them.

            I honestly love having a phonebook inside my cell phone. I quit writing numbers down a long time ago. There's been so many times I've needed to write down a girl's number, didn't have a pen or paper, but I just pulled out my cellphone and punched it in. Of course, they weren't able to get my number but that's not as important.

            I also use my cellphone as a clock, since I don't wear a watch anymore. I welcome additional features on my cellphone. But at the same time, I want a simple and clean interface, and some of these phones do have convoluted interfaces.
            • There's been so many times I've needed to write down a girl's number, didn't have a pen or paper, but I just pulled out my cellphone and punched it in.


              Just punched it in being about a 2-3 minute proccess. . ..

              Ugh phones are SLOW for data entry. :(
      • Handspring Treo is a PDA and phone, I use a Handspring Visor with VisorPhone and eyemodule2
    • They do have it. In Japan's NTT's Docomo network, they have iMODE [wapsight.com] (ie 3G phones) that have screens that can STREAM videos and other stuff. The US market has just been VERY slow in adopting it.
      • I'm tired of this bashing the american cell phone network like we're just too stupid to get it. The American market is DIFFERENT. And American consumers just don't CARE about having tiny cameras and streaming video on their cell phone. Its not a technology problem. Its that American consumers don't want it. So why should the network support it?
        • Have you considered that it may be that the majority of US consumers don't know about it? I mean, this is slashdot, so we know, but most people don't read slashdot. Take for example linux, before it got popular you didn't hear every geek going around say "Man, I wish i had a free minix clone" Its harder to desire something you have no knowledge of.
        • According to your argument, we could say that we don't have broadband because we don't want/need it. I mean, why do we need broadband anyways.

          As someone else responded, there isn't a demand for it because most people don't know about it. But like with broadband, once someone goes to cable/DSL, they'll never go back to dial-up. The case is the same here with cell phones.

          Secondly, I don't think the market is inherently different. Once people are aware of the capabilities, they will demand more of it.
      • Excuse me, but I don't want to watch tiny low quality videos while a phone gets as hot as a toaster while racking up absurd phone bills for all that data.

        I would rather watch a high-quality, high-bitrate DVD that I rented for $3.95 on my 36" direct view TV with 5.1 DTS or Dolby Digital surround sound. Oh, and my hand wouldn't get hot as a toaster, and I wouldn't experience network dropouts, and I wouldn't pay $.10 per minute for the "privelage" of watching it while I was on the go.

        I would also rather watch a video off of my iPAQ pocket PC (with a 256MB CF card, of course), with good-quality (better than whatever 3G could offer me) video and audio, no signal dropouts, and no absurd bills (I could rip a DVD or download it off of Gnutella).
    • Ah but you don't want your phone to have extra features, because then it's going to cost more, and you'll feel more sorry when you lose it. You can usually get away with not bringing your phone to that great party where you get really drunk and end up waking up naked in the city park wondering what the fuck happened, but in case you do need to bring your phone, you'll be glad you didn't bring one with an inbuilt MP4 player. It'll cost less to replace. :)

      And yes, I have lost a phone by being drunk. :)
    • What you need is a PDA with a built-in PCMCIA or CF slot for the phone module of the month.
    • I think they should start designing PDAs as workable phones and then build CompactFlash phone modules for them. That way Sprint can have their system, Verizon can have their system, and the PDA doesn't have to conform.

  • Hmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Imperial Tacohead ( 216035 )
    Would an IBM Microdrive work in one of these? Speaking of which, now that IBM is getting out of the hard drive business, will those things even continue to exist?
    • Microdrive won't work because they don't support Compact Flash for whatever their excuse is. I am personally waiting for device with at least 10Gb of memory and at least 10 hour _VIDEO_ playtime
  • Strange, it would seem to me that a "straight" PVR version would have been more successful than any of those. (Both can play MP3 and MPEG-4 video. The first is small and the second is a "jukebox" version with 10GB HD.)

    I'd love to put something like this next to my TV and use it to play stuff I find online. But it doesn't seem like it will be very good for that purpose. (The big one can be used as a PVR, but no networking built in.)

    Just seems strange that they haven't targetted the most obvious market instead of to rather fringe ones.

  • Quality (Score:3, Interesting)

    by delta407 ( 518868 ) <slashdot@nosPAm.lerfjhax.com> on Saturday June 08, 2002 @02:50PM (#3665545) Homepage
    I don't mean to start a holy war, but I have to admit that Windows Media Audio sounds better than MP3 at the same bitrates. Of course, it is Microsoft, the EULA on it sucks, and it's proprietary/closed/what have you, but I have noticed it sounds better.

    For reference, my music is ripped to 256 kilobit MP3s, but when loading stuff onto portable players, 64 kilobit WMA actually sounds decent. Seriously; compare it.
    • For low bit rate WMA does sound better to my ears - but for me, it's not worth dancing with the Microsoft DRM Devil for a little be extra quality, considering the .OGG files have all the benifits of WMA without a lot of the drawbacks. .OGG and .WMA both suffer from no broad support from players, but .OGG files have this really cool feature - you can re-rip a high-bit-rate .OGG file to a low-rate one, and the quality is the same as if you ripped it directly from the source. Try that with WMA and MP3 and the compression artifacts add up.

      • The DRM devil stopped bothering me once I unclicked the 'Use Digital Rights Management?' in the configuration settings.

        Of course, the cross-platform incompatibility demon still kicks my iBook's ass.
        • The DRM devil stopped bothering me once I unclicked the 'Use Digital Rights Management?' in the configuration settings.

          That may work now - but in the future Microsoft will clamp down on you. Example: The Windows Media Player included in Windows 98 use to let you easily save your movies from the file menu - that feature has been removed, even though the player makes a tempory copy on to your hard-driveitself - Microsoft is increaingly making it harder to use your computer the way you . Diden't you notice? The DRM setting is enabeled by default and you had to root around to turn it off.

          It will get worse - Microsoft is going to enforce sound-card drivers to certify that their drivers won't allow any 'unotherised' copies of the sound stream. See here [microsoft.com]

          • Of course I noticed. But what they've got out now works just fine for what I need. When they change that, I won't use it. Duh. I'm not going to skimp on efficiently using what I have now because they're probably going to fuck it up later on down the road. When they fuck it up for my uses, I'll stop using it. Easy. Simple.

            Hell, I'd have encoded it all to OGG format if there were actually a decent iPaq player, but since there appear to be technical reasons why the ARM 206Mhz processor won't handle it, I'm stuck with MP3 or WMA.

            • Re:Quality (Score:3, Insightful)

              by moonbender ( 547943 )
              The idea is that you won't be able to choose anymore when they enforce strict DRM. Lure customers into using a propietary, incompatible format with features, advertisement, price, candy, whatever, and when everyone uses your software and the alternatives are insignificant, you're basically free to do whatever you want.
              If everyone had started using WMA when MS introduced it, to a degree when getting even MP3s (not even mentioning OGGs) is nigh to impossible by legal or illegal means, MS could then enforce strict DRM and whatever they want. Or, for another example, when Microsoft dominated the desktop market, they could release whatever buggy software they wanted and people would still buy it, since there were no significant, compatible alternatives (or so people thought).
              I don't necessarily believe that, but as I said, that's the idea.
              • and when everyone uses your software and the alternatives are insignificant, you're basically free to do whatever you want.

                Until we write some. Unless that "programming" shit is illegal by way of the CWADTFYOG (Consumers, We Are Doing This For Your Own Good) act by then.

          • Re:Quality (Score:3, Interesting)

            by HeUnique ( 187 )
            Is that a problem?

            Install VMWare (or Virtual PC), and use the guest OS to load the copy-protected music. on the host OS install some "audio grabbing" utility which can grabs whatever the sound card outputs - now play the copy-protected song inside the guest OS and start recording in the host OS..

            3 minutes later - you'll have a WAV file which you can either convert to OGG, WMV, MP3 etc without any serious hacking...

            The more work they do on copy protecting multimedia - the easier it gets to copy it - ask Sony about their key2audio which could be beaten by a simple marker (heh, there goes few million dollars of investment in copy protection)...

            • Install VMWare (or Virtual PC), and use the guest OS to load the copy-protected music.

              Windows: "The file 'Britney Spears - Shitty Pop Song.wma' could not be played, because Windows is running in an emulator, virtualizer, debugger, or other insecure environment. Please reboot the computer, load Windows onto the bare hardware, and try again." Under no circumstances will Microsoft sign the drivers necessary to run Secure Audio Path through vmware.

            • VMWare presents Windows generic-style drivers when you install Windows under VMWare. All Microsoft has to do is refuce to sign those drivers as being DRM complient and your new copy of Windows XP-SE on VMWare will refuse to play WMA over the un-signed driver.

              Icky stuff.

      • What DRM devil? If you're making the files yourself, just make them without any DRM. Seems pretty simple to me.
    • The end result is that you may be right, but for those of us not stuck in the windows world, we're out of luck, and have to go with the (inferior), but far more heavily entrenched, mp3. Same with AVI, much better compression and quality than mpg for the same size, but unless you're either using the crossover tools, or have something like aviplay, you're out of luck if you're using something like linux.
    • I ripped my music using WMA as well. There is no comparison with MP3 - WMA is clearly superior. This matters when you are trying to stuff music into a portable unit. Do you want twelve MP3 songs or sixteen WMA songs?

      The only problem is that MP3 has become a de facto standard for sharing on the web, so if you are trying to download tunes from Gnutella etc., you are going to be downloading MP3s 95% of the time.

      • I definitely agree. I have a Nomad II that I use when I hit the gym, and I always store my files in WMA format on my player, so I can squeeze the most sound of it. However, all of my music is stored in MP3 format. As you and countless others have said, WMA is superior -- but it also doesn't hobble me with an DRM crapola.
    • Yea it does. But WMA is a 64kbps codec, that is, it was developed with the intention of providing near cd quality sound at 64 kbps. MP3 is a 128 kbps codec, so of course it will sound worse than WMA at equal bitrates. Try comparing WMA to MP3PRO, a newer, 64kbps codec developed by the Fraunhoffer(spelling?) institute. I can't tell the difference between MP3PRO and WMA at equivalent bitrates. But comparing MP3 and WMA at equivalent bitrates and saying one sounds worse is like saying a jpeg of a picture looks way better than a gif of the same picture with an equivalent filesize, the two aren't even in the same camp so its fairly pointless.

      • So... the fact that WMA provides equivalent audio in half the size doesn't matter?

        Also, in my experience at least, WMA at 64 kilobit sounds better than MP3 at 128 kilobit. Remember that CD-Quality is 44.1 kHz, 16 bits per sample, neither of which (being lossy formats) can provide. Music that I listen to often contains a lot of near-random noise in the high end (cymbals, some other percussion), and with MP3 I have to jack up the bitrate to 256 to even come close to WMA at 64.

        Look, I don't know about you, but I don't see why "comparing MP3 and WMA at equivalent bitrates and saying one sounds worse" is unfair. WMA can produce the same sound as MP3 using less data -- what makes that a bad comparison?

        • I didn't say it was unfair, I just said the comparison is sort of pointless. What if I compared my new, 2.53 GHz P4 buttkicker to your 3 year old P3 machine and came to the conclusion that your machine "is way slower than mine" Whats the point?? Of course it is. Thats why I suggested comparing WMA to MP3PRO, the latest and greatest. I just feel that would be a more meaningful comparison. By your logic I could just as well compare a wav and an mp3 at equivalent bitrates and say one sounds worse, of course a wav is gonna sound worse at 128kbps than an mp3 will..did we expect any different? The fact is WMA is a low bitrate codec, around 64kbps, MP3 is higher, around 128 or so, other formats, like wav are even higher. So why bother putting them all at the same bitrate and comparing them?? I just dont see how its meaningful.
          • It's meaningful because on a portable you want decent quality with as little size as possible. Thus, given the option of using MP3 or WMA, it makes more sense to use WMA because you can get more files in the same space.

            Again, on a portable music player, would you rather run WAV or MP3? Of course, you would want to run MP3, because you can still get 6:1 compression over WAV with no noticable loss of quality (on headphones at least). Likewise, I would rather run WMA than MP3, because I can (according to your earlier post) get the same overall quality in half the space of MP3. So, instead of having 2 hours of music, I have 4. In this case, it is meaningful because choosing WMA over MP3 doubled capacity of said portable music player.

            As far as comparing codecs goes, perhaps it is not meaningful. But then again, if it produces the same sound in half the size, I would argue even if they are in a different class that WMA is far superior.

            Also, for reference, it's an 8-month old dual-1.0 GHz P3 box, that (for my uses) will be quite competitive to your 2.53 GHz P4 :-)

    • Re:Quality (Score:3, Informative)

      by SmittyTheBold ( 14066 )
      IMHO, the jury's out on whether properly-encoded MP3s sound better or worse than WMA, but MS really sucks at proving that WMA is better.

      At a recent promo event on my campus, they played the same music clip in three formats for us: The RealMedia version, the MP3 version, and a WMA-encoded version. Everybody thought the Real file was horrendous. It was, but then that codec is designed for very low bitrates. Then, they played the next two and had us guess which was which. The sounds were almost identical, but one was louder. Most of us voted for the quieter sounding clip, because it was in general more pleasing to the ear. As it turned out, the louder clip was the WMA.

      It seems one of the key things MS does to improve WMA's chance subjective quality tests is EQ and volume tweaking. They jack up a few frequencies and raise the volume overall, to make the sound more "clear." It backfired that day, but I wonder how many people hear such comparisons and really think the louder version of the clip is better, because they're expecting to hear better sound, and that's what they do.

      All I can say is, let me set the EQ myself. I know how to adjust for my speakers much better than MS does...and I personally bet their EQ tweaking is based on the "turn it all up!" method home/car stereo know-it-alls like to use. You know, the ones where the bass is +20dB and clipping everywhere, or maybe everything is turned up and the WHOLE FRIGGING THING is clipped...
  • If you look at their products [pogoproducts.com] page, all their devices seem to be lacking enough memory. 64 and 128 megs for mpeg-4 files? Even the mp3 players they have use storage sizes that were barely acceptable 2 years ago. My ipod is maxed out at 5GB, I couldnd't imagine dealing with 128meg limit for video files.
    • Well, when you consider that the LCD is two and a half inches wide and running at a resolution of 160x234, 128 MB should be enough for a lot of video. 160x234 isn't exactly huge, you know, and you can get by at a lot lower bitrates than with higher resolution screens. (For instance, 250 kilobit WMV would look decent.)

      Granted, it would take a lot of time to crunch all your movies from their original formats to fit this little thing, but you could get a whole lot more video on it by repacking.
    • Well, 128 MB is enough for two hours of decent quality music (as pointed out before), so this is probably enough for the daily train commuter. Add another 128 or 256 MB of add-on storage, and you have 4 to 6 hours of music, which should be plenty for a day or so.
      Not really useful if you're travelling somewhere for days without having a computer available, but maybe that's just not what it was meant for.

      Personally, I really dig the small MP3 players. HD players like the iPod sport an awesome storage capability, but when I'm on the move I'd prefer a weight of less than 100g and dimensions of a box of matches.

  • A word of advice for soft/hardware developers (Score:5, Funny)

    by jimhill ( 7277 ) on Saturday June 08, 2002 @02:56PM (#3665558) Homepage
    If you're out there coding up software or drawing up circuit diagrams or in some other way preparing to release a product on the world, please bear in mind that as of October 23, 2000, the use of the suffix "ster" was officially deprecated as being Fucking Stupid. Please consider changing the planned name of Spreadsheetster or Videoplayerster or Toasterster before it hits the market.

    Thank you, that is all.

  • Well ill have to wait.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PepsiProgrammer ( 545828 ) on Saturday June 08, 2002 @02:56PM (#3665561)
    I just bought a zaurus, and they talk like sony has already made a Mpeg4 video player update for it, but has yet to release it, it already plays Mpeg1 and 2 if im not mistaken, and of course it does MP3s, and downloadable programs can make it play OGG. heh and with a 802.11b card on the NC State campus, and a 40 gig NFS partition, ill have all the storage ill ever need on a PDA

  • Gah (Score:1, Interesting)

    by delta407 ( 518868 )
    Anyone else notice that the supported operating systems are "MS Windows 98/2000/Me"? Why would it work under Win2k and not XP? Seems quite strange, seeing as the two are quite similar, and especially because XP is Microsoft's officially-backed "next-generation" home OS.

    • Re:Gah (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bsartist ( 550317 )
      The word "unsupported" does not necessarily mean it doesn't work. It's likely that it works perfectly well under Win2K, but they haven't yet trained their phone drones to handle questions about using it with Win2K.

  • pocket pc phone edition does this and more (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    voicestream / t-mobile is about to come out with this phone:
    http://www.voicestream.com/pocketpc/defaul t.asp

    o2 has these now:
    http://www.o2.co.uk
  • Other than running Windows CE instead of PocketPC (IIRC WinCE 3.0 was the version just before PocketPC 2000) and not appearing to have a stylus, but just having buttons instead, it looks like it has the same or similar guts to most models of iPaq.

    Lower screen resolution (160x234 as compared to 320x240 on an iPaq), typical Microsoft codecs for audio compression/decompression, and not much more memory than an iPaq with only another hundred bucks of price... I dunno. I just can't see spending $399/449 on one of these instead of going to $499 or $549 for a nicely loaded iPaq. If this thing had the ability to synchronize with Apple or Linux, it might have some advantages... but it doesn't.

    Nice idea, but for what they're offering, the price should drop down to someplace around $199-$250.

  • Undefined Target Audience... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tazzy531 ( 456079 ) on Saturday June 08, 2002 @03:21PM (#3665639) Homepage
    This is a pure example of a product with an ill-defined target audience. All in all, it comes down to that this can only be used ideally as a MP3 player. But with a $449 price tag, this is rather expensive for this purpose.

    With 64 MB memory, it can maybe hold a couple minutes of video at most. Maybe with an expansion card, it can hold a little more. But in the end, why would you spend this much money on a device that can only hold a couple minutes of video? At this price, you might as well get an iPaq that will be able to do the same exact thing plus more.

    What would be a killer-app would be if they expanded the hdd to (what many of you mentioned) a Toshiba 10 GB hdd. At this point, you will then be able to hold a couple full length movies. Build in an external port to TV-out and there will be some actual application.

    But to summarize, the limiting factor of this device is that relatively small storage space and a high price tag. In the end, they are not targetting any specific audience successfully.
    • "With 64 MB memory, it can maybe hold a couple minutes of video at most"

      have you seen mpeg4 movies? you can fit a 10 minute clip into 64 megs easily, and thats at a bigger screen size than this has. if it was the same size this screen has you could probably get double that. AND THEN you can encode it more lossy and double that again. two minutes my ass.

      think about it. theres plenty of 2 hour divx movies that can fit on a cd, 64 megs is 1/10th a cd. thats 12 minutes of HIGH quality 640x480 or similar video. sheesh.
  • I was thinking about this.... Exactly how powerful are these handhelds? I know it takes a buttload of CPU/RAM for the Wince. However, I was thinking of a design that would be fairly powerful (resource wise), and not be a battery soaker.

    Why not use a 500 MHz equalavalent Crusoe processor with linux. I'm not advocating doing things with command-line either (it'll be accessable if needed). You'd be able to put a heavy size HD in this. For the video, mplayer. That might run a bit of problems with Microsoft (linux mplayer can play/convert asf and WMV). Slap on a ethernet and 1 usb and a video out (maybe a serial port).

    I'd expect this to go for a lot, but it's a full comp that can do nearly everything.
  • It sounds nice and all, but where can I find any software to work with MPEG 4 now? All I can find is a bunch of wannabe formats wrapped up in AVI. And AVI can't even do MPEG 1.
    • AFAIK the file format ".avi" can wrap any other encoding format. That's why most DiVX versions (Which are basically MPEG-4.) use the .avi extention.

      If you are searching for "pure" MPEG-4 codecs for your computer I'm not sure where to find them. But I think the latest DiVX version are pretty much standard MPEG-4.
      • AVI will not allow frames that reference future frames, hence B frames are unsupported in AVI files, and therefore MPEG 1 2 and 4 cannot be implemented in any complete sense in AVI.

        AVI has a few other failings which make me sick of them.
    • Right over here [apple.com]

  • What I wanna see... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lostchicken ( 226656 ) on Saturday June 08, 2002 @04:30PM (#3665870)
    TiVo sync.
    Should be possible with the tiny rez, and MPEG-4.

    Would be quite cool.
    • I've been thinking this for quite some time now. Possibly a device with the same form factor as some of the portable dvd players out there, but with an internal hdd instead of the dvd reader. Sell it with the Tivo branding and dock it via the usb port on the new series2 Tivo's. Maybe even sell it as a bundle package.

  • Why? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can buy a Pocket Pc that does all of these things and more...
  • Seriously, this thing simply doesn't have the features to make it a really worthwile solution for portable MPEG4, your best option right now is a decent laptop. This is essentially an MP3 player with some extras thrown in. For starters the storage is extremely expensive, its small, and its slow, USB 1.1? puhlease... How about a hd with usb 2.0 or firewire or, maybe even better, cd rom. Secondly, most of the mpeg4 videos I already have are at too high a resolution to play on this so if I want to watch them I'm going to have to reencode..give me a break... And third it doesn't look like this thing has any sort of video out, so I'm stuck watching it on a miniscule screen..boring... The idea is great and for a first try its good, but to really be usefull theres going to need to be some serious improvement.
  • I wonder who wants to be the first one to fry, uh, try, one on of these fuckers out.

    I like the simulated picture. A boat. Yeah. Sure.

    But I bet that when the coroner unplugs this sum'bitch, the picture won't be of a boat. "Debby Does Des Moines" on the DVD's more likely, playing over the recumbent, lifeless forms of some late party people with more money than sense.

    If it had a heart shaped tub, you could sell 'em in the Poconos or Niagara. They'll fuck anywhere, anytime.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This is crap. Sharp just released in Japan a tiny little video player that is more or less the size of a screen. It's pretty close to this but it does Mpeg4 video just like their Japanese Zauruses do. It's about $350 depending on how you convert the yen cost.... but the bread and butter is that this tiny box has all of the functionality of a vcr... including hookups for composite audio and video to record shit in mpeg4! So if _I_ were shoppers looking for something like this, I would at LEAST by the one that has some advantage over an IPAQ or a Zaurus and can record. Oh btw, it uses SD cards for memory and I believe a 128 meg SD card can hold a full length movie in reasonable quality... these things are _COOL_ They measure about 2.5" x 2.5" just a little square box about the same size as a new md player. We should all import stuff from japan rather than buying lackluster american crap like this flipster. Or at least buy an Ipaq or a Zaurus SD-5000 which can do much more for around the same money.

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