Re: OT: ogg player

[Digby Tarvin <digbyt@acm.org>]

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 07:07:02PM -1000, Javier-Elias Vasquez-Vivas wrote:
> I've been looking for a portable ogg player which would work with
> removable batteries or plug to an outlet, that is mass storage
> compliant (that works nice under debian-linux), that would use flash
> memory cards instead of internal one, and that doesn't require
> firmware update for proper ogg support (most of such needs m$ for
> firmware update).  From all this I can remove the card requirement,
> although it'd be cool.
> 
> I haven't found any under google, :-(.  Are there any suggestions out
> there?  Is i-river worth buying (I remember some time back firmware
> update was required)?

I bought my portable player about two years ago, so I can't say what
the current state of the art is - but at that time the iRiver was the
one that ticket the most boxes for me.

My priorities were:
	- hight quality audio
	- works with Unix
	- excellent battery life
	- small

I bought an IFP-395T, no removeable media and only 512K of storage,
but it supports ogg/vorbis and connection as a UMS disk, and runs for
24 hours continuous on a single AA battery, which is pretty good.

It was reccomended by some friends in the audio industry that had done
some tests and found it to have the best audio quality.

It did require a firmware upgrade for ogg/ums, but the open source 'ifp'
program can do it from a unix host:

	digbyt@voyager2:/home/digbyt> ifp
	usage: ifp command params
	commands:
	    ls directory
	    df
	    upload localfile ifptarget
	    upload localdir  ifpdir
	    download ifpfile localtarget
	    download ifpdir  localdir
	    rm [-r] file
	    rmdir dir
	    mkdir dir
	    battery
	    typestring
	    firmversion
	    format
=>      firmupdate /path/to/FIRMWARE.HEX
	
After the upgrade, it no longer supports wmv - but that was no issue for
me. The IFP program is also nolonger required, as it is subsequently
mountable as a USB disk.

Removeable media would have been nice to have, but I suspect it would
make any unit too large for my purposes, and I can always carry a fuller
library around on my notebook. HDD storage would probably likewise make
it too large, and would drain the battery too fast. Proprietary
rechargeable batteries are no good when away from civilization or on a
24 hour flight to Australia. With a 'AA' I can use a rechargeable, and
when I can't find a mains outlet can buy cheap 'AA' batteries in most
parts of the world.

Regards,
DigbyT
-- 
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                          digbyt(at)digbyt.com
http://www.digbyt.com