D-World, Let's talk about Digital Music

2005-10-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

2005-10-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Converting One off Visitors to your Blog into Regular Readers

2005-08-17T04:35:00.000-07:00

One of the most exciting things about blogging is logging into your blog after a night’s sleep to find that overnight some large site has linked to you and that you’re in the middle of a deluge of visitors. Your statistics package graph (which you check every 13 minutes) has a massive mountain in it in the middle of something that looks like a flat line. Your heart beats faster as you realize how many people are reading your content and if you’ve got Adsense ads on your site you begin to dream of the things you could buy with the income that the influx of visitors might bring - if only you could keep them coming back to your blog….

Of course this is where the problem lies - most influxes of traffic from other sites are usually pretty temporary in nature - they last as long as your link lasts at the top of the other site’s page - a few hours, a day or two perhaps at most - and then things return to normal as your new readers surf off to the next great link put on the site that had linked to you.

Does it have to be this way?

What if you could not only enjoy the influx of visitors but could also convert them to regular and loyal readers of your blog? What if each time you had an big incoming link you had the ability to captivate a percentage of your new readers in such a way that they’d keep coming back?

I’ve been pondering this topic for a couple of years now and whilst I don’t want to pretend I have all the answers (otherwise I’d have 200,000 daily visitors rather than 2,000) I’d like to share a some things that I’ve been working on lately to see if I can convert some of those one off visitors into regular readers.

Create Conversation

One of the first things you can do with any new reader that is likely to pique their interest is to engage them in conversation. Blogs are ideal for this as most have a comments section that invites it - but you need to be willing to interact with your readers - especially new ones. The way you write posts can draw readers into conversation on many levels - ask questions, invite opinions and experiences, leave your readers room to be experts (don’t answer all the questions for yourself all at once) etc. When readers leave a comment email them or reply to the comment wherever you can. I know if there is a robust and interesting conversation happening somewhere on the web I can go back to it numerous times in a day to check for updates and every time I go back I’m a little more likely to add it to my regular daily sites that I visit.

Build Anticipation

One of the things that I love about writing a series of posts is that it creates momentum and anticipation on a blog. If your readers know you will be continuing a topic of discussion that they are interested in tomorrow they are likely to make a point of returning. I’ve found this 31 Days Project has also created a lot of anticipation in the wider blogging community and know that many of those reading ProBlogger today that were not reading it a fortnight ago have been drawn into the momentum that we’re building here.

Foster Relationship

Relationship goes beyond conversation and is perhaps why some of your most loyal and long term readers keep coming back to your blog. It takes time to build real relationships (after blogging at this domain for 11 months I feel we’re just getting to this stage) but out of it comes some amazing collaborations and partnerships. I’m not just talking about you as the blogger and your readers either - create a space where your readers can meet and interact with one another and grow friendship and you’re even more likely to retain readers. In fact the best people to recruit new regular readers to your blog are those who already are regulars. Find ways for them to evangelise on your behalf and you’ll find they are often much more effective than you’ll ever be. People want to belong to something - give them a place to hang their virtual hat and spend some time.

Get Sensual

Ok, I’m not talking about slipping into something more comfortable - no I’m talking about making your blog a sensory experience. The web is filled with dry, uninteresting, forgettable sites that do little to spark imagination - break the mold with the look of your site a little - do something that will be remembered, something that is a little mysterious, a little fun, a little sensual. Use pictures, spaces, colors - anything you can. One of my favorite books is Lovemarks (affiliate link) which talks (in part) about how marketers engage the senses in their efforts to make us buy products and services these days. Get yourself a copy of that book and read it - I’ve found it incredibly helpful.

Generate Mystery and Intrigue

- This is similar to what I’ve written about being ’sensual’ in that it comes from Lovemarks also which talks about how a lot of marketing messages these days have a sense of mystery about them. This might include the way you design your blog but could also include the way you write and engage readers on a heart level. Here’s a quote from the book that I love - ‘Mystery opens up emotions. Mystery adds to the complexity of relationships and experiences. It lies in the stories, metaphors and iconic characters that give a relationship texture.’ Some of my favorite blogs use story, pictures, anonymity and symbols in ways that keep drawing me back for more.

Involve Others

Get readers active in your blog. Invite contributions, involve a guest blogger, start a project of some sort. People like to feel like they are a part of making something better or achieving something so give them space to do that.

Obtain Permission

I’ve been writing in the past couple of days about how email newsletters can help you in your blogging - perhaps the best thing that I’ve found about them is that they are great for turning one off visitors into regular readers. I suspect that many blog readers intend to come back to blogs that they find helpful but that in the busyness of life that they just forget. Get permission to remind them.

Create Ownership

Yes you might ‘own’ your blog on one level - but the sooner you realize that your blog is nothing without it’s readership and actually hand over some of the reins in making decisions about where it’s headed to them the better. I’ve let readers make some big decisions over the years about my blogs and always find that in doing so it improves the level of participation and the quality of the blog.

What other tools, methods and strategies have you used to convert one off readers into regular readers of your blog?

A Comprehensive StatCounter.com Review

2005-08-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

StatCounter is the coolest web hit tracker available on the web! I just recently stumbled across it when visiting another blog somewhere in cyberspace (sorry- I don't remember which one). After registering for a free account, and signing up on Saturday, I have to say that I am exceptionally well-pleased. TuCows gave StatCounter 5 cows and Internet Magazine gave StatCounter 5 stars. Colin McGrath, from DSL-Experts.com says this about StatCounter:

"I LOVE this service, LOVE IT! I'm so impressed with [StatCounter], you have no idea. I'm a small business and StatCounter.Com is helping me make everyday decisions in real time! I am able to figure out what is working for my new websites and my new business immediately after I implement a change. I can't thank [StatCounter] enough ... "

I too LOVE this service! The biggest reason? All the information that StatCounter gives me. I get updated, real-time statistics on the following: Summary, popular pages, entry pages, exit pages, came from, keyword analysis, visitor paths, visit length, returning visits, recent pageload activity, recent visitor activity, country/state/city/ISP, browser, system stats and lookup IP address. And you can get it all free! Below, I post with pictures a majority of the pages and a brief description of each.

Statistics: Plenty of statistics are available to you when you sign up for your free account. The image below shows you the navigation through those stats.
Summary: The first page, and probably the most visited is the summary page. This shows you the recent page loads, unique visitors and returning visitors to your site. This data can be displayed using date filters. The summary statistic can also be downloaded as an Excel worksheet or comma-seperated value document. The free account will only keep track of up to 9,000 page hits per day. If your traffice exceeds this, you will need to pay for an upgrade account.

Popular Pages: This page shows the pages that are the most popular pages on your site. This information can be critical as if you run a commercial site, you can find out what product/service is most visited. This can help you increase traffic, and thus sales. For the free account, only the 100 most recent visitors are kept track of. For the first pay serverice, this is extended to 1,000. In fact, throughout all the stats with the free account, the log is only 100 long.

Visitor Paths: This page can be quite useful for identifying your customer, location, their ISP and how they found you. Again, the free account only allows a log of the most recent 100. For just $9/month, this can be upgraded to 1,000.

Visit Length: This page shows you how long visitors are staying on your page. Again, this can be crucial information for increasing sales. By learning how long people are staying at your page, this will give you sense if people are "grabbed" by your site or not. If selling a product or service, you may want the customer to browse around to learn more information. Then again, you don't wan't your customers staying too long, as this could mean a confusing site with hidden pages and meaningless links.

Recent Pageload Activity: This stat is more or less a very descriptive view of the Summary stats. This stat shows the date the page was viewed, the browser used in viewing the page, the operating system, the screen resolution, where the client is, and of course the page they visited and a referring page if any. The magnifying glass on the left will show what paths these visitors are taking through your website.

Recent Visitor Activity: This page will show the most recent visitor activity. This is very similar to the Recent Pageload Activity, however, being focused on users. Clicking the magnifying glass on the left allows you to view details about that visitor that visited the page.

Country/State (Region)/City/ISP: This is by far the coolest of stats available. You can view the country, state/region, city and ISP of the visitor viewing your page. This can help you know where your clientelle is strong and where you can spend time focusing on other areas.

Browser: This stat is also really cool. Here, I can see the most popular browsers visiting my site. Why would this be important? Because viewing your site in a certain browser might render bugs. Knowing this can help stabilize the traffic to your page.

System Stats: This page will show you the computer operating system, screen resolution and javascript information. Again, this can be helpful when designing pages to make sure you meet every visitor's needs. Beware HTML developers: many users are still browsing the web using a 800x600 screen resolution.

Sorry for the lengthy post, but I find StatCounter incredibly sweet! This is just a sampling of what StatCounter offers. If you have a web page, and you are curious about your page visits, get a StatCounter account and begin finding out!

posted by aaron with 0 Comments

BritneyGoogle.com

2005-08-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

Come across a fucking wickedly funny website.

It’s called BritneyGoogle.com. It acclaims “ BritneyGoogle.com lets you search google

whilst looking at pictures of Britney Spears. It's that simple. ”

Wait a Minute.Search google and in the meantime watch the photo stream of Britney Spears!?

What a creative idea indeed! Why can I never come up with some idea like that?! Like J.Lo.ass.google.com

which allow you watch the photos of J.Lo’s juicy ass from different angles while you carelessly enjoy searching

the google. This guy must be a genius!

Ok, enough bullshit. Here’s a screenshot of BritneyGoogle.com:

(Whataver)Skype pictures contest

2005-08-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

The German Skype forum www.skypeforum.de recently held a contest of Skype pictures. They asked the users to create images that had anything to do with Skype while being cool and/or funny and/or serious. Skype supported this contest with loads of SkypeOut and Voicemail credit for the winners.

Tons of great stuff submitted! We’re glad to see Skype provides this much inspiration to people Below is a selection of the works. Rough translations are provided in some cases — sorry if I got it wrong, German speakers please correct then.

“Life-long calling”.

“Damn, I forgot my headset.”

“Skypers — so that your telephone calls could last longer.”

“Reach all goals with SkypeOut — where, when, and as often as you want.”

“Looks say more than 1000 words. This look says… just Skype Me!”

If you think it’s a good idea to introduce Skype through pictures, you can host your own contest like this with Skype’s official support? Just Talk back to Skype.com in the forum.

cool

2005-08-08T07:13:00.000-07:00

cool

2005-08-08T07:12:00.000-07:00

Podscope Promises to Index Entire Spoken Podcast Universe

2005-07-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

Podscope, a search engine that indexes the spoken audio content of podcasts, has announced that it plans to "cover all non-music audio and video podcasts by August 31, 2005".

Podscope crawls the web, looking for podcasts, and creates an index against each spoken word, thereby making the contents searchable. The user can search on a term, generate a list of results ranked by a variety of methods to find the most relevant podcast and click to play or click to download.

Podscope says that it currently indexes more than 20,000 podcasts from more than 3,500 sites and is on track to cover every known podcaster by the end of August. Site owners can submit their sites for indexing at the Podscope site.

"Imagine how less useful a Google search would be if Google only indexed the title of the Web pages it returns for a search. It just wouldn't have the same value as search that includes the entire content of the textual Web. Such simplistic search is what's being provided by every other audio and video search on the Internet, with the exception of Podscope," said David J. Ives, president and chief executive officer of TVEyes, Inc., whose technology and company are behind Podscope.

"Indexing the spoken word using advanced speech recognition technology has a profound impact on a consumer's ability to get the most out of audio and video search on the Internet," said Allen Weiner, research vice president at Gartner. "Relying only on metadata search or categorical listings provides incomplete results, making it difficult and inefficient to find specific content you'd like to listen to or watch."

Replay Music Review

2005-07-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

At a glance

Release date: May 19, 2004
Editors' rating: 7.5 Very good
Editor's take: Replay Music is a useful tool for streaming audio enthusiasts.
The good: Splits streaming music into individual tracks; automatically tags most songs with artist and title; recordings sound excellent.
The bad: Must repurchase program after 5,000-song limit is reached; won't tag consecutive songs from different albums; can't use interface to stop playing individual tracks.
What's it for: Intelligently recording streaming audio and discovering new music.
Who's it for: Anyone with a streaming audio subscription and an MP3 player.
Essential extras: A subscription to a streaming audio service, such as Musicmatch, Rhapsody, or Streamwaves.
The bottom line: If you subscribe to a streaming audio service and want the music in your permanent collection, Replay Music is a sound investment.

When it comes to music on the Internet, you have two legal choices: you can stream tracks, or you can purchase them as individual downloads, most of which are protected with DRM. But what if you prefer to have tunes in your permanent collection, and your MP3 player doesn't support protected music files? Fortunately, Applian Technologies, makers of programs for recording and editing streaming music, has a solution: Replay Music. This app records and splits audio tracks coming through your PC's sound card. Regrettably, the $30 price tag gets you 5,000 recordings rather than unlimited use.

Installing Replay Music couldn't be easier, and once it's ready to go, you're rewarded with a simple, attractive interface. The program is straightforward, featuring just six control buttons--Start/Stop Recording, Reset, Edit Track(s), Delete Track(s), Play Track(s), and Burn Track(s) to CD--and a settings menu. Our one gripe with the interface is that there's no function to stop playback; you have to close the program to accomplish this.

The settings menu is basic. You can select the input source, designate the minimum amount of silence to split tracks, set the minimum length for songs to record, decide what volume level will be considered silence, and choose to save files as either MP3s (with a choice of bit rates from 128Kbps to 320Kbps) or WAVs or burn them directly to a data or audio CD.

Replay Music recognizes most songs and will identify them by the time the recording is finished.

Aside from its ability to automatically split streaming tracks, Replay Music's most notable feature is automatic tagging, which adds track titles and the artist's name to songs that you're recording. We found that the program recognizes most songs and will tag them appropriately, with one caveat: The tagging feature works only when you're recording songs from the same album. If you're streaming a self-created playlist, you'll have to label the files yourself. iPod users will appreciate the Add Tracks To iTunes option, which is self-explanatory and handy for syncing with the player later.

We were impressed with Replay Music's performance. While we streamed albums with Streamwaves and Musicmatch, the program identified and tagged everything we recorded, even obscure albums, and never had a problem splitting tracks. Better yet, and unlike other music recorders we've seen, Replay Music automatically shuts out alert sounds from programs such as Microsoft Outlook and instant-messaging applications, so you won't end up with random noises in the middle of a song. In fact, we didn't notice any bugginess in the interface, and recorded songs sounded fantastic (we were streaming at CD quality). Do note that when you're recording a stream, you are re-encoding a digital audio file; therefore, sound quality won't be as good when you encode a CD, for example.

Applian's Replay Music site offers a user guide and FAQ pages, including one that specifically addresses the legality of the program. It also has an e-mail contact form for support questions. A query that we sent from an anonymous e-mail address was answered within two hours.

User comments

Ratings from 4 users

User rating
Spectacular

out of 10

Great for Services like Rhapsody
by awesomegolfman - June 8, 2005

Pros:

Easy to use, good price

Cons:

Some song names not recognized, once in a while records have "skips"

User rating
Spectacular

out of 10

Awsome, Unlimited MP3 Recording from Streamed Sources
by gmcalmo - May 22, 2005

Pros:

Seamless recording of streaming audio, saved to disk as separate file with complete MP3 Tag. A great and ligitimate way to build your music collection.

Cons:

Sometimes confuses individual tracks but provides for easy editor to fix when required.

User rating
Spectacular

out of 10

Excellent software - make sure you get version 2.0 !
by cliven - March 7, 2005

Pros:

Version 2.0 allows UNLIMITED recordings at no extra cost. Works well with high quality audio streaming subscription services

Cons:

Requires me to re-adjust my audio setting after use if I need to use microphone for voice calls.

User rating
Mediocre

out of 10

lack of wow quality
February 2, 2005

Pros:

gets around recording problems on the pc

Cons:

expensive for just 5000 recordings. This fact alone is VERY understated on their website. They offer you commission if you gain lots of users for them. I just am not excited enough to bother and the interface sure needs a lick of paint

1 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

iTunes 4.9 Upgrade with Podcasting Suppport

2005-07-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

Via Micropersuasion, iTunes now has support for Podcasts. At the time of this writing, iTunes 4.8.x doesn't detect the new 4.9.x update yet if you go to the Check For iTunes Updates from the Help menu in iTunes. You can go here to download this latest version of iTunes software.

What's new in iTunes 4.9

With iTunes 4.9, you can now browse and subscribe to podcasts from within the iTunes Music Store. Podcasts are frequently updated radio-style shows downloadable over the Internet. You can also transfer podcasts to iPod, for listening on the go.

Getting Starting with iTunes Podcasts
One of the first things you will notice after you upgrade to iTunes 4.9 is that in the Sources list on the left side of the iTunes software (which manages and organizes your music) contains a new source for podcasts. These sources are like visual folders that identify where your audio files are, where they are sourced from and how you have them organized as playlists.

Very helpful for managing your must and very easy to use as well as being intuitive. For example, in the image to the right you will also see Radio and Music Store. This is and easy way that iTunes allows you to access thousands of audio files through the iTunes music store or access many Internet Radio stations for streaming radio broadcasts with iTunes.

How Podcasts with iTunes 4.9 Works
To access Podcasts through iTunes you select the podcasts Source and you will see an empty playlist. At the bottom of iTunes, you will see the option Podcast Directory. Simply press that option with your mouse pointer and you will be taken to the iTunes Podcast Directory.

Figure 2. iTunes Podcast Directory

From the iTunes Podcast Directory you have quick access to the most popular podcasts but you can drill down into categories for a wider selection as well. I like movies and movie reviews so I selected Movies & Television from the iTunes Podcast Directory and iTunes now presents the full list of available podcasts within that category as seen in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3. iTunes Movies & Television Category

I selected the Reel Reviews podcast (see Figure 4) and downloaded from iTunes this review Swimming With Sharks. Also, Micheal who publishes this blog and podcast has an excellent write up on setting up your own podcast. You should check that out.

Figure 4. Selecting and Confirming Podcast Subscription

Figure 5. Downloading Podcast into iTunes

Publishing Your Podcast to iTunes
Publishing your podcast to iTunes is as simple as submitting your podcast RSS feed link to the iTunes directory. You'll need to have a iTunes account (free) in order to do so as you will asked for your iTunes login credentials.

All you do is click the Publish A Podcast link from the main Podcast Directory page in iTunes located in the upper left of the page (see Figure 2 above) and you will be stepped through the process easily. See the following figures 6 and 7 below.

Figure 6. Submit Your Podcast Feed URL

Figure 7. Confirm Settings, then Publish

Once you confirm settings you then click the publish button and you get a confirmation page informing you that your podcast will be reviewed before being available in the iTunes podcast directory.

The podcast settings in iTunes are pretty straight forward. You can set iTunes to check for newly published podcasts that you are subscribed to at "every hour", "every day", "every week", or "manually". You can then tell itunes how to handle your downloads when new podcasts are detected. You can "download all" new episodes, "download the most recent one", or have iTunes "do nothing". Lastly, there is a retention setting where you can tell iTunes to keep episodes based on "all", "all unplayed", "most recent" or "last (from last 2 to 10 episodes)".

This is another great leverage opportunity for publishers. Just like Yahoo going to an RSS centric directory with My Yahoo, publishers benefit from the marketing and education that Yahoo is doing to increase exposure and usage of RSS for custom news. With hundreds of thousands of My Yahoo users, you only have to place your RSS feed in My Yahoo and you enjoy the benefit of Yahoo's promo efforts.

ITunes presents a similar opportunity. ITunes is one of the top digital downloads stops on the Internet today if not the top download site. With their 4.9 release they are promoting podcasts to their active user base. That could result in exponential exposure for you and exponential grown in subscribers to your podcast by submitting your podcast feed to the iTunes directory while letting iTunes take care of the promo efforts for generating interest in their podcast directory. Submitting your podcast is free by the way.

iTunes, I think, is especially powerful to podcasters because as a user of iTunes and an iPod, I think iTunes is very good at promoting new features and generating interest in browsing and in buying downloads. It isn't just the brand as much as I think that they provide a buying and user experience that is second to none. Once you start using iTunes for music downloads it really changes the way you purchase and consume music. Now that they have added podcasting and have a dedicated podcast directory, it will be interesting to see how podcast publishers benefit from being a part of the iTunes directory and how that exposure measures up against other podcast directories available in terms of increasing exposure and getting subscribers.

It is being projected that Apple will ship more than 35 million Apple iPods by the end of 2005. The iPod is driving significant business in other areas for Apple to include iTunes downloads and seamless integration between iTunes and iPods. The latest statisic I was able to find with a quick Google search was that iTunes had over 150 million downloads at some point in 2004. These numbers certainly present a compelling case for submitting your podcast feed to the iTunes directory.

iVideo, what we (and you) are expecting

2005-07-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

After years in the shadows, portable video is about to go mainstream: according to reports out this week from respected journalists, analysts, and columnists, Apple is rapidly preparing to sell digital video content and new portable devices that will play it. Since Apple has not publicly commented directly on its portable video plans, this editorial does not presume to speak definitively to what will happen, but suggests possible and likely outcomes based on the best information available.

On a side note, we acknowledge two things at the onset of this editorial: first, some of our readers - at least, for now - have said that they absolutely do not want to buy portable video players. And second, other readers have said that they will refuse to use anything smaller than a laptop screen to view video content.

As of today, these perspectives are well-established, and we have no desire to pick a fight with their proponents. Moreover, both crowds are essentially claiming to be satisfied by existing alternatives: buy nothing, or buy a laptop and watch DVDs. So if you’re in one of these two camps, be aware that the bulk of this editorial is aimed at a different audience, but we’ll address your interests directly at the end.

New Apple Portable Hardware in September?

Between these two extremes, there’s a significant middle ground that many people expect that Apple will exploit in time for the holidays this year. According to a Wall Street Journal report published earlier this week, Apple has been developing an iPod-like device for video content, and could unveil it as soon as September. The date is not trivial. Apple will host an Apple Expo in Paris in September, presumably an ideal place to unveil a significant new device, and highlight its anticipated international appeal.

Is an Apple Expo unveiling likely? iLounge’s Larry Angell suggests not, noting that the company has not unveiled significant full-sized iPods at trade shows: at best, Apple held special, invitation-only “music” events, but sometimes did so without any event at all. (The original iPod, and third-generation iPod and iTunes Music Store were introduced at special Apple events; the fourth-generation iPod debuted with a high-profile magazine cover story.) However, Apple has introduced several other iPods at trade shows: the iterative second-generation at 2002’s Apple Expo in Tokyo, the iPod mini at Macworld in 2004, and the iPod shuffle at Macworld in 2005. The latter two devices were arguably the most mainstream products developed by the company, and best suited to the huge surge of mainstream media attention Apple enjoys at trade shows.

Several fair questions, then, are whether: (a) the new device is anticipated to be a mainstream product, (b) what sorts of features it will offer, and (c) what it will need from a software perspective in order to succeed. We’ll look at each of these questions in turn below.

The Mainstream Apple Video Player?

Analysts and retailers have reported that the most popular iPods are - not surprisingly - the least expensive ones. iPod minis and 20GB iPods were top-sellers during the period in which they represented the lowest-cost offerings in the iPod family, and today iPod shuffles are estimated to account for 3 million of the 6 million iPods shipped each three months. If Apple was interested in quickly moving high volumes of portable video players, it seems logical that the company would aim for a price point in the consumer-friendly $300 range, give or take the standard $50 as an Apple luxury tax.

But history suggests that Apple will not do that - at least, this year. Last July, Apple introduced the fourth-generation iPod, and simultaneously shrunk the iPod family to omit a $499 model, focusing on $249-$399 models. In October, the company unveiled the 40GB iPod photo at $499 and 60GB iPod photo at $599, recreating its old price lineup and expanding it to include the most expensive iPod ever. A similar pricing shift has already taken place this year. Late last month, Apple dropped the price of its top-end 60GB iPod to $399, creating an identical vacancy at the family’s $499 point.

But there was a deeper reason for that move. According to many reports, the 60GB iPod photo was a comparatively poor performer at retail, a suggestion given credence by not just one, but two incredibly rapid price drops; the model fell by $200 in only eight months, dropping first by $150 after only four months. If $599 iPods don’t sell well, will Apple recreate the same pricing scenario this year with a new, high-end device, especially one that it hopes will rapidly achieve market success?

To place two portable video players at the $499 and apparently unpopular $599 marks would therefore be surprising, as would be the introduction of only one device at $499, denying consumers any choice of capacity. Moreover, Apple knows that Microsoft had very little success with last year’s introduction of $500 portable video players by Creative Labs and iRiver, despite the fact that they were significantly more powerful than the iPod photos unveiled at around the same time.

That leaves three major alternatives: (a) introduce the devices at $399 and $499, overlapping the current 60GB musical iPod with a 40GB video iPod; (b) introduce at $349 and $449, moving even more aggressively; or (c) let haters be damned and roll the device out just like last year’s iPod photo at $499 and $599. The latter approach would be old-school Apple strategy - the same sort of “we build the best products, even if only 4% of the market buys them” thinking that kept the iPod obscure for the first two years of its life. It remains to be seen whether the new Apple, committed as it appears to be to owning markets and developing huge pools of sellable digital content, will make the smarter choice to leverage musical iPod success to rapidly build a huge base of video consumers, as well.

Millions of current iPod customers could be converted, for instance, but probably not at $499 and $599 prices. iLounge’s Larry Angell predicts $349 (40GB) and $449 (60 or 80GB) price points, while our Jeremy Horwitz predicts $399 (40GB) and $499 (80GB) or higher, only because Apple so rarely surprises people with truly inexpensive technology. In light of the iPod shuffle’s aggressive introduction at $99, though, all of us hope that Apple will move equally aggressively in the video market, and avoid making the price mistakes that have dogged Microsoft and others.

What Will Be Inside?

The contours of an Apple portable video player can only be guessed at, but statements from the company, as well as outside reports, provide clues as to what might be in the offing.

The screen: Think bigger than iPod. Apple has pooh-poohed small screens for video several times in the past. For instance, CEO Steve Jobs told the New York Times in 2004 that three-inch video screens were unable to replicate a TV or theater-quality experience, unlike the concert-hall quality replication that headphones offer consumers. The company’s iPod product manager Stan Ng went further on this point in early 2005, telling Australia’s News.com that “for a player with a 3 1/2-inch screen, you have to wonder if it would be worthwhile.” Clearly, Apple dislikes the notion of screens smaller than four inches, but just what size screen is acceptable to consumers is open to question.

A widescreen display seems a foregone conclusion. Apple has gradually been shifting its monitors in that direction for years, and has focused attention this year on high-definition, theater-like video, always presenting movies in widescreen format. And there is now a well-regarded small widescreen LCD available: the 4.3” screen in Sony’s PlayStation Portable has received considerable praise. Whether there are enough of those screens available to supply Apple’s demands remains unclear, as does the question of whether the company would consider a larger (say, 7") screen a wiser alternative. At this point, we would be quite surprised if that was the case, not just because of the price, but also for power consumption and other reasons.

What about the device’s innards? Following reports earlier this year that Apple had selected a chip from U.K.-based Alphamosaic, there has been speculation that an Apple portable video player would be based on a sophisticated, power-efficient BCM2702 or BCM2705 processor now owned by Broadcom. These chips are an order of magnitude more powerful than the PortalPlayer chips used in today’s iPods, and conceivably would enable both video and games to be played on the new device. They promise 30 frame per second, VGA-quality (640x480) playback, both specifications that we expect Apple would demand.

The chips are also capable of realtime MPEG-4 encoding, which is to say that Apple’s device could also record video, but it’s entirely possible that Apple would cripple that functionality to appease movie and TV companies. (It’s our view that such a move would be foolish, and quickly exploited by competitors; a wiser move would be to lock recorded content with DRM and limit (not preclude) its transfer to other devices.) An additional wildcard feature is the chips’ ability to capture 8-Megapixel digital still images, which suggests that it could be bundled with camera functionality if Apple wanted to do so. Depending on the company’s intended price point, this might be entirely impractical, or could just lead to a really interesting new accessory attachment. There is also the possibility that Apple won’t use an Alphamosaic chip at all, in which case all bets on functionality are off.

Regardless of the screen and chip inside, it is highly likely that Apple will employ two well-established technologies in the new device: its H.264 video compression codec and the same 1.8"-sized hard disk drives that are used in current full-sized iPods. H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10, is capable of dramatically compressing video content, and can create portable-friendly movies that require around 1/10 the space of current DVDs. Alphamosaic’s chip supports H.264, as well as the advanced audio format AAC Plus. As a result, a 60GB hard drive could hold over 100 movies rather than the 10-15 it could hold with the older MPEG-2 compression used by DVDs, and four to eight times as many shorter TV shows. (Actual numbers will vary based on whether the user wants the video to be watchable only on a small screen, or viewable on a larger computer ot TV screen as well.) Our gut feeling is that a video-enabled device will be the first to feature the 80 GB hard disk announced late last year by Toshiba; such a large disk is best-suited to store the collected movie and music libraries of early adopters.

There are two other possibilities, each worth mentioning. Apple could introduce a screenless device that would serve as nothing more than a portable TiVo, connecting to whatever television you happen to be near. Though possible, we all discount this possibility, as it wouldn’t be anywhere near the breakthrough, useful everywhere product that an iPod was - especially on airplanes. The other possibility is that the device will have both a screen and video-out, like the current color-screened iPod, an option we think is more consistent with Apple design philosophy. Only one of the two Broadcom/Alphamosaic chips - the less expensive BCM2705 - supports video out. Regardless, we suspect that Apple may, like Microsoft, try to limit recording functionality to a Media Center-like piece of computer software (and possibly hardware), but hope that’s not the case, because competitors are and will be offering more flexible options.

Software: iVideo and the iVideo Store?

Over the last week, several publications have reported that Apple is currently in talks with music companies, movie studios, and media conglomerates, with plans to sell digital versions of everything from movies to television programs, music videos and Disney cartoons. In fact, music videos are already being sold through the iTunes Music Store, generally as special edition versions of $9.99 albums, repriced at $11.99 to reflect additional video content.

But does anyone really want to pay for and watch music videos, which have never cost a dime on MTV and have similarly only enjoyed limited file-sharing online? In our view, probably not. And we think Apple knows as much. It has barely promoted the music videos already sold through iTunes since version 4.8, and devoted significantly more promotional time and effort to its later-introduced support for free audio podcasts.

Why wait to promote videos that are already available? Columnist and pundit Robert Cringely has written that Apple is planning iVideo, under that name, as a download service for movies. If true, Apple is presumably waiting to get all of its pieces in place before launching a major video-focused publicity campaign. That’s probably a good idea.

But would it be enough for iVideo to simply serve as an iTunes Music Store for video content? In our opinion, the answer is no. People do not want to pay for all of the content they are loading on to portable media devices: they want to use existing content they own, and may be willing to buy more online thereafter.

So, just as with iTunes, Apple will need an application that serves at least three different purposes: downloading service, library management, and encoding tool. If integrated with a television, it might also incorporate Media Center/TiVo-like recording features, as well. There are reasons that iTunes as currently designed isn’t ideally situated to handling several of these tasks, but most of them could certainly be remedied in the upcoming version 5.0. These features could also be shifted into a separate application.

Converting Your Existing Video Library: Problems and Solutions

The key feature of any such program would be a means to convert one’s existing DVD library into digital video files viewable on the portable device. While consumers may be willing to purchase some videos online - “some” depending on the required download time, pricing, and ability they have to easily create an archival copy off of their computers - they are generally not interested in re-downloading their existing DVD collections, or paying for that privilege, even if the replacement movies are in high-definition. They also will be hesitant to pay for current television shows that they can record with a TiVo or other device for free. In the absence of the ability to play back these files without conversion, easy, free video conversion for existing files - like iTunes’ current integrated CD ripper - is therefore an absolute must.

Apple representatives have publicly gone on record to suggest that this is a more significant legal challenge than a technical one. iPod product manager Stan Ng, for example, noted earlier this year that “there is no legal way today of taking a DVD and making it viewable on a portable device.” While there are still questions on that point given consumers’ traditional “fair use” exceptions to copyright laws, say nothing of the fact that are are screened portable DVD players that can play back DVDs, the broader point is well-made: as self-appointed protector of the music industry’s presumed digital rights, Apple is unlikely to make any move perceived to facilitate piracy.

That leaves Apple with two alternatives, which could be executed separately or together. The safer one would be to seek permission from companies to allow their DVDs to be ripped by Apple’s software into DRM-wrapped files, subject to transfer limitations much like iTunes music files. Another option, preferable to many consumers, would be to enable the video player to play back open standard, DRM-less videos in addition to encoded ones. We strongly hope that Apple does both, and if the capabilities of QuickTime 7 and iTunes 4.8/4.9 are any guide, H.264 won’t be the only supported format - just the preferred one. Without support for open standard, DRM-less MP3 files, the iPod would have been an abject failure, receiving the same scorn that Sony’s ATRAC-only players were universally dogged by until only recently. If Apple believes otherwise, it will have legions of people to convince - including us.

The reasons underlying a player with support for at least some open standards is bigger than just DVD playback: consumers will also be strongly interested in watching their self-made movies, recorded by camcorders and digital cameras, on this portable device. Early adopters will be especially likely to have libraries of other existing digital movies, too, just as the iPod received support from people with existing MP3 collections - not AAC ones. We suspect that they will not want to have to encrypt or transcode all of their own movies just to watch them, just as few people were willing to re-encode all of their music files into ATRAC or AAC to enjoy them on Sony or Apple music players.

A related and important issue is that re-encoding movies - not just today’s TV- or DVD-quality films, but tomorrow’s high-definition ones - is a time- and processor-intensive task. Computers owned by “average” consumers today can encode low-resolution movies in certain formats at perhaps one-fourth their original run times: 20-30 minutes per movie, give or take. But other formats, such as H.264, are considerably more time-consuming, and may take hours depending on the computer you use. Hours will add up into days for users with large movie collections. (Better computers, of course, can run faster, but mainstream users don’t own them, and may in fact have significantly slower machines - especially outside the United States.) High-definition movies, such as ones recorded by the Sony HD camcorder touted by Apple at the National Association of Broadcasters conference earlier this year, will demand even more time and space to compress.

Consequently, we expect that Apple will begin a concerted drive to push superior consumer-level video encoding hardware and software in the near future. Thankfully, the company has all the experience necessary to pull off the software side of this feat quickly. It would make a lot of sense for Apple to leverage its existing moviemaking tools and expertise, starting with an easy-to-use version of its video transcoding tool Compressor 2. Included with the professional-grade application DVD Studio Pro, Compressor is a powerful conversion utility and supports H.264 encoding from many existing formats. The recent evolution of Apple’s iLife suite of movie, photo, and music tools - and their impending arrival on Intel-based machines - shouldn’t be overlooked either.

Good News for Everyone

At the beginning of this editorial, we noted that there are three different audiences out there: people who don’t want portable video players, people who only want large-screened (laptop-like) portables, and people who are interested in devices smaller than today’s laptops. From our perspective, there’s good news for everyone: Apple will continue to make music-only iPods for people who don’t want video devices, and they’ll likely become less expensive over time. It will also continue to sell laptop computers with various-sized screens for people who want larger portable digital movie experiences, and will likely enable future computers to connect with high-definition digital televisions.

Then, someplace in the middle will be the portable iVideo player - real name yet to be determined - smaller than a laptop but a bit larger than today’s iPods, with long-term plans for cellular phones and other H.264-equipped devices. As hinted by Apple earlier this year, H.264 will be the glue that binds all of Apple’s video-enabled desktop, laptop, and portable devices together. It’s already being used to compress movies and realtime, multi-person video chat on Apple’s computers, and the results are impressive. Just imagine how those technologies will look on a portable screen.

We’re excited, and hope you are too. Let us know your thoughts - positive or negative - in the comments box below.

I think that the video content that they should be focusing on is content from television shows and sports highlights. I might not have time to devote and hour or so for a movie when on the subway I would have the time to see yesterday’s sports highlights or a half hour show.

Shows like ESPN Sportscenter Comedy Central’s The Daily Show already offer free streaming video a Video iPod could charge 99 cents for yesterdays show. They could charge for something people get for free currently. I would love to own the short clips from the Dave Chappelle show.

This could be a on the go Tivo and watch television content when you wanted it.
Content where we want information ie news sports etc are a better fit than to try to re-create a big screen movie experience.

There is so much video content online on the web today why doesn’t Apple consolidate all of those wide ranging video streams into one location like it did for the podcast directory. Something like real players superpass but for downloadable content.

In this situation everyone wins the content providers are getting paid for something they were giving away for free (or free with the comericals) and consumers get content that they can keep and take with them on the go and they have more choices.

By daveisatmcc on 07.24.05 at 10:19 AM

the next incarnation of the ipod or video ipod will be more of a home entertainment device, where you can download video content and then either stream or download the video to a device which connects to a tv/lcd/hdtv etc… watch and see in september ;)

By me101 on 07.24.05 at 05:15 PM

Jeremy, nice article. You have covered the major points quite well.

But at the same time you seem to have gone overboard while speculating on features that video capable iPods might have. I mean, really, video recording? Large screen? This would increase battery drain. In that case I think Apple will stop at playback (no pun intended - really!).

Remember: iPod is a playback device, not a creation device. Media creation is what computers are for.

I’d be very happy watching short clips or 30min cartoon episodes on the current iPod screen sizes. But whatever Apple does it is likely to be done the right way and will make otherwise great devices like Cowon’s X5 (using XviD, a smart move) look half-hearted and confused.

By Pikemann_Urge on 07.25.05 at 01:43 AM

The key issue is content. Steve Jobs made this plain last year in introducing the iPod Photo. He said that Apple were [for the moment] avoiding a video device as there currently was no content to provide - or sell.

That is changing. It is significant that the BBC is about to make its entire video library available for purchase via the internet. Arguably the biggest storehouse of television in the world this is an amazing offer, scarcely imaginable a year ago.

This week we have seen an announcment that Apple and Disney have made some arrangement for video content. The elements are falling into place for video to be “packaged” in the way that music/audio has with iTunes and the iPod.

Other vendors are also talking about video downloads for a fee. Apple wants to catch the wave at the right time. Watch its timing. It has a knack of catching the public taste just at the right moment.

BTW Microsoft hypes its media centre. Mac users already know this is catch-up. Apple is well into its digital hub strategy to place the Mac [or indeed PC with Apple software] at the centre of the home entertainment suite. iTunes, Airport Express, Quicktime and the new video device are all key elements of that strategy. It is a winning combination.

By Aggedor on 07.25.05 at 03:58 AM

I remember seeing something about an Apple patent to use an iPod as a laptop controller. Maybe there is also a plan to use the laptop screen as a playback device for a video iPod?

By JeffW on 07.25.05 at 04:31 AM

iPodderX 3.0 Review

2005-07-23T07:40:00.000-07:00

iPodderX was my first podcatcher, and I chose it because it worked, and had a brushed-metal UI. My recent problems (compounded by continuing delays for v3.0) had forced me to see what's out there. Now that 3.0 is out, it's time to give iPodderX v3 a fair shake.

iPodderX v3 by Thunderstone Media, LLC. is a commercial podcast receiver, with a brushed-metal iApp style UI. It costs $24.95 (up from 2.x's $20), and I was lucky enough to get early access. This review was made possible by that early access and reflects my experience with the release version.

Installation and Upgrade

After a quick download (3MB, up from 1.9MB for b5) I dragged & dropped for the install (expanding to 9.2MB on disk). Startup took almost a minute to load. I tested this numerous times to see if this was an initial startup issue, but each time took about a minute. Unfortunately, on the first run it didn't pick up on my history.plist (basically it downloaded some items that I had already downloaded in previous versions/betas). Despite all this, it did pick up on both both my registration and my feed list - meaning that I won't be forced to buy an upgrade or reimport my feed list. Yeah!

First Glance

The first thing you'll notice is the new interface - which looks rather bland until you start reading items. Once you subscribe to a feed and select a text item you'll see a jewel-like blue gradient header in the content area where the entry title and feed title is re-displayed in white (it's also in the list area above it). Despite the improved user interface, it isn't perfect (in my mind): 1) The icons are rather confusing at first. Dots (filled and empty) and flags? However, you begin to get used to them as a dot represents an unread item, I'm not sure about the flags though they might be useful for SmartSpace as I discuss below. 2) When a podcast item is selected in the entry area, any files are shown in the attachment area which is in the top right corner - instead of in the content area (specifically the blue gradient header). If you then click on the attachment it will automatically begin playing it (either video or audio)... or not as your preferences dictate.

iApp UI

All of the icons are a boring black and white icons (where's the color?). Though color would be nice, this does fit the iApp look and feel. In addition to not having colorful icons, I also have another gripe with the iApp interface: sub-folders. It's one level only. No exceptions - just like iTunes and iPhoto. You can't fault iPodderX for either of these... it is just following the Apple iApp look and feel guidelines. It would be good to be able to create folders for different feed types (audio, video, text), or even folders by content type (tech, entertainment, news). Either way this is a minor issue, as I still prefer the overall iApp brushed-metal feel to the simple window Aqua look.

You'll also notice that the refresh (download) button has been moved to the top and is now square. There is a standard spinner, a text description and an progress bar to show you what's happening once a refresh is initiated. You can also initiate a global or feed specific update by right clicking any feed. This is a much needed improvement as previous versions told you very little about what was going on - and nothing in the interface about why things failed.

Help

The help file appears to be missing or empty, but there is a Flash 7 based "tour" that gives you a quick overview of adding subscriptions, and a bullet list of the main features. Oh, and it plays in the main content area - I'm guessing to prove that it supports *all media*.

Video!

It's obvious they intend on growing from a podcast aggregator to a podcast, blog and vlog aggregator - and the new UI makes this clear. Though 2.2.x supported video - I had no idea. I was using ANT, so using iPodderX as a vlog aggregator was new to me. By using iPodderX in this way, I learned that my favorite podcasts and vlogs actually had text and pictures in their feeds. Boy was I surprised to see all this extra data. Ray Slakinski (the developer) has pointed out in a other forums that iPodderX already supported video, and RSS already supports liner notes (so what's the point of using a separate mechanism to describe what's in a podcast?).

As my first test I subscribed to the best vlog - RocketBoom (go Amanda!). [Speaking of Amanda - wouldn't it be cool if she was a guest reporter on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart?!] The video was downloaded into iPodderX where it stayed. It wasn't until much later that I found the setting to publish to iTunes 4.8 (since it now supports video). However, during testing iPodderX refused to auto-publish video to iTunes - forcing me to manually right click each attachment and select "Export to iApp". This is where iPodderX locked up on me (though it did push the video into iTunes). I imagine that this will be fixed in subsequent versions.
Update: Hey, what do you know - one of my videos popped into iTunes today. Considering I tried it numerous times yesterday (by selectively updating a feed and updating all feeds), I'm not sure why it suddenly worked.

Full Screen Video

Full screen buttons are located in both the content area and the status area at the bottom of the window. Early betas didn't have this feature but with initial testing I found a larger Amanda to look even better. ;) However, for the most part, I'd prefer a double-size option from within the content area because most video content looks better at double-size then full screen. In fact lack of a resize option is what always bugged me about FireANT.

Unread Count Indicators

Much like blog aggregators, there is now an unread count indicator next to each feed (a red bubble), as well as an overall unread count indicator superimposed over the dock icon.

NewsCaster (Text-to-Speech)

Text blogs can now be imported into iTunes using a slick text to speech conversion option in the feed settings - though this isn't surprising given that text-to-speech is built into Tiger (and Panther?). I'm not saying that this will replace Andy McCaskeys' SlashdotReview - but it will work for some people, especially if there is no other option.

.MAC Backup / Restore

Another new feature is the ability to back up your feed list (and maybe history?) to .MAC (assuming you have a .MAC account). This wasn't working in b5, the release candidate or in the release version that I could tell.

SmartSpace

This will no doubt be the most talked about feature, and certainly I may grow to depend on it. Because many of us have watched podcasts eat up our hard drive space with the content explosion in the past few months, this is a way to remove all those files that you've either listened to or are very old, and likely won't be listened too. The entire process is configurable by setting the amount of disk space that you want to use. (This may be where Flags come into play by forcing content to stay even after it's been viewed.) However, this will *not* remove files that have been pushed into iTunes or iPhoto - which in my case is practically all of my feeds. This is a real issue that hopefully will be addressed in future versions. For now, I'll leave this feature turned off.

Playlist Builder

I haven't used this yet, but in the Wizards of Technology podcast it was described as a way to control what content gets pushed into iTunes. This could be useful with large aggregated podcast feeds such as the "Mother of All Podcast feeds" feed - allowing you to skip all the crap, and to push into iTunes your personal "Grab Bag" playlist of only those podcasts you really find interesting.

Conclusion [4/5 stars, good]

Though the UI has the same advantages (or disadvantages if you prefer) of an iApp, there are plenty of fresh ideas that make this iPodderX unique as an all-media aggregator. For example, I can imagine a flickr feed that servs up fresh content to a screensaver. Video and photo aggregation are the killer features in my eye, but many more will be pleased with SmartSpace and the PlayList builder. However, it does have flaws. During testing, iPodderX locked up on me when I exported a video to iTunes manually in the middle of a full refresh. I also found that the auto-export of videos to iTunes is broken. Additionally, the extremely long load time leaves me baffled (the last release candidate didn't have this problem). I'm guessing we will see a bug patch and stability release soon, but so far I've been satisfied and have returned to using iPodderX as my full-time podcatcher. I'm still not sure I'm ready for an all media aggregator (considering my dependance on NewsGator), but this release so far appears to have the juice to push the other aggregators out of the running (certainly ANT has already been replaced on my machine).

Server Side Sync - the Next Killer Feature

NewsGator's sync API integration is what I'd really like to see. I've sent both NewsGator and Thunderstone my suggestion that they work together (or have NewsGator buy Thunderstone like they recently did with Nick Bradbury's FeedDemon for Windows): allowing NewsGator to get a Mac client, and Thunderstone to get a server-side sync option for multi-machine aggregation. As I read many text feeds at work, it's counter-productive for me to re-read them at home. However if iPodderX integrated with NewsGator, than re-reading entries wouldn't be necessary as they would already be marked read in iPodderX. To me integration would be a win-win for NewsGator and Thunderstone! A few moments ago Greg Reinacker, NewsGator's CTO sent me a note saying he would love to see further use of his company's sync API (which makes sense), though he said nothing about buying them. I imagine Ray Slakinski (an iPodderX developer) has been so busy building to this release that he hasn't had time to respond (let alone consider another feature). Hopefully he'll give me a heads up when he gets a chance - or better yet, he'll talk directly with Greg.

iTunes Competition

With the latest news that iTunes 4.9 will support podcatching... it will be interesting to see how many podcatchers die. I think Thunderstone has positioned iPodderX perfectly by expanding the scope to all media. If they hadn't, iTunes 4.9 would have been a showstopper. As it stands, if iTunes implements podcatching effectively - iPodderX will most likely survive... but perhaps as a FireANT replacement and not an audio podcatcher. However, if server-side sync (NewsGator) support is not forthcoming... I can't see this as replacing a standard text-blog aggregator.

Review: iPodderX 3.0

Thunderstone Media has given us a sneak peek into iPodderX 3.0--the much anticipated upgrade to their already bleeding edge podcatching client. August Trometer and Ray Slakinski have been working away on adding an assortment of new features to a "from the ground up" build of iPodderX and they are just about ready to release it. But before they do, let's have a look at what they have in store for us....

Vlog support

When you first heard and finally grasped the idea of podcasting, tell me you didn't see vlogging coming right behind it. That's right, vlogging is video blogging and iPodderX is here to help you access that content as well. Thunderstone has put the icing on the video cake by enabling full screen playback of vlog content right from iPodderX. Good news, indeed.

RSS Newsreading

But, iPodderX isn't just for podcatching anymore. It can now be used as your RSS reader for all feeds. This means you can keep up with the Wizards of Technology and MacMerc.com in the same RSS application. My only beef with this system is that, even though you can set how often iPodderX checks for feed updates and because it is first and foremost a podcatching client, it doesn't allow you to check feeds often enough for news junkies like me--only as often as once per hour at the most frequent setting.

NewsCaster

iPodderX doesn't stop at simply pulling down the text of your favorite news sites, it can also convert them to speech synthesized MP3 files that you can listen to on your media player. So now you can have Vicky, Fred or Bubbles read you the latest Mac news!

iApp integration

Once you've got all this content, you're going to want to organize the audio and video in iTunes and the pictures in iPhoto. iPodderX has you covered there too. It allows you to do all that and more...

...you can even create iTunes playlists right inside iPodderX. Smart, huh?

SmartSpace

I'll tell what else is smart--SmartSpace. Sure, modern Macs can hold hundreds of gigabytes of data. Hard drives are cheap. But how much of that space are you willing to devote to podcasts? Those who have been catching podcasts for a while now will tell you, those babies will eat a lot of drive space. iPodderX's SmartSpace will automatically delete your old downloaded podcasts to stay below a drive space allowance determined by you. The oldest files will be the first to go, but don't worry, the files you keep in iTunes and iPhoto will be spared.

To sum up...

I have been playing with iPodderX 3.0 for quite a while now. August and Ray have done such a great job of improving upon the ease of use and feature set of version 2.0 that I really believe the release of this application is going to result in explosive growth for podcasting listenership on the Mac and possibly might inspire even more people to get into the podcasting themselves.

iPodderX is shareware with a registration cost of $24.95 (a free upgrade to registered users of iPodderX 2.0) and is sure to be the Mac's premier podcasting client

Brilliant Playlists

2005-07-22T23:47:00.000-07:00

Tips for making smarter Smart Playlists

By Christopher Breen

As our music libraries swell to gargantuan proportions it can become increasingly difficult to manage the music we listen to (or would like to listen to if we could just find half the tunes we possess). Thankfully iTunes offers a leg up with Smart Playlists—a tool for automatically creating playlists that contain exactly the kind of music you want in iTunes and on your iPod.

Of course, Smart Playlists can’t do the job on their own. They need an agile brain behind the scenes to help them separate the good from the not-so. While I’m certain that your gray matter is up to the task, why strain the frontal lobe when people like me are paid to do the work for you. Put your feet up, crack open a cooling copy of iTunes, and let’s begin.

New Music All the Time

Where better to start than at the beginning? If you’re sick of hearing the same old stuff, create a new Smart Playlist that reads:

Play Count is 0.

Below you can limit the playlist by number of songs, the length in hours and minutes, or the amount of space the playlist consumes (in either megabytes or gigabytes). In the Selected By pop-up menu you can further narrow your choices by choosing songs by Album, Artist, Genre, Song Name, Highest or Lowest Rating, Most- or Least Often Played, or Most- or Least Recently Played (I believe the universe collapses in on itself if you choose Play Count is 0 and then select tunes by Most Often Played).

Be sure to also enable the Live Updating option. When you do so, iTunes will check to see what you’ve played either in iTunes or on the iPod when you next sync it and replace any songs in the playlist that have been played with tunes that you’ve never played.

The iPod mini Playlist

The iPod shuffle has the cool Autofill feature that automatically fills the little player with tracks that don’t take up a lot of space (we’ll look at Autofill in a bit). Unfortunately, Autofill doesn’t currently work with any other iPod models and, if you have a reasonably large music collection, it could be useful with an iPod mini.

Oh sure, when you plug an iPod (that’s configured to update automatically) into your computer and your iTunes library contains more music that your iPod can hold, iTunes creates a playlist of music that will fit on your iPod, but iTunes isn’t discerning about what it puts in that playlist. It’s just as happy to copy huge AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless, and audiobook files to your iPod as it is to grab the tiniest MP3 and AAC files you own. If you want to pack as much music as possible onto your mini, you need something smarter.

With that in mind, create a series of conditions that read: Kind does not contain. This list of conditions would include AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless, and QuickTime—song formats that take up a lot of storage space. To avoid packing the mini with songs encoded at high bit-rates (the higher the bit-rate, the larger the file), ask the Smart Playlist to limit songs to those that weigh in at less than 192kbps.You’ll certainly want to exclude the Audiobooks genre and might also wish to skip such genres as Holiday and Children’s Music if its mid-July or you can’t bear one more round of “The Eensy Weensy Spider.” Finally, be sure that the top of the playlist reads Match All of the Following Conditions. If “any” rather than “all” is selected, the Smart Playlist won’t be exclusive enough—as long as one of the conditions is met by a song (bit rate, for example) the song can be used in the playlist.

If you have a lot of music on your computer and you’ve rated that music, consider adding a rating condition that reads My Rating is Greater than 3 Stars. Be sure to limit the size of this playlist with the Limit to option at the bottom of the Smart Playlist window. For an iPod mini this option should read Limit to 3500 MB selected by Album (you must use megabytes rather than gigabytes because the GB field won’t accept decimals, as in 3.5 GB).

Once you’ve created this playlist, select your mini in the Source menu, and click the iPod Preferences button. In the iPod Preferences window that appears, enable the Automatically Update Selected Playlists Only option, select the Smart Playlist you created for your mini, and click OK. The mini will be updated with your playlist—and continue to be as long as you leave this option selected.

shuffling Along

The Autofill feature that appears when you plug an iPod shuffle into your Mac or Windows PC is far smarter than the “how about I fill up your iPod with whatever I like” solution I mentioned earlier, but it could be smarter still. After creating several Autofill playlists, I was surprised to discover just how many songs in my music library run for less than a minute. I like Brian Wilson’s “Barnyard” and the Who’s “Tommy’s Holiday Camp” as much as the next guy, but I prefer that my iPod be filled with songs that are more than musical appetizers. Likewise, I don’t want to pack my shuffle with songs containing endless drum solos or large wav files (the one uncompressed format playable on the shuffle).

Also, having an iPod full of holiday music was great in December, but now that it’s nearing Valentine’s Day, I can do without visions of sugar plum fairies dancing through my head. And because I prefer that my exercise sessions aren’t interrupted with fits of laughter, any Spoken Word selections (which, in my collection, are made up largely of Eddie Izzard recordings) are out.

With all this in mind, my For the Shuffle smart playlist demands that playlist contain no WAV file, tracks are longer than two minutes (and shorter than eight minutes), and tracks tagged as Holiday and Spoken Word files are not included. I limit the playlist to 490MB because I want to know exactly what’s going to go on the shuffle rather than what might end up on it (if you leave the Limit To option disabled, Autofill will choose a subset of tracks from a potentially much larger playlist of songs). As with my other Smart Playlists, I leave the Live Updating option enabled.

Once you’ve created the smart playlist, simply select the iPod shuffle in iTunes’ source list and choose the smart list you created from the Autofill From pop-up menu. To refresh the contents of the smart playlist, just select everything in it and hit the Delete key to remove its contents. Because Live Updating is switched on, the smart playlist will be automatically repopulated with music.

In the Mood

Unless you’re the kind of person for which the party never ends, you’re going to want to listen to a far different kind of music on Sunday morning than was hammered into your brain the night before. To assist in this, you can create Smart Playlists that match your mood. And the key to doing so is iTunes’ Comments field. It works this way:

As you traipse through your music collection, find songs likely to work for you in particular situations—hung-over Sunday mornings or tunes that will get your blood racing while you exercise. When you find such songs, highlight them and choose Get Info from iTunes’ File menu. In the resulting window, click the Info tab and enter an appropriate word in the Comments field.

When you’re ready to compile your playlist, configure the top row of pop-up menus to read Comment Contains Whatever, where Whatever is the mood or situation you’d like a playlist for—Comment Contains Exercise, for instance.

Mood playlists have become increasingly important with the advent of the iPod shuffle. Because their storage space is so limited it makes sense to create playlists that will suit particular occasions—working out at the gym, playing on the subway on your way to a dead-end job, or learning a set of tunes for an upcoming gig. Again, use the comments field to classify your tunes and create mood playlists that you can choose in Autofill.

Be Exclusive

In iTunes 4.5, Apple enhanced the Smart Playlist in an important way. Previously, there was no easy way to keep sections of your library from appearing in a Smart Playlist. For example, let’s say you’d digitized all your old phonograph albums for the sake of posterity but you didn’t want any of the songs on them to ever appear in a Smart Playlist. Sure, you could have added a “phonograph” comment to each archived song and told the Smart Playlist to not include any song with the comment “phonograph,” but would it be easier if you could simply tell the Smart Playlist to exclude all songs within certain playlists? That’s exactly what iTunes 4.5 and later does for you by including the new Playlist criterion. You can now tell Smart Playlists to harvest songs only within certain playlists.

Using our example, just place all the songs you’ve ripped from vinyl into a playlist you’ve called From Vinyl. Then configure a Smart Playlist so that it reads Playlist is not From Vinyl. From there you can further narrow down your choices by including or excluding other playlists.

The Subgenre Playlist

By default, iTunes provides one entry for “art” music—Classical—and lumps be-bop, swing, and fusion in the single Jazz genre. Anyone who’s familiar with such music understands that such labels are far too broad. If you’d like to classify this music more specifically, reveal iTunes’ browser, and open the Get Info window for an artist or album. In the Genre field, enter a more specific classification—Opera, Baroque, Romantic, be-bop, or cool jazz, for example—and click OK to close the Get Info window. Add genre entries for your other classical and jazz music.

Now configure the top row of pop-up menus in the Smart Playlist window to read Genre is Romantic (or some other Classical or Jazz subcategory of your choosing).

Backup Your Purchased Music Playlist

If you lose the music you purchase from the iTunes Music Store, you lose it for good and all—Apple won’t allow you to download purchased music a second time without paying for it. For this reason, you should routinely backup your purchased music. This Smart Playlist can help you do it.

Configure the top row of pop-up menus to read: Kind contains Protected AAC, give it a name such as Backup Library, and click OK. This places all the purchased music files in your iTunes music library into a single playlist. (Your Purchased Music playlist should contain these same songs but if you’ve reorganized your iTunes Music folder, it’s possible that some of the music you purchased won’t appear in the Purchased Music folder.)

Select Preferences from the iTunes menu on the Mac or from the Edit menu on a Windows PC and click the Burning tab. In the Disc Format portion of the Burning window select Data CD or DVD and click OK. This allows you to burn your iTunes files in their current format rather than converting them to a format compatible with the audio CD standard (a format that creates much larger files). Select your Backup Library playlist and click iTunes’ Burn button. If the number of files in the playlist exceed the capacity of a CD-R disc, don’t be concerned. iTunes will burn as many files as it can to the first disc and then ask for as many subsequent discs as necessary to back up everything in the playlist.

When you’ve burned that playlist, Control-click (if you have a Mac) or right-click (if you have a PC) on it and select Edit Smart Playlist from the contextual menu. Click the + button next to the top row of pop-up menus and configure the resulting row of menus to read: Date Added is in the Last 2 Weeks. Enable the Live Updating option and click OK.

If you’re using a Mac, launch iCal and create an appointment two weeks hence called Back up iTunes! Configure the appointment so it recurs every two weeks and set an alarm that reminds you to back up your playlist. If you’re using a PC, use the calendar within Outlook or an application such as Palm Desktop to create a similar alarm.

If you do lose your purchased music, open iTunes’ Preferences, click the Advanced tab, and be sure that the Copy Files to iTunes Music Folder When Adding to Library option is enabled. Insert each backup disc, select the Add to Library command from iTunes’ File menu, navigate to the disc, and click Open. The purchased music files will be copied from the disc to your computer and placed in your iTunes music library.

The Audiobooks Playlist

The fourth-generation iPods, iPod minis, and iPod photos place audiobooks in their own special playlist. If you have an earlier iPod, you can fake an audiobooks playlist. Just configure the top row of buttons to read Genre contains Audiobook.

Go Out and Make Some of Your Own

With these tips in hand, your iPod will be filled with the music you want, when you want it. But this is only a beginning. You have far greater knowledge of what your music library contains and how you’d like to listen to the music in it. I’ve offered a glimpse of what can be done with Smart Playlists, it’s up to you to take the next step.

Smart Playlists

2005-07-22T23:42:00.000-07:00

Smart playlists are just about the best thing going for iTunes, other than built in, multi-format ripping or CD buring in both audio or MP3, or the nifty "Browser". I use them all the time. To my winamper friends, it's an alien concept. So, here's some of my more useful playlists.

Favs

This is a neat one which, if you have a properly rated collection, will provide you with your own personal radio station. The "Last Played" setting ensures I don't ever overhear a song. A variation of that would be to put a limit on it, and sort it by Least Often Played, that way you'll always have a fresh mix of your favorites.

Fav-Blues

This is just like my Favs, but tuned for Blues only. I've turned down the Star rating a bit to open up the field more. Without it, I could have just used my Favs playlist, with the Browser set to play only Blues. With it, I have some blues that would never appear in the main Favs. I have about 4 Fav- playlists.

Never Played

Every so often, you'll infuse your collection with a ton of new songs that you should probably listen to at least once. What's the point of carrying around songs that you may never listen to?

Newest

Sometimes, when I rip or download a bunch of new songs this playlist becomes useful, as it will usually contain the songs which need to be properly tagged, or have album art downloaded for.

Rarely Played

This playlist focuses on songs I haven't heard in a long time. It does so by choosing the 100 songs that haven't been played in the longest time. iTunes will randomly pick one of those 100 songs, play it and remove it from the playlist and add the new 100th least recently played song. I have that "Genre is not Comedy" bit in there because I recently added all 54 "Bud Light Real Men of Genius" radio commercials, and since I didn't play them all yet, this playlist was half filled with commercials.

Unrated

I'm a rating nut, and I try my best to have all my songs rated, but it's quite a challenge. This playlist helps me out. "My rating is less than 1 star" finds all my unrated songs. "Last Played is in the last 3 days" means I have a good chance of remembering the song. I check this every so often and rate the ones that are in there. You'll have to tune the "3 days" bit so there's always a manageable amount of songs in there.

Apple Color 4G iPod 20/60GB Review

2005-07-22T23:07:00.000-07:00

Pros: Apple’s best iPod yet, with a color screen and user interface, photo display through itself and TV sets, and 17-hour battery life. Great audio quality and overall experience. An affordable, substantial improvement on the black-and-white fourth-generation iPod released less than one year ago.

Cons: Photo display initially requires extended sync process, add-ons required to download photos directly from a camera, or display photos on a TV. Still no way for users to easily replace battery.

06.29.05

In November 2004, iLounge reviewed Apple’s then-new iPod photo (iLounge rating: A-), a premium version of the fourth-generation black-and-white iPod released in late July. We praised the storage capacity, battery life, and new features of the color-screened music and photo player, but thought that it was expensive at $499-$599, and a little rough around the edges for such a pricey device. Even when Apple dropped the iPod photo’s price - mostly by removing pack-ins - and released a lower capacity version in February, we still felt that the company hadn’t addressed most of the concerns we had raised in our initial review, and left our A- grade intact in our Spring/Summer 2005 Buyers’ Guide re-review.

Several major things have changed since then. Apple released the inexpensive iPod Camera Connector (iLounge rating: B+), which was a considerably better value than the $80-$110 devices iPod owners previously needed for camera-to-iPod photo transfers. The company also published a Software Update that added support for digital photo viewing without computer synchronization, and new slideshow transition effects, addressing two of our review’s issues.

And this week, Apple eliminated the biggest barrier for potential buyers: premium pricing. A 20GB (5,000-song) version of the iPod photo is now Apple’s fifth “iPod” - considered by the company to be a color fourth-generation model - and sells for $299, while the old 60GB (15,000-song) version now sells for $399 - a $200 price drop since its introduction last October. Now only do these two new iPods offer the best features and capacity yet for their price tags, but they perform better than their predecessors in other ways, as well. While not the perfect A+ iPods we’re still hoping to see, they’re fully worthy of iLounge’s flat A rating and high recommendation.

What’s In The Box: Hardware and Software

Since last October, Apple has dramatically streamlined the packages of its color-screened iPods, shrinking their boxes and cutting their pack-ins to a minimal level. Though the boxes are no longer as exciting to open as their intricately designed predecessors, Apple has thankfully gone back to using classy exterior designs, with the iPod name in silver foil and clean product shots on three of each black box’s sides. Gone are the colorful and overplayed images of silhouette dancers, replaced by Black Eyed Peas album art and shots of the hardware’s photo display capabilities.

Both the 20GB and 60GB iPods come with one pair of white earbud-style headphones, two sets of black foam earpads, an iPod-to-USB 2.0 cable, a wall power charger, a single data CD, and a collection of instruction, ad, and warranty booklets. The data CD contains PC and Macintosh versions of Apple’s iTunes music software and the necessary drivers to connect your iPod to your computer, as well as electronic versions of various iPod instruction manuals.

This collection of items is all any person needs to fully use and enjoy a new iPod - no further purchases or software are required. You insert the CD into your computer, quickly install iTunes and drivers as applicable, and then connect the USB cable to both your computer and iPod. iTunes provides an incredibly powerful and easy set of tools for transferring your music from CDs to your iPod, as well as legally downloading music and other audio content online. Recent versions of iTunes have also added video management tools, calendar and personal contacts management for Mac users, support for free radio-style “podcasts," and more.

It’s worth a small technical note that Apple has now officially done away with the FireWire cables that used to be included with standard “iPods,” a change that was made back in February when these devices were called “iPod photos,” but not carried out for the 20GB model up until now. As a result, Mac owners and the few PC owners with standard FireWire ports will not be able to take advantage of FireWire’s added computer-to-iPod transfer speeds, but the included USB 2.0 cable will certainly suffice for the data transfer needs of most users. If your computer only has an older USB 1.0 port, you’ll need to charge the iPod with the included wall charger, and expect that it will take longer to initially fill and subsequently update the contents of your iPod.

How Does the New iPod Work?

The new iPod adds power to the elegantly simple control and menu system of its black-and-white predecessor. Within an enclosure that is half glossy white plastic and half mirror-polished metal, the iPod combines a 2-inch color screen with a simple circular controller called the Click Wheel. You skim your finger over the Click Wheel’s touch-sensitive surface to move up and down in menus, adjust volume, and skip through photographs. Buttons hidden under its surface - one each to the north, south, west and east, plus one in the center - let you skip quickly through menus, go forwards or backwards in lists of audio tracks, and play, pause, or turn off the iPod. No easier control and menu system has yet been designed for a music player of the iPod’s complexity.

Apple’s screen is a significant improvement over the ones sold in the prior generations of iPods. Brightly backlit and made with a “transflective” LCD material, it’s easy to read indoors and outdoors, and capable of displaying over 65,000 colors. Seven lines of large, clean menu text plus a header can be displayed at once, with a battery icon always present on the top right of the screen and a play status indicator on the top left. In text file display mode, the iPod can show up to eleven lines of small text at once, and can also display attractive color graphics and games that its older predecessor couldn’t handle. For more details on all of these features, take a look at our Power Users’ Review of the iPod photo; with the exception of a new menu option that segregates downloaded Internet radio programs called Podcasts into their own library, little has changed since then.

As a music player, the new iPod improves in only one significant way upon its predecessor: it now allows you to store and view album artwork for each of your songs, displaying a small icon during playback that can be magnified to a larger (though not full-screen) view for short periods of time. It does not play back music videos or include any sort of visualizers; songs are accompanied on-screen only by their titles, artists’ names, and album names. You can still rate songs, increase or decrease volume, and skip to any part of a song with simple button presses - all with only one finger, if you desire.

When used as a photo storage and playback device, the new iPod is only a few hairs shy of perfection. Out of the box, it can transfer photographs from your computer using nothing more than iTunes, a process that initially takes a considerable period of time but decreases upon subsequent synchronizations. You can create and view slideshows from your photo collection, either silently or accompanied by music. A collection of five different transition effects can create movie-style wipes and pushes, simple visuals that add a little spice to any slideshow.

Additionally, you can connect the optional iPod Camera Connector or two other devices to transfer photographs to your iPod without a computer, and can also purchase separate cables or a Dock to connect your iPod to a TV for slideshow viewing. While not as sophisticated as a photo slideshow generated by a computer program such as Apple’s iPhoto, the iPod holds its own as a portable photo storage and display device.

Audio, Battery, and Storage Performance

In previous reviews of Apple’s iPods, we’ve noted that we don’t have any major complaints about the general audio quality of these players: they are accurate, sonically balanced devices that have earned the praise of average users and audiophiles alike. A small minority of users has insisted that iPods don’t have as much bass as certain other audio devices, but other than that - and related calls for user-customizable equalizers to permit dynamic changes to the device’s sound - the new iPod is about as good as portable audio players get from an audio standpoint.

That includes Apple’s substantial, but not complete remedy of an audio interference issue we identified in black-and-white fourth-generation iPods last year: a static sound that overlapped songs whenever the hard drive was accessed, audible with most pairs of headphones. While we can still hear a short, faint occasional hint of static in our pairs of high-end earphones during hard drive accesses, the noise was not audible using Apple’s standard earbuds or “typical” earphones we tested. Unlike the black-and-white iPod’s problem, most people won’t mind what little interference there is, but we still strongly believe that Apple should eliminate it entirely in the next-generation iPod.

We are quite happy with the new iPods’ battery life, which in our testing exceeded Apple’s 15-hour estimates by a full two hours - over 17 hours of run time, compared with the black-and-white 4G iPod’s 12-13 and the 3G iPod’s 6-8. Rare is the occasion when we’re away from a computer or wall outlet for longer than 12 hours of iPod playback, so 17 hours works quite well for us. While the iPod family could and should continue to improve in this regard, this is nowhere near the issue it was back a year ago. Our only remaining issue is that users cannot easily replace the iPod’s battery by themselves - you need to use special tools to pop off the rear metal compartment - and we certainly hope that this issue is addressed in future iPods. It’s been a limitation of the iPod family since the beginning (see a comparison photo of 2G and color 4G iPods, below), but needn’t be.

The storage capacities of the two current iPod models also deserve a few words. In the past, 20-Gigabyte iPods have proved the most popular with iLounge readers, holding a peak of around 5,000 songs at standard compression rates. We applaud Apple for being honest about the iPods’ storage capacities, even as competitors have stooped to claiming that their devices can hold more songs in the same 20GB of space - despite their scratchier, lower-quality sound.

However, as the new iPods can now play back both music and photographs, the 20GB iPod is required to squeeze even more content into the same space - album artwork, pictures of various sizes, and less-compressed songs stored by increasingly quality-sensitive listeners. After transferring a sample collection of 7,095 photographs to the new iPod, we saw that over five full Gigabytes of storage had already been used up, leaving far less room for music and album artwork. For future iPods, Apple needs to work on reducing the size of its photo database, perhaps through improvements in processor power (enabling realtime scaling of stored images rather than storage of multiple thumbnails). Today, however, music lovers planning to make major use of the new iPod’s photo features should give serious consideration to the 60GB model, which for $100 more triples the smaller version’s storage capacity and leaves plenty of room for whatever you might want to put on the device.

Physical size and Accessory Compatibility

In upgrading the iPod family from black-and-white to color screens, Apple was forced to make only one compromise: thickness. While the new iPods are as tall and wide as their 30GB and 60GB iPod photo predecessors, and thereby fit in all of the same cases, cradles, and other accessories previously designed, they are not as thin as their black-and-white 4G predecessors. The 60GB model is .75 inches thick, and the 20GB model is .63 inches thick, each a bump of .06 inches over last year’s 40GB and 20GB black-and-white iPods. Practically, these differences are virtually irrelevant and fully justified by the device’s superior batteries, but they’re modestly noticeable when compared right next to last year’s models.

Critically, however, these iPods are now fully compatible with the wide array of third-party accessories that have been developed for prior iPods - everything from speakers to voice recorders, camera connectors, battery chargers and car mounts. These accessories either were already compatible when the iPods were sold as iPod photos, or because their manufacturers have subsequently released fully compatible revisions that are now the only versions on store shelves. If you already own an iPod accessory other than a case that doesn’t work with your new iPod, you can most likely contact the accessory’s manufacturer for details on how to obtain a fully working replacement.

Additional Details

If you’re looking for additional information on various features of the new iPod, or its included iTunes software, iLounge has plenty to offer. Our comprehensive Power Users’ review of the iPod photo contains all you’ll want to know about the current iPod’s menus and built-in applications, while our Complete Guide to iPod photo Pictures will help you make the most of its photo features. To learn about iTunes, check out our Tutorials pages, including details on the new features in the current version (4.9) of iTunes, and for information on compatible accessories, you can find cases and other items on our Reviews page, and a easier-to-read digest in our popular, free Buyers’ Guide.

For a discussion of the new iPod’s name and comparison photographs with other generations of iPods, check out our Backstage article Naming the New iPod.

We have two photo galleries full of new photographs of these new iPod models: first, the iPod 20GB gallery, and a separate gallery for the color-screened black U2 Special Edition iPod released at the same time. Our historical photo galleries of older iPod models can be found here.

If you’re not sure whether the new iPod is the right model for you, take a look at our recent Editorial, Today’s iPod lineup, and you. You can also find our super-simple iPod picking guide in the Buyers’ Guide.

Still have questions? With over 65,000 members and 600,000 messages, our Discussion Forums likely already address anything you might want to know. If not, post a message, or use Ask iLounge, our weekly Q&A column. There’s a good chance that you can find the answer on the site, but if not, we’re always happy to help.

Conclusions

It would have been easy to pass on re-reviewing Apple’s newest iPods - after all, the 20GB version is little more than a cheaper, lower-capacity version of the 30GB iPod photo released only four months ago, and the 60GB version is just the same, only in a different box. That simple fact has elicited groans and tears from the most devoted iLounge readers, particularly those who purchased black-and-white-screened iPods only recently.

But to view the new iPods from the perspective of existing owners would clearly miss the significance of what Apple is now offering to new potential buyers: a color-screened, photo-capable 20GB digital music player with unparalleled ease of use and the best software package on the market, all at a lower suggested retail price than any serious competitor. Similarly, its bigger 60GB brother and black-bodied U2 clone are more affordable than ever before, while continuing to possess all of the key features that made them stand out at their October 2004 introductions. Owners of black-and-white-screened iPods may complain, yet there’s little doubt that they’d quickly upgrade if given the right incentive. The reasons for this are obvious: the new iPod’s color screen is not only useful for photos and album artwork, but makes typical reading of its menus and other text considerably easier - and visually more pleasant - than on last year’s iPod.

Last October, we said that “there’s little doubt once you’ve used the iPod photo that its new screen and interface will be in virtually every full-sized iPod Apple sells two or three years from now.” Frankly, we never expected that Apple would be a more than a year ahead of that curve, and that competitors such as Sony would be focusing most of their recent efforts on black-and-white hardware. By switching across the board to superior color displays, offering last year’s great storage capacities and user interface experiences, and polishing most of the iPod photo’s rough edges, Apple has redefined what consumers should expect from a $299 digital music player, and very much earned our high recommendation.

With all of that said, there is certainly still room for improvement. iLounge readers continue to ask for a variety of new features that could further enhance the iPod experience, ranging from an integrated FM tuner to crossfaded playback, customizable equalizers, and even better batteries. While none of these features is today a necessity, future iPods would unquestionably be helped by their inclusion - and competitors will unquestionably continue to exploit their absence to mount challenges to Apple’s market dominance. Our flat A grade recognizes the iPod for what it is today: a great value and truly wonderful product, without any serious reservations. Whether the next full-sized iPod merits equal or higher praise will depend very much on what Apple’s competitors can muster before its release, and the wisdom of Apple’s response.

[Editor’s Note: Following publication of this review, Apple Computer clarified that the new color iPods remain part of the fourth-generation family, and as such we have changed “fifth-generation” references in our review to “color fourth-generation.” We thank Apple for providing this clarification.]

My 5g U2 iPod is on its way. Its gonna rock so much. Hey, is the U2 iPod gonna be thicker to? Would it still fit in a 20gb dock?

Oh, by the way. I think you misspelled “all” in one sentence. I didnt see which one.

By Rascal_King on 06.29.05 at 11:31 PM

why is apple abandoning the firewire standard which they helped create. firewire is way better than usb.

By podskater on 06.30.05 at 01:06 AM

Two possibly dumb questions:

Q. Though the new thickness is very small, will I need a new case, or will my 4G 20gb iSkin stretch to fit the new 20gb iPod color screen? It is a very stretchy case, thats why I ask.

Q. I’m assuming that the wall charger is USB 2.0 compatable (whereas I have to use the included firewire cable for my wall charger)?

Either way, i’m certainly going to return the now discontinued 20gb monochrome display that I just bought, and hold on to my store credit and buy a color display when it is in stock locally! Thank you iPodlounge for being the first to let me know about this new lineup!!

By pinkninky on 06.30.05 at 01:24 AM

I don’t think the term 5G is deserved. Taking a 30GB and dropping it to 20GB is not a generation jump. Neither is dropping the price.

Unless there is a big reason you want to call these 5Gs?

By Eriamjh on 06.30.05 at 03:24 AM

Can anyone report as to whether this iPod has the audio quality issues that the *old* iPod photo’s suffered? In particular the iPp’s were said to have difficulty with high-fidelity works such as piano solos or similar.

I’m in the market for a new iPod, but not if they’ve still got these audio issues. If they do, then Apple has just killed off the only decent-sounding, full-sized iPod - the 4G.

By jamesd on 06.30.05 at 03:56 AM

The comment on case compatiblity is misleading. I know that for people with 20g 4g Vaja cases, they’ll need to buy a new case to fit a “5g” 20g iPod. But Vaja cases are handmade to fit. I would think many other cases will still fit the 20g just fine, if not make for a tighter fit.

By Morvran on 06.30.05 at 04:04 AM

I just don`t get why iPodLounge is calling these a 5G.
All the people i know agree this is NOT a 5G we’ve all been waiting for.

I think it only confuses people.

I`m still waiting for 5G to replace my good old 15gig 3G.

By Unbeliever on 06.30.05 at 06:01 AM

After a firmware upgrade my photo 60 is exactly the same as the “new” model. IMO, the “5G” moniker is both unjustified and undesirable.

By Spad on 06.30.05 at 08:05 AM

I think they address this as 5G (I consider this 5G) because it’s a change in some aspect of the normal iPod-- the 2G and 4G were mainly only changes in the wheel, and this one is a change in the screen.

By anonms on 06.30.05 at 08:16 AM

is there any reason for me to return my newly bought ipod 30 gb photo as i bought it a week ago is there any reason that i should get the new 20 or 60 instead cause aparently the 20 gb is the same as the 30 in terms of bulk but 30 ofcourse is bigger but is there a better firm ware update or anything big that i should consider changing my ipod

plz reply asap as times running out thanks

By amad on 06.30.05 at 09:23 AM

It is too bad that Apple took away the ability of Smart Playlists to Live Update on the Ipod without resyncing to Itunes.

Owners or 3G Ipods now have more capabilities and features than 4G Ipod owners. This latest firmware upgrade removed this valuable feature from all 4G Ipods, and I am sure it is also disabled on the new Color Pods as well.

This feature used to allow songs to be automatically removed from a playlist based on play date or play count once you played them, and was the only way you could manage a playlist so you did not hear the same song twice.

It is a shame that Apple is taking usefull features away. It is, after all, an MP3 Player, and managing and playing music and playlists should be the most important function of it.

By BuzzardBait on 06.30.05 at 09:40 AM

I just ordered a 60 gig IPod Photo from Circuit city and they have it listed as “IPod (60GB)
Part Number: M9830LL/A”. This is the same as the new 5th Gen on the Apple site.

I am hoping that I am getting the 5th Gen as opposed to the 4th gen. Can anyone clarify?

By throwrocks on 06.30.05 at 09:52 AM

Pinkninky: Because of the added 0.06” thickness of the new 20GB iPod, the best fitting case will be one made for the now discontinued 30GB iPod photo, rather than the previous generation 20GB iPod. Silicone cases for the 20GB iPod will stretch to fit, but alignment of the holes will not necessarily be perfect. Also, the included power adapter is a USB adapter, and will work with the included USB cable.

Amad: Keep your 30.

Regarding the “5G” designation: this is the fifth distinct product to be called “iPod.” Don’t worry or get too worked up over this - Apple is not going to stop making new (and more revolutionary) iPod hardware, but this name change strongly suggests that whatever comes next will be the “iPod [xxxxx],” not the “iPod.”

By Jeremy Horwitz on 06.30.05 at 10:32 AM

I agree with other users that this may not be deemed a “Gen 5 iPod”. Sure, they added a color screen, made it thicker, and added battery life, so maby it does deserve the title. We could also call it “Gen 4C” for Generation 4 Color.

Now that I think about it, this is a redesign of the gen 4, and is much different.

By P4ipod on 06.30.05 at 10:44 AM

I realize this question may become annoying within the next 14 days, but any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My younger sister and I bought 20GB ipods from Circuit City within the last 14 days (we have until Sunday, July 3rd to return them). Now that the new “5G” ipods have been announced, i’m having a small bit of buyer’s remorse.

My question is, objectively speaking, is the increased battery life in the new “5G” substantial enough to warrant a return of a recently purchased 4G?

We’re not really concerned with the color screen as we just want it for music. Also, I’m bearing in mind that the new ipod is slightly thicker. Plus, I should point out that Circuit City gave each of us $30.00 gift cards when we bought them, which ultimately means we bought them at $270.00, as opposed to “5G” cost of $300.00 (I’m assuming they’re not offering same promotion for the new ipods).

In the end, I really just want to run this by my sister before Sunday to see what she wants to do. $300 to her means a whole lot more than it does to me, and I just want to make sure she gets a good deal. Again, any advice will be appreciated.

By newipod05 on 06.30.05 at 11:15 AM

Is the screen the same on these as it is on the first iPod photos? I have one of the older ones on order.

By klwdallas on 06.30.05 at 11:25 AM

5th gen my arse! these are stil 4th gen im my eyes. i bought my 4th gen 20 gig about 10 months ago and i feel the use i have got out of it outweighs the benefits of a the coula screen but i feel for people who bought one a few months ago, especially those with their names engraved on them

By craigowen89 on 06.30.05 at 12:23 PM

newipod05, you should just keep the ipods you have since you are not concerned with color screen. Go to circuit city and get a price match as they are now selling your 4g ipods for 269.00 (your bonus gift card has nothing to do with the price you paid).
So after the price match you will have new ipods for for a total of 239.00!

By dukka on 06.30.05 at 01:41 PM

the “big reason” for calling these 5G is the price drop + addition of a color screen. any questions?

By the_commanche on 06.30.05 at 02:12 PM

Well if you go that route the_commanche, then a simple price drop should mark a whole new gen, no?

Since iPod Photo was the same as these 20/60 so-called 5G. Same battery life, sam screen, same interface.

I’m still waiting for a real 5G. iPL can call these whatever they want.

By Unbeliever on 06.30.05 at 02:26 PM

I think the real reason it’s being called the 5g is because it seems to be all apple is gonna release this year in terms of new full fledged ipods, I think that all colour screen ipods(original 30/40/60 photos) can now be deemed 5g ipods, people were never sure but this seems to be it, it was just a long transition into a new generation.

By Enigma on 06.30.05 at 02:44 PM

As far as cases go, all of Speck’s cases should still fit.

By anonms on 06.30.05 at 09:11 PM

How did you test the battery life ? Switch the damn thing on and just look at it for 17 hours ? Listen to the same track continuously for 17 hours ? Details please....

By Karl Hungus on 07.01.05 at 12:17 AM

Am I the only one here who thinks that going from a 30GB to a 20GB model, charging basically the same price and calling it an upgrade is questionable?

Also your statement about compatibility leaves out an important fact. People should know that the 60GB Ipod has the poorest 3rd party support of all ipods. You will greatly limit the amount of cases you can buy, forget about armsbands, and watch out for accessories with a dock. If there is one thing I regret about my 60GB model its the lack of compatibility that it has.

And finally I think you conclusion was more about looking for something/anything positive to say than anything else. I realize this is a site devoted to marketing/promoting/celebrating Ipods, but the price drop for the 60GB model is the only thing of note IMHO. The 20GB model going color is more about losing a thinner lighter model and 10GB vs how much “better” it now is. If I didn’t need the space I’d ditch my 60GB Ipod Photo for for an “older” 20GB 4G in a heartbeat.

By mesostinky on 07.01.05 at 06:01 AM

quick question, is there a physcial weight or width difference in the 20GB and 30GB colored screened ipods?

By BlueSIm on 07.01.05 at 06:20 AM

Wow. I ‘m glad I bought the 30 gig Photo back in March. I’m half way or less through ripping my CD’s (most at 160, a very few higher or lossless), I’m keeping a new podcast novel, “Earthcore” (decent story, entetaining) on board, and I have a couple hundred ipod/tv format photos on board. I’m up to about 10 gigs. I can see most of 30 gigs getting used up by year’s end, definitely more than 20 gigs. Sure I could not store everything on my ipod, but it makes management easier if I just automaticly update, and it’s not like the extra data weighs more… Personally, 30 gigs is the right size.

By MotoTrojan on 07.01.05 at 06:57 AM

Karl (great Lebowski reference): Our recent battery tests always use the same formula, which we’ve detailed in past articles - iPod set on 50% volume level, standard earbuds attached, randomized (shuffle songs) playback chosen on large library of songs with varying bitrates and lengths, no equalizers turned on, very minimal use of backlight (when unit turns on, has settings applied). It’s essentially a test of maximum continuous playtime.

Meso: “Questionable” is a fair word, but it doesn’t change the fact that today’s “iPods” are significantly better than last year’s, both in features and in value. It’s a measure of the relentless advancement of the family that some people would today roll their eyes at a $399, color 60GB iPod when only last year Apple was selling a black-and-white 40GB iPod at the same price. Ditto on today’s $299 iPod. Premium features at an affordable price. That’s a win for consumers.

Regarding the 60GB iPod, “greatly limit” is a fairly significant overstatement. We’ve tested the majority of cases that have been released for the various iPods, and very few companies have passed on supporting the 60GB model. The bigger question - and one that has dogged all full-sized iPods since the release of the iPod mini, and the iPod shuffle - is whether people really want to exercise wearing something with the footprint of any larger iPod.

Also, we’re not a site devoted to marketing iPods. If we thought that these iPods were unimpressive, we’d say so.

Blue: They’re the same.

By Jeremy Horwitz on 07.01.05 at 08:43 AM

Just to be clear: the 20 (regular and U2) is still thinner than the 60 (and 30) models.

Too bad it’s slightly thicker than the old 20, but not much--and you get extra battery life.

Plus there’s always the Mini… can’t wait for a color screen in that.

By Nagromme on 07.01.05 at 10:04 AM

If we can agree that the iPod photo was not included in the generations of the iPod, as the shuffle, and mini aren’t either, then the new iPod is a generation ahead of the 4G monochromatic iPod, and therefore would be 5G.

I know that Apple has said that it is still a 4G iPod, but I disagree.

By Impulse29 on 07.01.05 at 12:52 PM

Impulse,

If Apple considers their latest products still part of the 4G model, who is anyone to argue with that?

Manufacturers are constantly updating and upgrading their products, and the generation type still remains intact. Automobiles are the most obvious example. Cars are constantly getting upgades, some quite significant, and yet the manufacturer still considers them the same generation design. Apple is certainly entitled to do the same (which BTW do I agree with).

By flatline response on 07.01.05 at 03:39 PM

Well as much as I don’t want to argue, I think that adding the photo ability to the standard iPod, which doesn’t only mean changing the screen to colour, but also the port, chips, and the dock. If adding a touchwheel to the iPod was enough for G1 to G2, then I think that making another line of iPod, the photo, the normal iPod, it should be a new generation.

Analogies can be helpful, but only in the same context. Although Apple and car manufacturers both make products, they are in totally different fields. iPod’s upgrades are in the form of firmware upgrades which do not mean a new generation.

Would you be implying that Apple would have to change the button layout/ button functions to be a new generation (as it has been for all previous iPods)?

By Impulse29 on 07.01.05 at 04:28 PM

Why this got an A and the 30G photo got an A- I don’t know. Personally, I’d rather pay an extra $50 Aus to get 10Gig more and have it a tiny bit thicker then have a 20G.

I agree with MotoTrojan, 30g is the right size. Also note that in australia, the “new” 20g has bumped the price up $30 to AU$449 where 1 month ago, AU$499 would have got you an extra 10Gig.

I’m just happy I’ve got my 30G photo, my iPod of choice of any iPod to date.

By Jibbons on 07.01.05 at 07:28 PM

Impluse29, I think Apple will just change the design but retain the wheel-- it’s an excellent design and it doesn’t really need any changing.

By anonms on 07.01.05 at 09:37 PM

STOP CALLING THEM 5G’s!!!

By JeremytheIndian on 07.02.05 at 03:26 PM

i love this new upgrade. but as soon as the real 5g comes out… who knows what will happen to these? will apple discontinue this once the 5g comes out this year?

By zerophase on 07.02.05 at 04:02 PM

I think apple is going to pull four new ones for us on the 5G debut. I think apple will…

1. give us iTunes 5,
2. I heard apple placed a bunch of orders of 80GB drives (double platter) and the 40gb and the 60gb (will be single plater) making it the size of the 20GB, so perhaps the 5G iPod (XXSomthingXX) will be a 80GB,
3. I think a 3G 8GB mini (color screen maybe)
4. 2G Shuffle with LCD in 2GB and 4GB

I sure wish apple would make a PDA… But pretty much I think apple is doing a pricing game for a reason I have a feeling that apple is doing the 20BG for $299/ 60GB $399 so people will say “hey for $100 more I can triple my size “ thus Dumping the old dual plater 60GB and for the new 5g Apple will give us a slim 40GB/60GB and add the 80GB

I noticed this when the iPhoto was offered in a 30GB. My assumtion was that apple had a bunch of 30GB drives from the rare 3G 30GB that didn’t sell as much

Plus I hope that for the %G the battery is 20hrs or more. my Ipod moves with me alot, from school to the car to work and back it looks at 2 to 3 full charges a day just to stay juiced up with me.

By bmxing85 on 07.02.05 at 09:55 PM

P.S. Apple please Kill the U2 model. it was cool but it got old (fast). Perhaps offer a artist ed. for the mini too.
P.P.S. Just to throw it out there, Perhaps with the Gorillaz ad, you could of done a “Feel Good IncPod” or something new like that, I would of bought the ipod with some Gorillaz stuffon it, since the Freak’n Demon Days CD won’t rip in iTunes, or even open on my computer for that matter (What is up with that? Wasted $15 on a useless piece of plastic)

By bmxing85 on 07.02.05 at 10:06 PM

why is apple abandoning the firewire standard which they helped create. firewire is way better than usb.

By podskater on 06.30.05 at 02:06 AM

APple ain’t abandoning it. Firewire cables bought from Apple still work fine. 98% of iPod owners are PC users, who don’t have a clue about Firewire, and wouldn’t use their FW cable.

YOU CAN STILL BUY A FIREWIRE CABLE!

By iPod Dance on 07.02.05 at 10:42 PM

“Analogies can be helpful, but only in the same context. Although Apple and car manufacturers both make products, they are in totally different fields. iPod’s upgrades are in the form of firmware upgrades which do not mean a new generation.”

Impulse,

However different, they both are still consumer products; that’s the context. Both can and do encounter modifications that summarily change the performance of each product over its entire lifespan cycle. In the case of the 4G, how should adding a color screen and picture capabilities not be any different than adding a turbocharger or boring out the cylinder displacement for, say, a Type 996 Porsche 911 (conveniently forgetting that we are currently in the age of the Type 997).

Both improve the usability/performance of the product over the lesser/earlier siblings of the respective product, yet as different as the original 4G is from a color 4G, they can easily be seen as the same design generation/model, just in the same way as a late run GT3 was to the first 1998 911, since to Porsche and us followers they’re still both Type 996 models even though they perform, look and even DRIVE very differently.

As for what I would deem significant enough of a change to move on to another generation/model labeling for an iPod: first of all, it’s not MY call. But if I WERE to be the one to decide, I’d say it had to be a fundamental change in the execution and function of the iPod to warrant such distinction. Monochrome to color and JPG displays ain’t it to me; that to me is an upgrade improvement, not some fundamental difference in how I use the iPod, especially given that the original iPod Photo was previously considered as a 4G derivative.

But wired to wireless, or audio to audio+video, or something that profound in changing the nature of the iPod...THAT I would consider profound enough to warrant a change. As for revising the outside appearance: that to me is not as important in determining a model change as it often is to others, but if Apple were to beef up that cheapo, noise-making headphone jack on the 4G (at least it is on my 40GB with headphone cords using a metal base to their plugs), I MIGHT consider that ALONE worthy enough for a generation change. (Listening, Apple?). Regardless, as I said before it’s not for me or even you to say anyways.

And besides, regardless of any anologies you deem inappropriate, Apple and their product planners still have already spoken: 4G the new photos are.

By flatline response on 07.03.05 at 12:53 AM

“is there any reason for me to return my newly bought ipod 30 gb photo as i bought it a week ago is there any reason that i should get the new 20 or 60 instead cause aparently the 20 gb is the same as the 30 in terms of bulk but 30 ofcourse is bigger but is there a better firm ware update or anything big that i should consider changing my ipod

plz reply asap as times running out thanks
By amad on 06.30.05 at 09:23 AM”

There is no need to exchange from a 30gb to a 20gb. u just need to go to apple.com/ipod and look for the new update v.1.2 . this update will make it the same as the new ipod color 20gb by adding the new features such as Podcast. aside from that, there is nothing new about the new color iPods. I have a 30gb iPod Photo, perfect size, but the new ipods take away from the fact that u can say u have a ipod photo vs the person who had the black and white ipod. o well.

By Striker_Fox on 07.03.05 at 11:14 AM

*whimpers at the thought of a fairly new ipod being rendered obsolete*

By punkrockavocado on 07.03.05 at 12:11 PM

I just got my 20 gig color. It is sweet. I now know what you all have been raving about with the Photo.

By mrjwhit on 07.09.05 at 01:37 PM

Someone asked earlier regarding the audio quality of the ipod. I bought the 4g 30gb ipod photo and used some classical music in ALC and 192 AAC and there is a slight difference in quality if you listen on a high end system. I did not hear any artifacts on either. ALC playback was smooth (I previously bought a early 4g 20 gb ipod which used to skip through ALC files - thus it was returned) it seems that apple fixed this problem. I use it with the Kenwood IP-500 ipod interface in the car - Its an impressive combo with great sound quality, allowing you to control everything from the head unit. For the person asking about classical music or solo piano, make sure you rip from original CDs not CDRs. I did not hear any difference between LAME VBR 192 / iTunes 192 highest / or 192 AAC.

By Nadoor on 07.11.05 at 04:47 AM

My 4G b/w iPod’s battery is acting up and i really consider sending it to Apple to get a replacement/ battery change. But I’m unsure if they will send me the new one with a color screen or an old b/w one. I really like the b/w one, simply because it’s thinner.

So, does anyone know if I get a color one or b/w one?

By Prismatic on 07.11.05 at 11:45 AM

APPLE, BRING BACK THE 30GB iPOD!!!
I OWN 30GB 4G PHOTO AND IT’S THE BEST.
I WANT TO BUY IT FOR MY FRIENDS BUT THE CLUBMAC FREE ENGRAVING AND THE OVER CHARGED SHIPPING ISN’T SOMETHING THAT WAS IN MY MIND.
I PURCHASED MINE FOR 317 WITH EDUCATIONAL SAVING.(CHEAPEST DEAL I FOUND EVERYWHERE - PUT IN ANY SCHOOL NAME THEN YOU ARE ELIGIABLE)
AND NEW 20GB IS ONLY .06mm THINNER AND AROUND 270 ON APPLE STORE (W/ ED. SAVING) NOT THAT FAR FROM THE PRICE I PAID FOR 30. ANYONE DON’T MIND HAVING EXTRA THICKNESS ON YOU iPOD, GO FOR 60GB. WHY NOT HAVE MORE SPACE WITH MUCH LESS THAN WHAT THEY USED TO OFFER. FOR THE REST, CONSIDER CLUBMAC FOR 30GB OR THE APPLE STORE FOR 20GB ( I WAS VERY DISSAPPOINTED WHEN I MADE THIS PURCHASE FOR MY SISTER B-DAY PRESENT ). ONLY IF I MADE THE PURCHASE A WEEK EARLIER.

By le_petit_prince on 07.13.05 at 01:56 PM

i just got my 20gb color yesterday and i’m loving it completely right now… i had an old 40gb and was insanely jealous when the 30gb photos came out because i’ll be taking a trip overseas with a digital camera and i dont have a large memory card in it. taking my laptop would have been a disaster waiting to happen, so as soon as i saw apple integrated the color screen and photo abilities into the new generations, i scouped one up… i only have about 9gb of music, so storage space is definitely far from being a problem. i’m pretty picky when it comes to the music i’ll keep and listen to, so 20gb will last an unreasonably long amount of time. even if i take 1000 pictures on my trip, i’d still have room to tote around lots of extra files in disk mode…

for a $50 savings over the 30gb model, i am extremely happy with the value of the 20gb. for a college kid, that $50 goes a long way (esp. in the bars)

By Apoc112 on 07.14.05 at 06:48 AM

okay, i dont know if this is true (and i highly doubt) but i heard that you can trade in your fourth generation ipod for a new photo...is this true or am i just kidding...please comment back!

By tracy xx on 07.15.05 at 07:02 PM

tracy xx

I just got back from my local Apple store today with my 3rd iPod in less than a year. I don’t know if it’s bad luck or what. I asked if I could trade, and the tech said no. If you really wanted to trade, he suggested selling the b&w iPod on eBay and using what you get for it to buy the new one.

Since this one I picked up today is brand spanking new, not even turned on, not even out of it’s plastic pajama top, I’m going to try to sell it, as well as the AppleCare warranty.

Now there’s something. I get a 3rd iPod, and the warranty runs out on the first one, which died in October. Don’t you think that I should be able to start a new warranty on this one, since it’s freakin’ new? Essentially, I would have had a brand new iPod with a 6 day warranty. Bunch of junk.

Enough of my ranting. How much does this forum think I can get for my iPod?

By alan.hopper on 07.16.05 at 12:49 AM

As described at another blog, the 60GB “with color” sounds like a great substitute for my ibook to store photos on a trip. But please clarify, will the new 60gb use a “dock to firewire 400” cable to power the new ipod from an old firewire ac adapter? And will it sync to my ibook via a firewire to dock cable? I have the cable. (Apple tech support says yes, but your review casts doubt.)

By djmjr on 07.18.05 at 01:33 PM

any mention of the audio defect present in high picthed piano tracks when using low impedance earphones? or is that just glossed over in all the praise?

By yw_217 on 07.19.05 at 02:36 PM

ipod dance: i tend to disagree, i work in a computer shop and sell PC’s on a daily basis.

all our new PC’s have FireWire capability and the users know what it is,

the fact of the matter is that there are still tons of people without firewire, alot of laptops also don’t have it. usb is in anything and everything these days, oh no! its an intel standard too, funny that

By linux_insidev2 on 07.21.05 at 12:57 AM

MusicMagic Mixer software review

2005-07-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

MusicMagic Mixer software review
Introduction:

Even though there are dozens of options when it comes to music software, most are simply derivations on popular programs like iTunes and Winamp. Still, every once in a while something unique pops up that is worth checking out; case in point, MusicMagic Mixer by Predixis, a piece of software that analyzes individual music tracks and then creates dynamic playlists based on their attributes.

The Fingerprinting:

As opposed to rule-based playlists (“smart playlists” in iTunes, “automatic playlists” in Windows Media Player 10), which rely exclusively on ID3 tags, MusicMagic Mixer (hereafter referred to as MMM) actually scans each song and obtains a ‘digital fingerprint’ of the track (it recognizes properties like what instruments being used, speed and style, etc). It must be noted that it takes some time for MMM to fingerprint each file, around 1-3 minutes, so you’ll likely want to let the program analyze your library overnight. Once the lengthy process is complete, setting up a playlist based on these fingerprints is easy as cake. Simply selecting an artist, album, or song, and hitting ‘Mix’ will create a playlist based on the attributes of said selection(s). The options menu lets you adjust the size of your mix (by # of tracks, total time, or total megabytes), and alter variety and artist style as well.

Once your playlist is created, you can shuffle it to your liking, and save it as a .m3u file, meaning it is compatible with most DAP's and media players.

All these options are nice, but of course the million dollar question is, how well does this fingerprinting feature work? How about a few tests…

Test #1: Acoustic guitar/piano

For the first test I created a playlist based on the fingerprint of ‘The Elements’ by Greg Graffin, a tune that contains no more than vocals, a piano line, and an acoustic guitar accompaniment. Naturally, I was expecting the playlist to contain songs that used acoustic guitars and/or pianos. And it did. By using those two instruments for a benchmark in similarity, I judged that about 95% of the songs in the playlist featured both instruments and sounded close as a whole (some Beatles and Third Eye Blind tunes with the same instrumentation were among the songs in the playlist).

Test #2: Brass group

This test created a mix around a track entitled ‘3rd Man Theme’ from Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, an ensemble that includes several trumpets and trombone, along with the rhythm section. The resulting playlist included mostly similar sounding songs, including some more Herb Alpert tunes, some brass quintet pieces, and impressively enough a number of songs using synthesized brass instruments rather than real ones. This test was about 95% accurate like the first one, with only the occasionally odd unrelated rock song in the mix.

Test #3: ‘Tagless’ music

After casually creating a half dozen playlists and being reasonably impressed, I still wondered how much of the playlist selection in MMM was actually based on the fingerprint, rather than some sneaky sorting using ID3 tags. I decided to create a playlist around a grungy, punk rock jam, ‘Born to Lose’ by the Bouncing Souls, an untagged file as it was. Though not as accurate as the first two tests, about 80% of the songs chosen were of the same genre and sound as ‘Born to Lose.’ This definitely convinced me of the legitimacy of Predixis' fingerprinting feature.

After experimenting with numerous methods for mixes, I’ve come to the conclusion that this fingerprinting feature basically works as advertised. It's a neat feature that is great fun to play around with.

The other stuff:

While MMM’s big draw is its analyzing and mixing capabilities, that’s not all it can do. You can also use it to batch edit ID3 tags, and manage music on portable devices (ones that are seen as removable storage drives in Windows). The tagging interface is simple and useful enough, and is similar in function to iTunes and Windows Media Player 10. The device feature (only available on the retail version) itself is pretty straightforward. It works with any USB mass storage device (DAP’s with the feature include iRiver, iAudio, Archos, and more), and when connected MMM displays all songs and .m3u playlists on the device for easy editing of ID3 tags or editing/creating of mixes. Dragging and dropping files from your music library to the player is possible as well, though it’s really just as easy if not easier to use Windows Explorer for that task, so the feature isn’t super necessary. Also, like other management software, you can set MMM to watch a certain folder on your computer for new files so it can automatically import them into its library.

It’s important to know that MusicMagic Mixer will not replace your standard music library software, as it lacks key features like music playback, ripping, and CD burning. There is a ‘play’ button in MMM, but it only opens the selected file(s) in your default media player.

Conclusion:

Predixis’ MusicMagic Mixer is clearly aimed at music fans that spend lots of time creating and editing playlists in programs like iTunes and Winamp. For those folks, MMM may be worth the cost. It's simply, efficient, and unlike smart playlisting, its analysis method doesn't requite perfect ID3 tags to be effective. For the rest though, it just doesn’t offer enough else to choose it over something like iTunes, J.River Media Center, or WMP10. If you’re already satisfied with the software you’re using for music/playlist management, you probably won’t find enough here to justify the cost ($ 30 for the full version).

Pros:
+Simple, clear interface, very stable program
+Cool, innovative fingerprint analysis
+Exports playlists in popular .m3u format
+Supports analyzing/fingerprinting of Mp3,WMA,Ogg and FLAC files

Cons:
-Lacks common features like playback/ripping
-Not enough features to justify cost

Musicmatch Jukebox 10

2005-07-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

Musicmatch Jukebox 10
REVIEW DATE: 12.08.04

Total posts: 6

By Troy Dreier

The new Musicmatch Jukebox 10 (the first release since Yahoo! purchased the company) delivers incremental improvements to an already strong music manager. Whereas Microsoft's Windows Media Player 10 branched out to help you organize all types of media files, MMJ 10 sticks to its knitting, delivering mostly ease-of-use refinements designed to help music lovers better organize and play their collections. The result: While WMP 10 arguably has the edge for casual users (and for those who will use its multimedia capabilities), MMJ 10 is our favorite for music lovers looking for the most robust audio manager.

Unlike WMP 10 and RealPlayer, which aim to help you manage all your digital media, MMJ 10 (which runs only under Windows XP) focuses on audio. It does not aspire to organize and play your entire multimedia library (music, photos, videos); it's trying to be the best music-management solution for serious enthusiasts. And it succeeds, handling enormous music

libraries impressively. Working with a collection that contained more than 100,000 tracks, MMJ 10 was just as responsive as it was with small collections. Organizing your music is easy, with more tagging options (including a full set of ten new tags for classical music). And we love the new drag-and-drop tagging (a feature also found in WMP 10), which lets you change mistagged songs simply by dragging them into the correct folder.

One new feature is the completely revamped AutoDJ tool. With it, you select a few artists to build a playlist around, set the controls for how much variety and how many songs you want, and let the program do the rest. If you subscribe to Musicmatch's fantastic On Demand service, which lets you stream all the music you want (from the service's 800,000-track library) for $7.95 per month ($95.40 per year), the AutoDJ can even include On Demand content. This is a great way to discover new music. Fans of the previous AutoDJ tool, which uses filters to create playlists, will find that it's been improved and is now called AutoDJ Classic.

Other improvements include new library views, a handy tool for managing your playlists, faster CD ripping and burning in the free version (8x burning and 10x ripping are now supported), and an option to filter out explicit lyrics from the online services. There aren't many new features exclusive to the premium version. Jukebox Plus ($19.99) does, however, include a tool for finding duplicate tracks; it also supports custom library views and lets you export your library to a spreadsheet.

But MMJ 10 might not be right for everyone. Some will prefer WMP 10's Explorer-like tree menu to MMJ's drop-down menus. Accessing different views or the various controls is also easier in WMP 10, thanks to the tree menu and a tabbed interface. And while WMP 10 is no replacement for a dedicated photo-management application such as Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0, those with modest photo-organizational needs (or a Portable Media Center to sync with) might prefer to use WMP 10 as their sole app. Also, WMP 10 users can easily shop from MSN Music and Napster within the player, while MMJ 10 users can choose only Musicmatch's store from within the player.

Still, MMJ 10 makes an already good jukebox even better. It has the most depth in music organization of any jukebox out there. If all you want is a way to organize and play music, you'll be very pleased.

Member Ratings

bostmaguy
July 18, 2005

Member rating:

The "editors" of PC Mag must be out to lunch. Not only have I, a technically savvy geek, found the interface complicated and overwhelming, when iTunes for Windows was made available, I felt like I entered Valhalla. It even prompted me to purchase a Mac for home and roll out Macs to "test" departments at work. Now everyone wants to be in a test group. Well, testing ends shortly and we will be doing a systemwide rollout based on my recommendations. All of this happened because I was looking for a better way to manage my music, and the waterfall effect kicked in.

tgalang
July 12, 2005

Member rating:

Based on Troy's Dreier article, I decided to purchase Musicmatch 10.0 Plus for $19.95. It was money poorly spent. They claim to only have technical support for Plus users, yet they have no phone number, do not reply to emails (I'm still waiting for two responses from emails sent 6/27 and 6/29 - it's 7/12 right now), and their online help is full of errors. They also refused to refund downloaded music in the following two situations: I had an error downloading three songs ($0.99 each) and for two and a half weeks they wouldn't download. I went to Real and purchased the songs there. After I debugged the problem myself (no help from Musicmatch) when I wanted to download more songs, these old songs finally downloaded. Their billing department couldn't care less that I had purchased them from Real, or that I had to wait 2-1/2 weeks to get the songs. They just wanted their $3. Two other songs that I downloaded will not burn to a CD with the error "No burn rights". Even though I can't get any technical support to fix this, the billing department will not refund. I tried to give them the logic that I had just purchased a $230 20 gig MP3 player, that I have spent around $50 in the last six months on their site, and it didn't make sense to piss me off over $5 of worthless music. They could care less. I plan on disputing the transactions on my credit card (including the cost of Plus since they aren't offering the promised technical support) since this may be my only recourse. Troy, take a look at their online help. Type in a key word (such as "rights") to search their knowledge base, and note that you get nothing close to anything to do with "rights", and every article synopsis is identical (and wrong). No company like this should ever be a PC Magazine Editors Choice.

zdphotog
June 14, 2005

Member rating:

I have contacted them by email Never get any responses Called on the telephone All I got was answering machines Support is non existant. I do not see where they get such a high rating from magazines since there is no support for this product!!

xaris777
May 9, 2005

Member rating:

I challenge anyone to get anything but an autoresponder from customer support. Each time you reinstall Windows on a machine Musicmatch thinks it is a different machine. You can only play purchased music on 5 Machines. Reinstall your operating system the 6th time and you lose the right to listen to your music. the web sight says to go to one of the old machines and deactivate it in order to free up an activation. Of course the old machines don't exist to deactivate. In that case the FAQ sight says to contact customer support. Yea Right. I have tried repeatedly and am still waithing

rollintraver
February 20, 2005

Member rating:

I upgraded from MMJB9 to the new version 10, and the auto song detect option no longer works at all, and the on-line technical support is not helpful. Recording from non-cd sources is one of the main reasons for me to use MMJB, in fact I typically import the results into iTunes because it is a more intuitive interface.

iTunes 4.9 with Podcasting

2005-07-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

iTunes 4.9 with Podcasting
REVIEW DATE: 07.18.05

Company: Apple Computer, Inc., www.apple.com

Price: Free

By Troy Dreier

Podcasting—the ability to time-shift and download your favorite radio programs (NPR has been a pioneer here) and subscribe to a multitude of homegrown audioblogs over the Internet—has, despite a grab bag of free tools, inconsistent feed-management styles, and a hodgepodge of largely disparate content, grown rapidly over the last 12 months. Now Apple gives podcasting a huge nudge into the mainstream by blending innovative podcast download and management features into the latest release of its widely distributed iTunes music download and management software. This integration is a boon for podcast consumers who, up to now, had to choose from a number of adroit, yet standalone, podcast-download software options, including iPodder and PodderX. But integration is not the only reason we liked this iTunes update. Apple also makes a couple of smart choices, both on the client application and the iTunes music store, that will help users find and manage podcasts.

To help people discover podcasts, Apple has created a podcast directory that can be accessed from the iTunes Music Store, so that users can search by browsing through categorized lists. While Apple's directory features content from big-name providers like Disney and National Public Radio, the bulk is from the kind of small-time do-it-yourselfers who first built up podcasting. The directory is light years ahead of what you'll find with other podcasting tools, which like iPodder typically offer text-only lists to sort through.

Apple's directory had 3,000 podcasts at launch. While some programs were miscategorized and others' descriptions were sketchy, Apple appears to be polishing the area rapidly. New podcasters can submit their shows via a link on the directory. Apple only links to the podcast files; it does not host them. A company representative said Apple will not link to pornographic or illegal content, and shows with adult content will be marked with an "Explicit" label. (While there's no written rule, we doubt you'll see any Macintosh-secrets podcasts listed.)

To receive a podcast, simply click the Subscribe button on the show's directory page, and it will download to your iTunes library. All podcasts are currently free. Apple has built helpful podcast controls into iTunes that let you set how many episodes of each podcasts you'd like to have and how often it should look for new content. It even deletes old ones automatically, a feature we wish competitors would replicate. We were not happy to discover that these settings apply to all podcasts universally. It's a choice that could frustrate power users who want all the episodes of some podcasts and only the current one of others. Some competing podcasting utilities like NetNewsWires, which handles podcast management and more, offer more granular control than iTunes—letting you set preferences for each show individually—and can pass files automatically to iTunes or other music organizers.

Subscriptions are listed in a new podcast directory in your iTunes library, and new content is helpfully marked with a blue circle. A title graphic and program description downloads with most podcast streams. Apple makes it easy to download old episodes; simply click the triangle icon to the left of each podcast subscription to see a list of previous episodes.

Apple also built a little something for podcast authors: It has created a useful and unique chapter feature, which podcasters can use by downloading Apple's Chapter Tool beta software. With it, online broadcasters can create chapters within a podcast so that listeners can quickly jump to a different point. These chapters are displayed in a pull-down menu at the top of iTunes. Few podcasts use the feature currently, but you can see it on the iTunes New Music Tuesday and Podfinder podcasts.

We experienced problems downloading some popular podcasts, such as the Al Franken Show and Wired News, often getting an error instead of the correct file. An Apple rep suggested that these programs might suddenly be too popular for the host servers, which could turn off after a certain amount of downloading. Since Apple doesn't host any of the actual podcast files, it's safe to assume that the content servers are showing some strain as iTunes' large installed base of users discovers podcasts and begins downloading in previously unseen numbers.

Transferring podcasts to an iPod is simple, as iTunes' controls let you set exactly which podcasts you want to transfer. After users update their iPod's software (www.apple.com/ipod/download/) they'll see all their podcasts listed in a new podcast folder. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell which podcasts are new on an iPod. This is an issue regardless of which podcast-management software you use, though we do wish Apple had addressed it with its own podcast tools.

Apple has created an innovative podcast download and management solution that easily outstrips its competitors in visibility, and adds some much-needed innovation to boot. The subscription controls are somewhat sloppily implemented, but the benefits of an integrated system and the ability to delete older podcast episodes easily outweigh these negatives. We still think Musicmatch Jukebox 10 is overall the better music manager, and it remains our Editors' Choice, with its powerful user-pleasing features, but iTunes is significantly improved with this release.

MEMBER RATINGS

Rate it Yourself

sehested

Member rating:

July 19, 2005

I'm not going to write a full review - There are pleanty of those around - but let me try and justify my personal rating. Before going with iTunes I was a happy user of MusicMatch Plus. However the interface for the portable player I had at the time was a bit cumbersome and I realised that to get the ease of use I wanted I would need iPod and iTunes. Having made the switch I never looked back. iTunes is more intuitive and pleasant to use. Its integration with the iPod is second to none. I enjoy the integration with iTMS which I find very pleasing to browse for new music. The ability to control iTunes via its COM interface allows me to write small scripts for special managing tasks of my music library. Such as joggling files for listening tests, Updating tag information, or Adding art work. I beleive this feature is quite unique to iTunes and have not seen anything like it in neither WMP nor MMJB. Although there are always things that could be improved I don't hesitate to give iTunes a five star rating as the best music manager around.

Anapod Explorer

2005-05-14T23:07:00.000-07:00

Anapod Explorer

By Ian Betteridge
September 30, 2004

Be the first to comment on this article

Any iPod or iPod mini; Windows 98SE or later.

Editor Rating:

iTunes is a great piece of software for playing MP3's, with one of the most accessible interfaces built, but it's not for everyone. On Windows in particular, it looks somewhat out of place, and Apple's efforts to turn iTunes into a truly Windows-style application have been minimal at best. And, of course, if iTunes isn't your preferred MP3 player, you're simply going to be out of luck when it comes to using the iPod.

Enter Anapod Explorer, which is the nicest and most comprehensive piece of Windows software for getting the most out of the iPod that we've yet seen. Anapod integrates with Windows Explorer, allowing you to directly drag and drop audio files on to the iPod from any folder on the PC. Uniquely, it supports conversion of audio files from formats that the iPod doesn't understand – such as Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, or unprotected WMA – into MP3, so you don't have to worry about what format your music is in.

However, copying doesn't have to be a manual process. Anapod's SpeedSync feature allows you to designate any number of folders as being synchronised to the iPod, so that all the files within them are transferred over whenever the iPod is connected to your PC. What's more, Anapod supports creating play lists directly within Windows Explorer, simply dragging tracks into and out of the play list at will. If you have pre-existing play lists created in any of the popular formats by applications such as WinAmp, you can also just drag the play list directly on to the iPod, and have all the tracks on it automatically downloaded. Of course, this is a two-way process: drag a play list from your iPod to the PC, and Anapod creates a new folder and copies all the tracks in that play list to the PC.

And Anapod Explorer does more than music, too: you can copy over all your contacts from Outlook with a single click, as well as creating iPod notes directly by typing on your PC. There are some other nice features too, which allow you to play the music on your iPod across a network, from any machine which supports MP3 streamed over HTTP, even allowing you to play your music through a web browser.

Our only problem with Anapod Explorer came when occassionally it would refuse to recognize the iPod. However, within less than a week the software was patched to fix this issue - and with the product being patched on average every two weeks, bugs tend not to last for long.

Overall, if you're using an iPod with Windows and you want to do more than iTunes is capable of, or you simply want the freedom to use your iPod in a different way, then Anapod Explorer is for you. Had this been $50, we would have thought it was decent value: at $25, it should be an essential purchase for anyone who can't get their head about the way that iTunes works, or just wants more flexibility when using their iPod.

Tekkeon myPower Battery Pack

2005-05-14T22:49:00.000-07:00

Tekkeon myPower Battery Pack

Pros: A solid external battery for Dock Connecting iPods, includes USB and FireWire ports for data docking, as well as a line-out port for clean audio.

Cons: Underperforms comparably priced (expensive) iPod batteries by a fair margin; dock substitute is fine on-the-go, but can’t be used when iPod is standing up.

Company: Tekkeon

Website: www.Tekkeon.com

Model: myPower

Price: $89.95

Compatible: iPod 3G, 4G, iPod mini, iPod photo

Jeremy Horwitz
11.08.04

Sometimes good products are overshadowed by similar competitors. But for a couple of small but interesting twists, such would have been the case for new iPod accessory maker Tekkeon’s myPower ($89.00), a white plastic external battery for iPods that competes directly with cheaper products from Belkin and slightly more expensive ones from Battery Technology Incorporated. While not identical to BTI’s stellar The iPod Battery and its strong sequel The iPod Battery ii, Tekkeon’s myPower is similar enough for most people’s purposes to merit direct comparisons.

Design

At a distance, it would be easy to confuse myPower with BTI’s The iPod Battery ii ($99.95). Both iPod external batteries strap relatively thin backpacks onto Dock Connecting iPods, adding over a day of additional battery life as demarked with a four-light power indicator. Each product has a power switch to control the flow of power from battery to iPod, and detachable plastic belt clip and iPod clip pieces. Tekkeon includes two iPod clips (iPod mini/iPod) instead of BTI’s three (iPod mini/3G/4G), and uses soft sizer pads inside its full-sized iPod clip to fit different iPod thicknesses.

Other differences are potential biggies. Rather than spread its power indicators and a “tell me how much power is left” button across the top of its battery like BTI, myPower adds an inch of extra plastic at its bottom and keeps its indicators constantly lit while power is being used. The lights are multicolored, with a single red light indicating that you’re close to the end of myPower’s juice, and three yellow lights to say you’re in the beginning to middle of the discharge cycle. As with BTI’s batteries, the lights aren’t reliable indicators: the fourth light disappears much more quickly than the third and second, and red quickly gives way to no lights - black - although myPower will recharge the right iPods (4G, mini, and Photo, not 3G) and leave them playing past myPower’s no power mark.

The real differences between the batteries are in what’s at the bottom of the inch of plastic: three ports for line out, USB 2.0, and FireWire cables. These ports might be considered odd additions to myPower’s design as a battery, but Tekkeon promotes myPower as an alternative dock, albeit one you can’t simultaneously stand up on its bottom edge while using those ports.

To that end, the company wisely includes white FireWire and USB cables compatible with myPower’s ports, either of which can connect to a computer for data transfers or recharging, while the FireWire cable can also connect to the iPod’s white power adapter to recharge off wall power. (Unlike BTI’s batteries, myPower doesn’t include its own AC power adapter cube, an omission plausibly and acceptably explained by the fact that Apple’s power adapter works fine, and can either charge myPower alone or with an iPod attached.) Though a Dock Connector port on myPower’s back would have more neatly accomplished these features, at least Tekkeon doesn’t force the user to go out and buy cables in order to use their dock features.

The company does, however, note that you’ll need to purchase “optional adapters” to use myPower for yet another purpose - namely recharging mobile phones. Presumably this will be handled through either the FireWire (unlikely) or USB 2.0 (likely) port, and would have been more expensive if Tekkeon had to use Dock Connector parts in every adapter. If Tekkeon sticks to the pricing it’s used on past adapters, you’ll spend an extra $4.95 per adapter. The adapters haven’t been released, and we haven’t tested one, but it’s an intriguing feature nonetheless.

Tekkeon’s choice to include a line-out audio port on myPower’s bottom is similarly interesting, and perhaps the single biggest distinction between myPower and other battery offerings. Because of this port, myPower’s the only battery we’ve seen thus far that can be used while outputting line-quality audio output in your car, though the importance of this feature to a given person will depend on whether he or she has already purchased one of several car chargers that offer iPod charging with line-out audio.

Performance

Because of BTI’s release of The iPod Battery and its sequel, positively recommending the performance of any other external battery is going to be tough from here on out. Tekkeon promised up to 32 hours of extra play time on a 4G iPod, 28 hours on an iPod mini, and 20 hours on a 3G iPod. The myPower is listed as iPod Photo compatible, but Tekkeon doesn’t provide runtime estimates. Since its numbers are based on roughly 20 hours of extra playback from myPower plus a complete recharge of the connected iPod’s battery if the iPod supports that feature (which the 3G iPod does not), so the iPod Photo could presumably hit between 32-37 hours, depending on how significantly the Photo drains myPower while recharging its own battery.

Our tests showed Tekkeon’s numbers to be fairly accurate - our standardized 4G iPod test ran for 30 hours and 45 minutes, for example, falling modestly short of Tekkeon’s numbers in a manner that repeated tests (and gradual battery burn-in) would likely remedy. As mentioned briefly before, the four battery indicator lights didn’t correspond with the time actually left on the battery; the first green light went out after less than three hours, for example, so you’re left with only rough estimates of how much power remains.

There’s nothing bad about 30 to 32 hours of 4G battery life, strictly speaking: buy myPower and you get nearly a day and a half of extra playback from your iPod, or a day (give or take) out of your 3G or mini. The only problem is that BTI’s batteries, which sell for close to the same price, give you two or three days worth of power in a very similar package. BTI’s iPod Battery ii went for over 55 hours on a 4G iPod, and The iPod Battery ran for 73 hours on a less power-efficient 3G iPod. While both retail for $99.95, they’re now available at retailers for as little as $75, placing Tekkeon in a tight position competitively.

Conclusions

Given its competition, myPower’s $89.95 price seems a bit high at this point. It seems obvious to us that when comparing external batteries to external batteries, the key factor is how much extra power you get for the dollar, and by that standard myPower sits a distant second to BTI’s options and better (though pricier) than the Belkin batteries we’ve seen.

But if you need its extra features, namely its USB, FireWire, or Line-Out ports, or its optional ability to recharge compatible mobile phones, myPower is currently the only iPod battery accessory with such offerings. While we can’t give myPower our highest recommendation overall, we do think it merits a strong B+ level recommendation given that some people may really like these extra features.

On a side note, we were glad to see that Tekkeon has proven that integrating extra ports on an iPod battery is plausible. However, we think that the feature would best be used not for mobile phone recharging, but rather to provide a pass-through (or Y-shaped) Dock Connector port so that the iPod could draw external battery juice while simultaneously using battery-draining accessories such as Belkin’s Media Reader. As-is, myPower is a solid iPod battery offering, but Tekkeon’s creative expansion of its ports (or changes to them in a future offering) could really expand the product’s value to all iPod owners.

Jeremy Horwitz is Senior Editor of iPodlounge and practices intellectual property law in his spare time. His recent book, Law School Insider, has been called the “best book about law school - ever,” and he continues to contribute to Ziff-Davis electronic entertainment magazines.

Page 1 of 1 pages

Wow, first battery solution for power users who need extended battery life AND pass through access to the dock features!

By mikemac on 11.08.04 at 05:50 PM

these things are still HUGE!!!!! Hey lets put a big brick in your pocket… WOOHOO. Might as well tote around the powerbrick. I’d rather replace my internal battery with a more powerful one. Like a 2300 MaH Li-Polymer battery. That way- no size increase. They can be had for under 30 bucks too!

By apple juice on 11.09.04 at 04:12 AM

Yuck, this thing makes iPod look big and boring (like a huge chunk of white plastic), not what I want for my iPod.

By podlover on 11.19.04 at 01:51 AM

Good review. This looks like the one I’d want as the port and audio out features are cool. In your review, the 1” section at the bottom is mentioned several times as a detractor but it should be noted that BTIs unit has the fire wire connector sticking out the bottom to the tune of almost an inch. The firewire connection certainly looks more vulnerable as compared to Tekkeon’s solution. I’ll also add the the Tekkeon device, to my eye, looks more elegant and integrated and less like an after thought. All of these devices are a pain compared to (if it were made) a high capacity iPod. If only Apple offered a a hi-cap version.

By corndog on 11.20.04 at 10:24 AM

Pardon my possible ignorance, but if it has a USB and FW connectors how can the Belkin Media Reader connect to it as it uses an iPod dock connector? Or is there a converter cable available?

Thx

By tomartinh on 12.14.04 at 05:30 AM

Pardon my ignorance as well, But does anyone know if, by using a Compact Flash card reader (USB 2.0) plugged into the USB port of the mypower, could digital photos which were saved on a compact flash card be transferred directly onto the ipod?

Thanks

By wengenfeffer on 12.14.04 at 10:28 PM

Avoid this product. It is so cheaply constructed that the line out plug has really poor contact with the jack. The sound gets disrupted at the slightest touch ! I thought I had a defective product but the same problem after exchanging with a new one.

By herry on 12.28.04 at 11:36 AM

was trying to decide between BTI’s The iPod Battery ii and Tekkeon myPower Battery Pack. I like the extra features of the Tekkeon but it seems like BTI is the battery that is best.
Now if you combined BTI iPod battery with the extra features of the Tekkeon, you would have the exact product I want.

By treeshark on 02.25.05 at 05:52 AM

I was also trying to decide between BTI iPod Battery and the Tekkeon myPower Battery.

Is it me, or does the myPower seem better designed. The dock connector is integrated into the battery and you do not have the cord hanging down like it is on the iPod Battery? My main beef with my 4G iPod is that I have to charge it just about every day. 32 hours seems like enough charge time to keep me going for a few days of commuting.

Download.com Review of iTunes

2005-05-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

Download.com Review of iTunes

Apple's iTunes used to be simply a versatile jukebox program that brought Mac users into the digital-music world, but new features that tune up its jukebox and the much-ballyhooed iTunes Music Store push it over the top. Seamless integration with the iPod, smart playlists, CD burning, and label printing create an 800-pound gorilla. New on the scene is Party Shuffle, which keeps a queue of songs at the ready that you can rearrange. Also new is iMix, which lets you publish playlists on the iTunes Music Store. iTunes supports MP3, AAC, AIFF, WAV, and a new format called Apple Lossless, which gives you uncompressed audio quality with files half the size. The Rendezvous sharing feature lets you see and play the playlists and music libraries of other users on your network.

One unfortunate quirk is how iTunes handles unprotected WMA files. We would prefer the program just play those files, rather than re-encode them into AAC format. Regardless, iTunes continues to be one of the best jukeboxes available.

Apple iTunes 4.8

2005-05-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

Apple iTunes 4.8

Now with support for video

Platform Mac OS, Windows 2000, Windows XP

Type freeware

Manufacturer Apple

Size 19.5Mb

Tim Smith, vnunet.com 10 May 2005

If you're getting tired of your current media player, Apple's iTunes is the answer.

ITunes is one of the best media players on the market. It comes with a vast music store that gives you the opportunity to preview and download songs at very reasonable prices.

This and the ability to create your own digital library makes iTunes a great choice for anyone who is tired of needing multiple players.

ITunes will look for any other copies running across a network and you can then listen to other people's music. An internet radio option is available for broadband users.

Version 1.8 adds support for video, in the form of an embedded QuickTime player. Little details are provided by Apple about this new feature, but it appears to support all the video formats that QuickTime supports (AVI, MPEG, Flash etc.).

Also new is Apple Lossless, an audio encoder for importing music into iTunes at half the original size with no loss of quality.

Verdict

An excellent audio player with a huge library of music for sale

New in iTunes 4.8 [updated]

2005-05-14T19:46:00.000-07:00

New in iTunes 4.8 [updated]

New iTunes adds video capabilities

By Christopher Breen

Apple has released iTunes 4.8—an update that can be found on Apple’s website, though not through Mac OS X’s Software Update system preference as I write this.

In typical fashion, Apple’s release notes tell us little about what the update fixes and changes—only that the new version “includes new Music Store features and support for transferring contacts and calendars from your computer to your iPod (requires Mac OS X version 10.4 on your computer).”

I’ve poked around a bit in the new version and here’s what I’ve observed.

Contacts and Calendars

When you plug an iPod capable of holding contact and calendar information into a Mac running iTunes 4.8 and click the iPod preferences icon at the bottom of the iTunes window, two new tabs appear in the resulting iPod window—Contacts and Calendars. These tabs are similar to what Mac users have seen in iSync. Here you can choose to synchronize all the contacts in Apple’s Address Book or just the contacts in groups that you choose. Likewise, you can synchronize all your iCal calendars or just selected calendars.

iTunes Does Video

Also at the bottom of the iTunes window is a new Show Video Full Screen button. This button hints that iTunes 4.8 plays movies, and indeed it does. These videos are available from two sources—videos on your hard drive and those sold as part of an album on iTunes. Videos on iTunes? No, not the music videos and movie trailers found at The Store. Rather, the iTunes Music Store now includes videos that are included with select albums sold by The Store. [Thanks to Playlist forum visitor mrhsean for being the first to bring this to our attention.] To see the system in action, check out the Dave Matthews Band’s latest, Stand Up, and you’ll discover that along with the album’s music you also get a digital booklet that contains the album artwork and a video. This 5 minute 28 second MPEG-4 video weighs in at around 55MB and is of the “making of the album” variety, showing some interview clips along with scenes from the studio.

This is an interesting development for the iTunes Music Store in an age where recording companies are beginning to release DualDiscs—discs that contain music on one side and DVD video on the other. While bandwidth limitations may keep the iTunes Music Store from offering the same content as a DualDisc, it does put The Store in the video space and allows it to charge more for an album than the usual $9.99 (the Dave Matthews album costs $11.99).

As I hinted earlier, the music videos and music trailers available from the iTunes Music Store can’t be played in a separate window and don’t take advantage of this full screen button. If you want to view these movies you must download them (some trailers can be downloaded, other can’t) and then drag them into iTunes.

The new iTunes can also play movies that you drag into it. When you drag a compatible movie file into iTunes, it appears in the Library with a movie camera icon next to it. Select the movie and press Play, and up pops a small window that displayed the movie and the Show Video Full Screen button became active. Click this button and the movie plays full screen.

Movies can not be shared using iTunes music sharing service. And iTunes doesn’t support all the files types that QuickTime does. For example, a .avi file that plays perfectly well within QuickTime Player Pro 7 on my Mac running Tiger can’t be imported into iTunes 4.8. The Windows version of iTunes has the same limitation—QuickTime movies will play, movies in formats such as .avi and .wmv won’t.

Varying the Video

You can change how iTunes shows movies in iTunes’ Advanced system preference—choosing to show videos in the main window, in a separate window, or full screen.

You can also resize movies by holding the Control key and clicking on the movie—selecting Half Size, Normal Size, Double Size, or Full Screen from the resulting contextual menu. If you close the movie window, the Now Playing window (the window that displays album art) will play the video. Just as with audio tracks you can rate movies and iTunes will keep track of the number of times you’ve played them. You can also create Smart Playlists that sort your stored movies—just create an action that reads Kind contains QuickTime Movie and you’re in business.

Another interesting movie feature is that you can convert the soundtrack of a movie file to the encoding format selected in iTunes Importing preference. For example, if you’ve configured iTunes to import tracks using the AAC encoder, you can select a movie file you’ve brought into iTunes and choose Convert Selection to AAC. iTunes will take the movie’s soundtrack and create a new AAC audio track of that soundtrack (without, of course, altering the original movie file).

More Stores

This update also supports the new iTunes Music Stores that are opening in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

Added Security

And, according to a posting on an Apple security list, iTunes 4.8 closes a possible security exploit. Versions of iTunes prior to 4.8 could parse a malicious MPEG-4 file that could cause iTunes to crash or execute arbitrary code. iTunes 4.8 improves its validation checks of MPEG-4 files to prevent such exploits.

Apple iTunes 4.7.1

2005-05-14T19:43:00.000-07:00

Apple iTunes 4.7.1
REVIEW DATE: 01.27.05

Total posts: 2

By Michael Kobrin

If GarageBand 2 is the most-improved app in the iLife '05 suite, iTunes is the one that remains the most the same—but we still think very highly of it. Version 4.7 has been shipping for several months now; it included a host of new fea-tures mostly geared towards keeping up with the release of Apple's other products and new developments in the Apple iTunes Music Store. Version 4.7.1, shipping with iLife '05, added support for the iPod Shuffle and the ability to sync photos with the iPod Photo as well as some minor performance enhancements.

Aside from support for the new iPod Shuffle and the ability to sync album art and photos to iPod Photo, the most significant update seems to be in the area of DRM: You can now authorize up to five PCs to play tracks you've bought at the iTunes Music Store. Other items some users may find handy is the new Lossless Encoder, which retains uncompressed CD-quality sound at half the file size, and the ability to find and delete duplicate songs in your library. iTunes also now lets you print out CD jewel-case inserts and create Party Shuffle mixes—automatically generated continuous queues of music from your library or playlists.

The rest of the enhancements are mostly tied to the iTunes Music Store, including Artist Alerts that notify you when the store adds new tunes by your favorite performers; iMix, which lets you post your own playlists at the store; and Library Links, which you can click on for more information about items in your library. But if the improvements are small, that's only because iTunes was already one of the best music players out there (along with Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 and Musicmatch Jukebox 10).

Aside from support for the iPod Shuffle and photo syncing with the iPod Photo, version 4.7.1 fixes a buffer overflow vulnerability and lets you find and delete duplicate songs in the iTunes browser window. It also lets you search iMixes by title in the iTunes Music Store.

Where other apps in this suite have inherited some features from iTunes, we'd now like to see the reverse in iTunes—such as views of our music akin to those of photos in iPhoto. We'd also like to see a bit more in the way of browsing and organization flexibility, which is one area where Musicmatch Jukebox 10 wins out.

Apple iTunes 4.7

2005-05-14T19:39:00.000-07:00

Apple iTunes 4.7

http://reviews.cnet.com/4505-3669_7-20201986.html

At a glance

Editors' rating: 8.3 Excellent

CNET editor's review

Reviewed by ; Eliot Van Buskirk, John Rizzo, and Rebecca Viksnins
Reviewed May 11, 2004 (updated December 6, 2004)

Editors' note: Version 4.7 adds the ability to optimize and transfer photos to the iPod Photo. You can also display and delete all duplicate songs, a much-needed feature for iTunes. Finally, Windows users can minimize the player into the Windows taskbar. (12/6/2004)

Whether you are looking to purchase music over the Internet or just need a good way to play and organize your digital music, iTunes is a great option, although it's available for only Mac OS X and Windows 2000 and XP. The iTunes Music Store section of the program offers flexible usage rights, high-quality tracks, a simple pricing scheme, a catalog of more than 1 million songs and 9,000 audiobooks, no-cost burning, and extended song information. Meanwhile, the nonstore portion of the application works great for ripping, encoding, creating playlists, smart shuffling, and even streaming your music to other computers on the same network--all for free. And, of course, you can use iTunes to transfer music onto the iPod, regardless of where you acquired the songs.

Installation and interface

Getting started is a simple matter of downloading and installing the latest version, a major advantage over more-convoluted programs such as Musicmatch. After that, you can start ripping your CDs and browsing the Apple iTunes Music Store for digital downloads. You don't even have to enter a credit card number or fill out any forms in order to browse and listen to 30-second previews. In typical Apple style, the iTunes interface is clean, friendly, and intuitive, even for beginners, but a help file is included.

The iTunes Music Store is integrated into the iTunes application, so you can purchase additional music seamlessly. Click a song title, and you can edit its ID3 tag information, submit your own rating (1 to 5), and add it to a playlist or Party Shuffle (an automatically generated on-the-fly playlist). You can also customize iTunes by selecting new columns of information that should appear for each song. For instance, you could add Genre for sorting purposes.

The catalog focuses on rock and pop, with some jazz and classical goodies. Downloads are fast: 45 seconds for a six-minute song over a home DSL connection. In our dozen or so tests, we consistently noticed smooth, fast transfers. Some copyright holders still aren't letting Apple sell certain albums in their entirety; these works are labeled as partial albums. For example, although most of the 73 Ella Fitzgerald albums are available intact, much of Miles Davis's extensive catalog is offered as partial albums. Also of note: Songs with racy language are labeled Explicit. The same songs sans profanity are labeled Clean.

Browsing and searching the iTunes Music Store is quick and simple. You can search by genre, as well as the standard artist and album categorizations. Click the Artist or Album column next to any song to bring up new lists of songs or pictures of album covers. You can hear 30-second clips of every track, including exclusive new songs from profiled artists. Apple has deals with all five major labels and more than 450 indies to create a catalog of 1 million songs, although artists such as the Beatles still refuse to be included in this or any other online music store.

In addition to browsing for tunes, you can choose from more than 9,000 downloadable audiobooks, thanks to Apple's partnership with Audible.com, a Web service we've long admired. There's even a menu of free streaming Internet radio, and it includes a decent selection of stations, categorized into 19 genres to make them easier to find, with a visualizer that displays graphics moving in time with the music.

Since most kids don't have their own credit cards, iTunes offers allowance accounts to help parents manage the amount of music their kids can spend. You can set up allowances that recur each month, in addition to separate accounts for each kid in your family. You can also buy iTunes gift certificates in $10 increments, from $10 to $200 (the same amounts apply for monthly allowances).

Features

The iTunes application can play MP3s, AACs, and Audible files. This new version also lets you convert unprotected WMA files ripped with other programs into unprotected AAC files so that iTunes (and the iPod, if you have one) can play them. The program offers an equally healthy set of options for ripping CDs; you can choose between MP3, AAC, and the Apple Lossless codec, which compresses files in half without losing one bit of CD information.

iTunes really shines in the area of playlists. You can create a playlist by manually adding songs or by specifying certain parameters, then having the program create a Smart Playlist. There's also a feature called Party Shuffle; when you click it, iTunes creates a spontaneous playlist from your music library or any playlist. If it's not what you want to hear, you can reorder the songs and add more tunes from your library via drag and drop. There's also a Celebrity Playlist option, which lets you browse and purchase songs or full lists from various celebrities, such as Missy Elliott and Michael Stipe. Right now, there are about 16 available.

A few generations ago, Apple added a feature that allows iTunes users on the same network (say, at work or in a dorm) to listen to--but not download--each other's music. Unfortunately, users of iTunes 4.7 cannot access the libraries of those running older versions and vice versa. Another quibble: You can burn only the exact same playlist of purchased songs 7 times, instead of the 10 times previously allowed. The compromise: Apple lets you access purchased music on five computers in this version, as opposed to three in earlier versions. If you upgrade or replace a machine and want to transfer purchased songs to the new computer, you can de-authorize a computer with a simple menu command in iTunes--a feature glaringly missing in Napster and other services.

Another new feature is iMix, which allows you to share your favorite playlists. After creating an iMix playlist, you receive a link that you can send to anyone else who uses iTunes. They'll be able to see the songs in your playlist and listen to 30-second samples of each, the idea being that they'll purchase the ones they like. This would be cooler if you could be paid referral fees or receive credits toward iTunes music when people purchase songs based on your iMix recommendation, à la Amazon's affiliate program.

iTunes Music Store also features a music video section, radio charts that track the most-played songs on about 1,200 stations nationwide, a way to print CD labels of purchased songs, and a freely downloadable promo single every Tuesday.

Music Store files are not MP3s; Apple uses a better codec called AAC. The files are encoded at 128Kbps and sound better than MP3s at the same bit rate. We noticed, however, that Apple chose not to normalize the files, so you might have to tweak the sound now and again or use the Sound Check control to level the volume automatically between songs.

Apple does a far better job of integrating artist and album information in its Music Store than its competitors. You can search artist biographies, as well as links to their influences and contemporaries. However, unlike Napster, which lets you browse other users' playlists, iTunes Music Store is thin on community features. With the exception of online forums, you're pretty much alone with your music.

We'd still like to see a line-in recording feature that would allow users to capture external audio sources into AAC, MP3, or any other supported format. Also, while applications such as Musicmatch Jukebox have a built-in album art retrieval service, you have to find your own with iTunes if you haven't purchased your songs from the Music Store.

Service and support

Due to the simplicity of the service, we doubt that many users will find a reason to ask for help. However, should you run into some sort of issue, Apple offers a variety of support options. If you've purchased another Apple product (such as an iPod) and its phone help is still valid, you can call for free iTunes-related support. Otherwise, Apple's info for Music Store is all online in the form of FAQs, material on upgrading and using the products, links to discussion boards where questions can be answered, and e-mail-based exchanges.

Search results within iTunes Music Store include EPs, albums, and partial albums, depending on what the labels licensed to Apple.

User comments

Average user rating
Excellent

8.2

out of 10

Average user rating: from 115 users

User rating
Perfect

out of 10

Awesome Jukebox Program
by mikes63737 - May 6, 2005

Pros:

Fast CD Burning, Fades Into Next Song, AirTunes Support, and everything else!

Cons:

None

User rating
Excellent

out of 10

Doessnt get any easier than this
by oli666 - April 28, 2005

Pros:

easy to use, auto playlist function very quick to sync with ipod

Cons:

No subscription option!

User rating
Perfect

out of 10

It cant get any easier. . .
by mrghos7 - April 16, 2005

Pros:

Everything . . .

Cons:

It wasn't around 10 years ago...

1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

User rating
Terrible

out of 10

Look elsewhere for a good music managment program
by thecoffman - April 11, 2005

Pros:

Attractive interface, speedy, easy to use for beginers

Cons:

lacks almost any in depth features.

2 comments posted to this opinion.

User rating
Poor

out of 10

Horrible Service
by ce2030 - April 7, 2005

Pros:

Good selection of songs

Cons:

Very bad service

User rating
Spectacular

out of 10

Pleasantly surprised
by Mark32 - March 7, 2005

Pros:

Terrific interface with IPOD, very fast and easy conversion of CDs.

Cons:

Some fiddling with MP3s on CDs to move them over.

User rating
Perfect

out of 10

Pure simplicity
by joeandjill - February 28, 2005

Pros:

One click to download, rip, burn, and cram you pod

Cons:

Nothing I can think of

2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

User rating
Spectacular

out of 10

Best way to organize music
by Lukey0499 - February 25, 2005

Pros:

the swithing for store to libiary options and style

Cons:

somethings slow downloading and once you put music there you cant take it out

User rating
Abysmal

out of 10

A rock and a hard place
by sleepydad - February 24, 2005

Pros:

Great quality - great price

Cons:

Will not convert to MP3 for a player other than iPod

2 out of 4 users found this user opinion helpful.
1 comment posted to this opinion.

User rating
Spectacular

out of 10

Excellent MP3 player and store!
September 14, 2004

Pros:

Easy to use easy to import old librarys, easy to burn, rip and compose cd in mp3 or audio formats...excellent all around player!

Cons:

Some artists are not avialable on itunes music store and you can look at what other countrys can get, even sample the music, but you can not buy any of it.

Basic specs for Apple iTunes 4.7

Version-- 4.6
Compatibility-- PC, Mac
Distribution media-- Download
License qty-- 1 user
License type-- Complete package
Min processor type-- Intel Pentium
Customer service phone-- (800) 275-2273
Knowledge base URL-- http://www.apple.com/itunes/
Registration URL-- https://register.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/GlobaliReg.woa
Software updates URL-- http://www.apple.com/software/
Technical support URL-- http://www.apple.com/support/
Technical support phone-- (800)275-2273

XPlay 2

2005-05-13T22:59:00.000-07:00

Monday, October 04 2004 @ 10:16 AM EDT

XPlay 2

As an iPod user whose primary computer is a Mac, but who often needs to (well, wants to) transfer files to and from a Windows system, I recently spent some time looking for a way to do just that.

What I found was XPlay 2, which is a Windows application described by the vendor as "the first product ever to provide Windows connectivity for iPods, and as the only product ever to provide Windows integration for Mac-formatted iPods."

Basically, XPlay 2 is a Windows Explorer integration that gives you access to your iPod. Yes, including a Macintosh formatted iPod. Using XPlay 2, you can perform such interesting operations as dragging and dropping music files to and from your iPod, drop vCard (contacts) and iCal and vCal (calendar) items onto your iPod. Oh, and full access to your iPod as a hard drive.

Installation and setup was extraordinarily painless. Very professional and entirely seamless. After setup, it was simply a matter of plugging in my iPod and double clicking the "Explore my iPod with XPlay" desktop icon to begin.

While I was mostly interested in hard disk access, I was fairly impressed by the music navigation (see screen shot below). An attractive, understandable way of navigating my music collection using the Windows Explorer metaphor.

Beyond navigation (of the music collection, that is) and the expected abilities like copy, delete, rename, etc of songs, XPlay 2 lets you edit tag information on individual songs using the normal right-click/properties operation.

Is this an "essential"? Definately, if you have a Mac formatted iPod and want to use it on a Windows system. Even if you're a Windows user only, though, you should find this application remarkably useful.

There are lots of features in XPlay 2 that I haven't spent time on (like the iPod showing up as a portable device in Windows Media Player) just because I was interested in a specific purpose. There is, however, a full 14 day trial where you can try out all of the extras for yourself.

Pros

Complete access to your iPod without using iTunes
Professional installation and general high quality throughout
Great attention to detail
Fast operations
Excellent Help

Cons

Price of $29.95 feels a little high - but then again, you're paying for quality
Synchronization between iPod and iTunes is one way only - from iTunes to the iPod. In other words, you can't use XPlay 2 to facilitate using your iPod to synchronize your music collection between two different desktop systems
I was unable to get the iPod to "Eject" using the XPlay 2 "Stop my iPod" option and instead had to eject the drive itself under My Computer.

xplay from amazon.com

2005-05-13T22:56:00.000-07:00

All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

how to share an iPod, March 17, 2005

Reviewer:		Todd Steinwart "...todd" (Carrboro, NC USA) - See all my reviews

An undervalued feature of this software is its ability to let you read and write a Mac formatted iPod in Windows, both through its native XPlay interface and iTunes for Windows. Granted, the extra translation layer (borrowed directly from their MacDrive software) slows the process down a little but the flexibility is well worth it if, like me, you have both Macs and Windows machines. (NB: If you use MacDrive you don't need XPlay to access a Mac-formatted iPod in iTunes for Windows - that capability comes built in.)

I don't care for the native XPlay interface personally: why make something look and act like Windows Explorer when Explorer is only marginally functional? but more importantly, XPlay doesn't support Smart Playlists, to which I am addicted. I use it strictly for its cross-platform capability.

Overall I am happy with this software. It stays out of the way when I don't need it and works seemlessly when I do. If you're running Windows ME/2K/XP and have a Windows-formatted iPod I'm not sure what its value is, but if you're running and older version of Windows or (like me) want to share an iPod between a Mac and Windows, XPlay is indispensable.

Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

Report this

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Why can't all software be this powerful and easy???, February 1, 2005

Reviewer:

Steve Cross "Stevie" (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

I installed it and that is all there is too it. Within a minute of installing XPlay I was transfering music to my iPod. It was as easy as using any other disk on my Windows XP computer. I can do everything I did with iTunes, but it just feels better, more "Windows" with XPlay. It really is one of the easiest programs I have ever used.

Also, a friend of mine uses XPlay with his Windows Me system. With XPlay we were able to copy music off his iPod and save it to his PC. Pretty cool!!!

I was leary when I first read reviews on here about both XPlay and Mediafour as a company. I am not sure what experience others had on here, but for my money this is a first rate program.

Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

Report this

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

Poor documentation, arrogant customer support, December 22, 2004

Reviewer:		Richard Down (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

I have been buying software for computers for almost 20 years now, and this is one of the worst experiences I've ever had with a software purchase. Despite the fancy "iPod family" packaging, there is no manual in the box. The support info on the CD is skeletal, as is the website. Upon calling Media4 customer support, the individual I talked with knew next to nothing about the XP operating system - even though the program is marketed to both Windows and Mac users. There is better freeware out there that actually does what, as far as I can tell, Xplay only says it does.

Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

Report this

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Sweet as candy, October 27, 2004

Reviewer:

AMG - See all my reviews

"Good show!", I say. The program does what it claims to and more.
My old 98 computer can use the iPod and that is pretty cool.
I like being able to copy music from my iPod onto my computer. It makes downloading music at the office and bringing it home a lot simpler than FTP'ing the songs, remembering to grab them off the FTP, et cetera. This way I can also play the songs my new songs on the commute home too.

Slick stuff. If you haven't tried it you don't know what you're missing.

Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

Report this

PopUpCop 2.5

2005-05-13T21:24:00.000-07:00


	More images

PopUpCop 2.5

Editors' Rating

Full Review

Readers' Rating		0%			0%
Rate this product

List price	£11
Check Prices

Full Review

Robert Vamosi October 18, 2004

Full Review

Robert Vamosi October 18, 2004

Sometimes pop-up windows serve a purpose, such as providing additional information or linking to an external Web site. But most of the time, they just litter your desktop with annoying adverts. Thankfully, PopUpCop 2.5 stops all kinds of ads -- animation, audio files, pop-ups and even cookies. You can download a trial version of PopUpCop 2.5 here -- it costs $19.95 (~£11) to buy. In order to remove all of the ad-serving software that's already installed on your PC, you'll still need to run either Spybot Search and Destroy or Ad-aware, but PopUpCop 2.5 can protect your desktop from future ad-serving software, annoying pop-ups and malicious scripts. If you use Internet Explorer, PopUpCop is a more complete choice.

Once you've download PopUpCop 2.5, it automatically installs on your Internet Explorer toolbar and waits there, ready to stop pop-up windows the next time you launch IE. PopUpCop doesn't require you to reboot to get started after installation. For $19.95 (~£11), which is comparable to other ad-stopping products, registration includes all users of a single computer when entered by a user with administrative authority.

PopUpCop's IE toolbar is clean and easy to understand. A police badge icon on the left opens a drop-down menu of configuration and technical-support options. A slider bar in the middle lets you quickly select preconfigured low, medium or high protection settings. A stoplight on the right of the toolbar indicates Java or ActiveX advertising script activity on a Web page. Finally, a handy display at the far right shows you at a glance the features that you've turned on or off.

Click the PopUpCop badge icon, and a drop-down menu displays your configuration choices. And this program gives you more choices than any other pop-up stopper currently on the market. PopUpCop lets you choose to allow all pop-ups, require the program to ask about each pop-up or simply disable Web features such as Java and ActiveX scripts, images, animation, background music and Flash movies. And as if these controls weren't enough, PopUpCop lets you customise its treatment of mouse scripts, useless warning dialogues, and window frame resizing. You can even customize PopUpCop's own setting controls; for example, you can remove options from the configuration panel.

With PopUpCop, there's no need to wonder which pop-ups got killed on a given Web page. The PopUpCop stoplight on the toolbar turns from green to yellow to red to indicate that the program suppressed either a pop-up or a script timer used to deploy a pop-up. Mouse over or click the stoplight, and PopUpCop indicates the presence of a cookie, a mouseover or a conventional pop-up.

Beyond its basic ability to stop Web page advertising, PopUpCop includes Xguard, a tool to fend off ad-serving software that installs on your hard drive. You may still want to run Ad-aware to remove any existing ad-serving software, but Xguard keeps future ad-serving programs off your system. Internet Explorer itself already alerts you just before a Web site loads such scripts onto your computer, but it doesn't describe the scripts themselves. Xguard, on the other hand, says it provides all the available information about the control and its publisher, including info on how to remove the control. PopUpCop's Xguard feature even stops the new InVue ads, such as those found on Yahoo or GeoCities sites, which sit atop Web pages. So far, none of PopUpCop's competitors can stop these ads.

In addition to PopUpCop's online help pages and adequate FAQ, EdenSoft, the maker of PopUpCop, offers free email technical support but, unfortunately, no telephone support.

Sony MZ-NH1 Silver Hi-MiniDisc Walkman at Amazon.com

2005-05-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

1-7 of 7

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Why bother?, March 23, 2005

Reviewer:

E. ROSENBLUM - See all my reviews

These minidisk players/recorders lock a user to some Sony's proprietary format (Atrac3) and software, and impose severe limitations on how your music collection (MP3, WMA and so on) may be copied from/to these devices (see WWW for details).

So I just ask myself why a one would want to use this thing if there are so many (much cheaper) alternatives available that don't impose all these annoying restrictions?

Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

Report this

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

excellent portable music machine, March 18, 2005

Reviewer:

Drez "Drez" (MD USA) - See all my reviews

This little machine is awesome... I use it to play music copied from CDs (I ride the train to work) and to record live music. What puts this unit in a class by itself is the ability to record through the line-In or mic-In straight to 1Gig MD and then USB download to PC and convert to wav... Nobody else can do that, that I know of... that was the missing link --- Yea Sony! of course, from there, u can do anything you want with the digitized music: edit, layer tracks, crossfade with other music, burn CD, MD, the web, whatever... I also needed a good stereo mic for recording live music and rehearsals. I picked the Sony ECM-MS907 Stereo Microphone. It's small, sturdy and adequate, but the threads on the included adaptor don't fit standard mic stands, and the Sony mic won't fit in the adapter that comes with, say an SM57 or SM58... bummer... I also needed closed headphones. The Sennheisers are great for rehearsals, etc, but uncomfortable on long train rides,,, the Sony MDR-EX71SL/WK ear buds fixed that problem... OK Here's something you can't do,,,, you can,t transfer songs to and from your PC on AC power, 'cause you can't cradle the MZ into the AC adapter and plug in the USB cord at the same time... I know... tha's dumb... The Sonic Stage software is adequate after you upgrade it from the Sony sight,,, and you need to download the MP3 and WAV conversions tools also $FREE$ ... You have to have Sonic Stage installed in order to install these other tools... OK here's another gotcha,,, An MD that was loaded from Sonic Stage knows what computer it came from, so you CAN'T take your MZ-NH1 to your friends house and download your Sonic Stage songs to his Sonic Stage so he can make a copy of your disc ... naa-daa ... u get a nasty message saying something like "This MD wasn't recorded on your friends computer so fuhgetaboutit" ... tha's wack'd Sony ... You CAN record directly from a CD to an MD loaded in the MZ through the Line-In, thus bypassing Sonic Stage step, but Line-In means analog so some degradation will occur (You can record your favorite TV show here, but why?). Oh yea, the units made out of some kind of alloy from outer-space (Cryptonite, i think), it feels like an indestructible cigararette case (looks like one too) ... but here's the gotcha... the remote's just painted plastic, it works good, lights up, etc, but it feels like if you accidentally stepped on it, it'd crunch like a cockroach... Still, with the line-in, mic-in recording capabilities, 1GB disk capacity, WAV & MP3 conversion software, tank-build and very good sound, this unit is way ahead of the CD/MP3 players, I-Pods and other portable units availabe today...

Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

Report this

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

i love the sony mz-nh1, February 15, 2005

Reviewer:

Michael Blackstock "drdestructo1" (Stuart, FL USA) - See all my reviews

i recently bought the sony mz-nh1 for recording live shows, and i couldn't be happier. you can transfer your recording to your computer, make cd's (with sony WAV converter) and then format the minidisc and use it again! awesome

Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

Report this

13 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

What's an iPod??, February 10, 2005

Reviewer:

Young Mario (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

Whenever I am going to work, I cant help to notice all the people sitting around me on the train with their stylish iPod. They are just cool fad as are those yellow rubber bracelets that cost a dollar. Apple should have just added the yellow bracelet in the packaging! "I really dont want an iPod, but my friends have one so I'll dish out 250.00 so I can look cool." This is why I didnt want an iPod. They are dumb and trendy. This Mini Disk player will obliterate any iPod ever made. Just look at the specs and compare. Ok, sure some iPods can hold more music, but who wants a device who's internal battery will only last you about a year or so under normal use. Not only do Mini-Disk players offer superior sound, but they are long lasting. I myself have dropped my player many times over the past two years and it still plays and records like the first time I used it. So do yourself a favor and get a Mini-disk player and stand out, unless you want to be like everyone else on that train or bus or wherever with their little iPods and white earbud headphones. If you got an iPod for Christmas, sell it on EBAY so some poser out in suburban America can look cool with their yellow LIVESTRONG bracelet.

Pros:
-Fast Data Transfer
-Excellent sound
-Durabilty/Reliable
-Easy to use
-Record all types of digital music files
-Not an iPod

Cons:
Ahem,...it's not an iPod!

Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

Report this

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

Exceptional Quality; great sound fidelity, December 16, 2004

Reviewer:

Alex theodo (Los Angeles CA) - See all my reviews

I have been an MD user for a couple of years now. I finally got this great Hi-Md unit and I am very satisfied thus far. The unit is really sleek and sturdy; light, but at the same time has a rugged feel to it. The sound is amazing. Do yourself a favor and buy a good pair of phones for th unit. The phones that come with it do not do justice. I splurged and got the shure ec3s, and the sound is amazingly clear. SonicStage 2.2 has come a long way since OpenMG; and keeping in mind that when we are talking about transfering, we are actually talking about burning a cd; the transfer speed is very good.
Of course the big drawback is that there is no Apple support for the MD; but for the sound, the features (digital recording; microphone recording that is at pcm quality) I can live with that drawback. i have a dedicated windows laptop for my music.
Coming from just being an ipod user for the last 7 months; the batter life on this thing is trully amazing. In the two weeks that I have had it; I had to charge the battery just three times (including the initial time), and then I just listen to music hours and hours each day. I am using hi-sp for my songs which equates to 7 hrs of music at the 1gb disk, and 2 hrs of music at the regular MD disks formatted under the Hi-Md scheme. One word of advice; to enjoy the sound fidelity to its fullest, you will need to start with a lossless format; in my testing if I start the conversion from a compressed format already e.g., MP3, Atrac3 to AtracPlus; there is some distortion and artifact introduction. However, I believe this has to do with the sensitive earphones that I have. If you use medium grade earphones you should be ok.
Bottom line, I think the MD format is here to stay; true it's not for everybody, but those of us that are used to the little quirks that come with the system (sony's drm leaves something ot be desired), love these little machines.

Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

Report this

13 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

MZ-NH1 is the best portable HD sound, October 16, 2004

Reviewer:

CARLOS GALVAN - See all my reviews

I got the MZ-NH1 a couple of weeks ago and I love it.
The sound is great when i use the headphones, and amazing sound when i connect the MZ-NH1 to my house amplifier or to my car audio system.
If you are a fanatic for the High Sound definition the Ipod don't compare whit the MZ-NH1.

The High quality of sound that gives the High Definition Digital Amp incorporated in the MZ-NH1 with the versatility of the Md are the perfect combination.

Additionally the MZ-NH1 has another amount of excellent characteristics.

Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

Report this

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

Search 4 the best MD Player Ends Here! IPOD has a competitor, September 14, 2004

Reviewer:

S. Arslanian (Buena Park, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

I got the MZ-NH1 a couple of weeks ago and I am thrilled with it.
Let me sum it up:
PROS
* I gigabyte MD is great
* Over 7 hours of music using ATRAC3 256kbps, 2nd highest quality, and sounds beautiful
* Full Magnesium Body
* Small, Slim, and Solid Device
* Long Battery Life - Gumstick Rechargeable battery
* Sweet Cradle
* Finally we have Transfer from MD to PC
-important note- When the file is transferred it's in sony's omg format which you can only play using the sonicstage software. However, there is official news that Sony will come out with a free program that will let you convert the "omg" file into
a wave.
* Mic recordings still sound incredible
* No check in - check out, but you still have to use SonicStage Software to transfer music to player
* You can drag and drop files
-note- If you drag and drop mp3s it will put the file on the disc but you won't be able to play it through the player, must use sonic stage.
* Backwards compatible with old minidiscs
* You can record from literally almost any source of sound.

CONS
* headphones included aren't too good (no biggie)

This player is sweet

Was this review helpful to you?

(Report this)

Report this

Avg. Customer Review:
Number of Reviews: 15

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

again,excellent but could have been better...., April 25, 2005

Reviewer: A electronics & photo fan from beckenham, kent United Kingdom

this is going to be a very quick unbiased kinda review.

the unit and controller,top notch,great functionality,and especially the build quality or the md itself,work or art,real quality.

the headphones are a crock of poop,come on sony,what a let down,i havnt bought any new ones yet but definitely will,the e2c's and e3c's look the biz.

sonic stage which is the software you need to use to manage the contents of you md that comes with the nh1(hi-md) and its horrid.what a pile of dung,i mean its never actually crashed on me or anything but its nasty,yukk. i've never owned a ipod however i love listening to my non atrac music files through itunes,what a wikid piece of software,well done you mac guys.for the record i downloaded the latest version of ss,that being 3.1 and its still rank!

apart for that,pretty cool,and well done amazon,brill price.

Professional Sound Recording Quality, April 9, 2005

Reviewer: liu_qingdao from London, United Kingdom

Not only I am happy with the playback of sound tracks ripped from CDs but also very pleased with the recording quality that the Sony MZ-NH1 possesses when using an external microphone. The recording on the minidisk can be easyly downloaded to my PC using SonicStage, then you can convert the file into wav format using Sony's WAV Conversion Tool. You can, of course, further convert the wav file into any format such as mp3, rm etc using third party software. It's really great. A must for voice artists.

This little baby sure packs a punch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, January 6, 2005

Reviewer: thelittleliverbird from WORKINGTON, CUMBRIA United Kingdom

After searching for a minidisc player and scanning through many reviews of certain models, i plumped for this one.
After getting through the instruction manual (which is a task in itself!)i charged up my new minidisc player and sat back to enjoy (obviously with different earphones to the ones provided in the box as they are utter rubbish and besides, my little ears are far too sensitive for them!)
The sound quality and the features on the player are fantastic. The backlit remote display is very useful although i do think that this feature should be standard on minidiscs anyway.
The player is of a good design that is very light and easy to operate.
The charging cradle looks great but is just not practical to transport with you.
I have not yet had a chance to use the new 1gb disc but i have already had trouble trying to buy them (you do get one free with the minidisc player)and even an official sony shop i went to did not have any!
Overall,I think that this player is definitely worth the money. It has lots of great features such as random and repeat play, it looks great and it is great. I am very impressed with mine and i would recommend it.

One of the best MD recorder ever built, November 21, 2004

Reviewer: A electronics & photo fan from Singapore

Just bought this player 3 weeks back. More than satisfied but could have been better. I prefer this to iPod due to its size and battery life. The battery can also be changed once it is flat. The remote supplied is wonderful. Jogdial makes choosing music tracks easy. The different settings for equaliser is also a plus espically for custom ones. Minor complains, could have build the stand for both charging and transferring music, not only for charging. The LCD screen on the unit could have been better and at least with back light.

Great, but is it worth ?225?, October 26, 2004

Reviewer: bx456 from Tewkesbury, England

I got my MZ-NH1 about 2 months ago, and so far have had no problems. There's no way I could talk about everything in one review, but here's the main bits.

Most reviews I've read talk about their absolute hate for the software, but what's so wrong with it? It's quite slow, but then I do have a slow computer. It looks very swish, is easy to use and basically it does what it's ment to do, very well.

It looks great, the magnessium casing on the player is smart and it doesn't scratch. The remote is a piece of genius. There's alot of people who say that the one line display on the player isn't enough, but every single feature you could ever ask for is on the remote, which I prefer - and it's easy to use. You also don't have to keep getting it out of your pocket to change stuff.

Now for the not so good features... the claim that you can get 45 hours onto one disc, is all very well if you don't mind listening to the worst quality of music, ever. For 45 hours you have to compress at 48kbps, but a listenable quality at 112kbps will fit around 17 hours - which is still loads!

The headphones provided are terrible. If you're going to buy this then just buy some decent headphones with it, believe me the ones provided aren't even worth trying.

Overall though, the MZ-NH1 is an excellent player. the two things I'm not happy with are only very minor compared with all the other impressive features. The only reason I'm not giving 5 stars, is the huge price. In the high street this player is being sold for ?300, which is ridiculous.

Excellent, October 11, 2004

Reviewer: A electronics & photo fan from London, United Kingdom / Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

Much better battery than the iPod! This mini disc player has seen me through several jet-lagged nights and a couple of long flights without letting me down.

The software is reasonably straightforward and intuitive.

The sound reproduction is excellent on 64 kbs, which allows you to fit more music or talking books onto a single disc then if you use a higher resolution, though I did buy new earphones as the ones supplied might fit a man's ears, but don't fit my dainty ones.

All in all, I would strongly recommend this Walkman. The 1Gb discs should be available soon, but the 80 min discs work well for the time being. One 1Gb disc is supplied with the machine.

Thank you, Amazon, for getting hold of a Walkman for me given my time constraints, I was impressed with the speed of delivery once I had explained my problem.

Should of happened sooner, October 4, 2004

Reviewer: A electronics & photo fan from great yarmouth, norfolk United Kingdom

i'm really impressed with my new purchase it's got all the features i need and many more beside's. It's probably one of the best prices you'll find online let alone the high street. Again one problem is not being able to record you'r tracks from the pc to md while the recorder is in the cradle but that can be over looked, Sony have recntly deicided to support MP3 instead of making you use Atrac3plus which is a plus so i would keep a lookout for an updtaed version sometime in the future.

Gadget Chinaman, September 30, 2004

Reviewer: chrischriswanwan from Hampton

Nice work Sony. I must say that it has lived up to all expectation. Out playing the Ipod by miles, this is simply the best piece of kit you can buy today. Excellent sound quality with most of my cd collection on the 1 gb disc. Although it takes a whole three monutes to transfer an album! Battery is excellent, a whole weeks worth of playing time then needs chargeing next to my pc.

Smaller than most md players, it is also light weight and stylish. LCD is brilliant, four lines of text and a bright blue light that doesnt strain your eyes in the dark.

So....concluding this i would like to say sorry to Ipod, whos regin will come to an end in the near future and congraualtions to sony (not usually said)

great, September 26, 2004

Reviewer: A electronics & photo fan from Leeds

?4 for 3 discs each 1 gig in size! thats 3gig for under a fiver. how can u complain!!!!!!! the player looks and sounds great, u need to throw away supplied headphones and buy the sony 'ear-buds' (amazon price ?25.99) so add that to the cost of buying the walkman, but still a good buy.

I'am seriously impressed, September 25, 2004

Reviewer: adwol48 from great yarmouth, norfolk United Kingdom

this is a major step forward for mindisc's i've just managed to put basically all of my mp3's onto a 1gb Hi-MD disc and these normally take up about 2.2gb on my pc, for 224 pound yes it might be more expensive than other recorders which basically do the same thing but if size does matter to you this has to be the one it's far slimmer than other recorders ( and easier on the eye i think). a couple of problems which have been pointed out before is the doclikng cradle cant be used to charge the battery and transfer files simultaneously, also i've think that although the supplied software is okay it can be a bit slow but you might get better results if you have a newer pc also the addition of optical input is very handy since a couple of my cd collection cant be transfered to WMA so i'll directly record those to Hi-MD.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Very Impressed, September 24, 2004

Reviewer: Minidisc Fan from Potters Bar, Herts United Kingdom

I have recently purchased this minidisc recorder and am delighted with it, it does everything that was promised. The transfer speed is really fast and, as well as music files, I have successfully downloaded photos, Word files and video files onto the 1Gb disc and used them in other applications.

The re-chargeable battery is not really a problem as the recorder uses mains power when attached to the cradle and power from the computer when it is connected via the USB cable. Ideally I would have liked the option of using a standard battery in certain circumstances as I could do with my previous recorder, but this is a minor point.

My only gripe is that I have been unable to purchase the 1Gb discs.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

fantastic sound quality, September 19, 2004

Reviewer: A electronics & photo fan from COVENTRY United Kingdom

the nh1 provides top sound quality among all md and mp3 players. Sony never lets me down. the reason I choose this hi-end version is that all other cheap versions are not available in Japan, you know, Sony always made cheap version to occupy overseas markets, and their sound qualities are terrible, I have tried the nh-600,my god......the sound is worse than my old n10(net md). so strongly recommend NH1,it's what Hi-md should be!!!

A better than average peformance from Sony's flagship Hi-MD, September 15, 2004

Reviewer: MR O J BOOTHROYD from Windsor, United Kingdom

I bought the MZ-NH1 about 2 weeks ago, and since then I've been spending half my waking hours recording music from my computer and CDs onto this wonderful-looking new contraption by Sony.

Despite the fact that the NH1 was plugged as being a worthy rival to the iPod (said endorsement made me hold out 'til its release) it is simply too different to compare:

Pros:
*Easy recording from CD to device.
*Ultra-light and easy to carry.
*When all tracks are in Atrac3(plus) mode, it is very easy and very quick to exchange files from PC - MD.
*Remote control is very well designed. Controls are easy to use, as is the display.
*When used for recording from a Hifi/optical cable/microphone it is just as easy to use as its predecessors.
*You can still play and record on old MiniDiscs.

Cons:
*Sonic Stage software is temperamental - on numerous occasions it has either frozen or shut down on me.
*If you record media onto the HI-MD from one computer, you cannot upload it to a different computer, even if it has 'Sonic Stage'.
*If you record media using the supplied 'MD Simple Burner' you cannot upload it onto 'Sonic Stage'.
*The cradle is the only way to charge the device.
*Unlike some of the older NetMD models there is no USB port on the cradle.
*The blank Hi-MD 1GB discs will not be on general release in the UK 'til December '04.

In summary, if you are going to use the MZ-NH1 as an MP3 player; don't. Get an MP3 player. If, however, you want the flexibility that the MiniDisc range has always given (changeable discs, recording from microphone, recording from optical cable...) then go for it.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

Well Done Sony, September 14, 2004

Reviewer: bugz-hot04 from England, Manchester

This is an exceptional music player. It has style, reliability, and is a vast improvement in terms of the older "MiniDisc." The MZ-NH1 Hi-Md player (in my opinion) rivals even the "almighty" Ipod. But not in terms of space, as the Ipod has a huge capacity for music. However, although the Ipod is unique in this sense, it has a tendency to "crash" alot, the MZ-NH1 will never crash making it more reliable. Plus it lets people deal with a more realistic amount of music at one time as it provides 1 GB discs (Over 200 songs) not 20 GB. (Around 5000 songs)

The MZ-NH1 does have it's flaws though, as the "electronics & photo fan" points out (read his/her review). The transfer speed has also improved dramatically. It is incredibly fast for a mini disc player. However it has nothing on the ipod's speed. Both the MZ-NH1 hi-md player and the Ipod are a good buy. They both look good and and the cost roughly the same (20 Gb Ipod) But I think the MZ-NH1 player is the best bet. It has endless space as you can just keep buying more discs.

27 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

It's Great But It Could Have Been Awesome, September 6, 2004

Reviewer: A electronics & photo fan from Dagenham, Essex United Kingdom

This is my second Sony MD player and for me MD is the way to go. I love the MZ-NH1 and the indexing, remote control and just the style of the box is great. BUT.... The cradle is the only way of charging the battery which means you have to take the cradle everywhere with you, instead of just popping in an AA battery. Also, the cradle doesn't connect the USB port to the PC so you can't do both at the same time. You need a separate cable for the PC-USB connection. It's a great machine, but it could have been better.

MZ-NH1 Hi-MD Walkman

2005-05-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

User Product Reviews and Ratings
Average User Rating: Number of User Reviews: 5

Reviewed by: big_jan on Feb 14, 2005	Rating:

Experience: 15 Days

Strengths: ability to transfer files to and from the unit

Weaknesses: seemingly fragile build

Summary: I would like to recommend this to any budding musician or audio recordist. I play in a folk/pop duo and record our jams everytime including jams with great visitors or just simply annoying drunk customers. It is a thrill to listen back to our sound and improve from the very clear mistakes. Remember to download the latest sonic stage software from Sony and install the software first. The ability to transfer these files as audio format in either pcm and or Hi-SP mode is a major breakthrough for the MD community. Kudos to Sony for keeping up to its promise. MP3 sounds terrible and this is the true portable audio system. I even make CD's of our performances and pass on to some regular customers who are delighted to hear themselves and of course our performances.

100% of people (3/3) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?

There are no comments for this review. Post a comment

Reviewed by: zornrah from CT on Oct 10, 2004	Rating:

Experience: 2 Months

Strengths: Design, battery life, disc capacity, music navigation system, USB harddrive.

Weaknesses: Perhaps fragile, remote/headphone length/bulk, cradle function, software, headphone quality.

Summary: (Edited November 14th by zornrah) First its strong points: It is a beautiful little toy, all brushed silver metal and a little black plastic. Very tiny and surprisingly thin. Even though the battery is tiny it lasts a long time. The unit tells you how much life is left in hours and minutes which is useful. When it charges it does the same. The discs hold quite a lot of music, even at the highest quality setting. The navigation via remote is well done, the scroll/enter wheel is simple to use, simple to find your tunes amongst the hundreds of titles on a disc. The fact that you can use it as a USB hard drive/removable media device is pretty useful, especially for storing photos.

The weaknesses: because of its compact size i believe this unit may be especially fragile. This is not really a weakness as it is unsubstantiated. The length of the cords on the headphones and the remote are all wrong. The cord on to the remote is too long. The remote itsself is a little bulky, but it is the main music navigation system, so that is a necessity. The cradle is used for charging only, it should really be used for data transfer too. But that isnt possible because the same usb socket is used for recharging and data transfer. OK, my prior review had sowtware on the strength side, but i have changed my mind. While it does work, you constantly have to update it to keep up with XP updates, or the thing just doesnt work. Like the other reviewer noted the copyright protection is obnixious. Even if you created, ripped and mastered the recording, this thing wont allow you to migrate your work (to another PC via the walkman), it says, "cannot copy; tracs copied from another computer." It is maddening. It doesnt matter all that much, unless you want to copy your old minidiscs onto the new 1 GB discs. Cannot be done (except in real time/analog). The headphones are cheap, a mouse chewed mine into six pieces. Odd but true.

All that being said i highly recommend this toy to everybody. The weaknesses dont bother me except for the copyright issues and the cord length issue. It is a beautiful little thing. I far prefer it to its competition.

92% of people (34/37) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?

There are no comments for this review. Post a comment

Reviewed by: web_lin from TX on Nov 12, 2004	Rating:

Experience: 3 Weeks

Strengths: Awesome sound quality, ultra compact design and light

Weaknesses: Can't burn what I record from mic to CD

Summary: This pricy toy is wonderful, I use the to record piano playing and class lecture, the recording quality so awesome, period. The headphone is alright but small enough for pn the go, if I stay home I'll use ny better headphone or speaker. Battery recharge is fast and it shows how long it'll take. Hope SONY comes out some solutions how to brun my recordings to CD.

91% of people (20/22) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?

There are no comments for this review. Post a comment

Reviewed by: fstg on Jan 5, 2005	Rating:

Experience: 5 Months

Strengths: Size, recording quality, battery duration, conversion to other formats, sound quality

Weaknesses: Lenth of the Jog Dial cord, the Jog Dial itself, the size of the window on the unit, fragility

Summary: I have been using the unit for the past months with great pleasure. I had a reading problem for a while (I am not sure but carrying the unit in a pocket in front of the hearth seems to have disturbed the mechanism...this is not sure, but the electricity generated might have stopped the machine), but only in these occasions. With the Sony converter you now can record a show, download it on your computer and burn a CD, and this with great sound quality. I have bought "Sound Professionals In-Ear Binaural Microphones SP-TFB-2" and enjoy great response, even recording on the street. I also use " Sony Fontopia Headphones MDR-EX71SL". With these I feel incaged with the music. I carry the MZ-NH1 everywhere I go, even crosscountry skiing with the dog. Well I would't throw it on a wall just to see if it still works. Try it you will adopt it.

86% of people (6/7) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?

There are no comments for this review. Post a comment

Reviewed by: mlgarmon from TX on Sep 23, 2004	Rating:

Experience: 30 Days

Strengths: Good sound quality, easy to use.

Weaknesses: Cannot make CDs of music recorded from microphone.

Summary: I purchased this product in order to record the Praise Team that I direct at our church. However, not until I tried to make a CD of the recording did I find out that it is not possible. Sony has put a copyright protection on the files and you cannot put files that you record live onto a CD.

On another minor note, the marketing information says that it comes with a USB cradle. In reality, the cradle is only a charger, you must remove it from the charger stand to connect the USB cable. Not quite as slick an arrangement as is advertised.

83% of people (48/58) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?

Olly Fletcher

Posted: 29/03/05

'FUNKY NEW HI-MD PLAYER'

Strengths:
The player looks and feels great and the remote control from previous versions has been vastly improved upon, with a three-line display and new ‘jog dial’. The transfer from PC to MD is extremely fast, and the ability to transfer recorded tracks from MD to PC sounds exciting (although I haven’t tried it out yet). The storage on the new Hi-Md is good.

Weaknesses:
Although storage of up to 45 hours is advertised on the Hi-MD, you only get 17 hours of music at an acceptable quality of 128kbps. Earphones provided are absolutely unbearable. Hi-MD discs seem to be difficult to get hold of on the high street. It's a bit pricey - so shop around!

Overall:
I recently bought this unit as an upgrade to my existing Sony MZN-10 and as an alternative to buying an MP3 player (I was considering a ‘Creative Zen’ for their superior battery life). It's a nice player to have in your hand and seems to pack an endless batch of features into a compact little shell.

Performance

Build

Value

Overall Rating:

User rating
Spectacular

out of 10

"Best incarnation of MiniDisc yet!"
by JunFan08 (see profile) - March 9, 2005

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Pros:

Sleek design (magnesium!), simple interface, Hi-Md compatibility, rechargeable battery

Cons:

Sonicstage is slow to transfer music, battery life is erratic

Full user opinion

The MZ-NH1 is the best MiniDisc yet. Previously, I used a MZ-N505, but I recently upgraded to the new Hi-MD format (which holds ONLY 8 hrs @ 256kb!).
At first glance, the design of the unit is very sleek and modern with magnesium casing and slim profile. The unit comes with a slick docking cradle (which, oddly enough, you cannot upload to the unit while docked?!), and operates on a lithium-ion rechargeable battery.
Asthetics aside, the interface is both good and bad. The interface for the unit, using the in-line remote to control your musical selection, is easy and simplistic to operate. On the other hand, the SonicStage software for managing the files on your computer is cleverly laid out, but slow to operate, even for small file sizes.
The unit produces excellent sound thanks to a built in digital HD Amp, and sounds great at 256kb/s. Invest in a nice pair of headphones (Sony MDR-V700DJ recommended) to make this unit put out sound like it was made to.
The first drawback i have is the battery life. The unit promises up to 18 hours of battery life, but i just havent seen it. It seems that i get no more than 5-8 hours out of the battery before it dies. The remote, which can be used to display battery life, has given me erratic reports of battery life (one minute it has a full charge, the next its half full?).
The second thing to keep in mind if you use a Windows computer, is that SonicStage is disabled by a Windows XP security hotfix. It took me hours to figure out why it would not initialize, but Sony provides a patch online to fix the problem. Just be aware of it.
Overall, the NH1 is an excellent purchase....just make sure that if you want the most out of the unit, invest in a quality pair of stereo headphones.
You won't regret it!

Spectacular

out of 10

"An amazing piece of audio hardware!!!"
by feelmaroon (see profile) - March 2, 2005

Pros:

uploading and downloading from the player, speed, edit and playlist options, battery life, remote, size, design, and multiple source recording.

Cons:

software stinks, attrac coding is slow.

Full user opinion

People tend to get down on md's because they don't understand what they truly do. let's get this out of the way: MD's are not mp3 players(they're mp3 converters), they're much more than that. you can record on the fly from any possible source you can imagine (tv, computer, stereo, live concert, another ipod at a cafe), upload and download anything you record, the battery life is insane (it tells you exactly how many hours you have left *ex: 15 hours left*, and the quality of the hardware itself is amazing. as for the capacity, people are also pretty ignorant of that too and sony somehow does nothing to promote it in the right light. the new hi-md discs say 1gig but it compresses to almost 4. i can get 750 songs on each disc. ALl in all, this latest entry of md is absolutely amazing. i use it and wonder why so many people settle for ipods. i have a ipod mini and i love it too. but for a real piece of audio hardware that does more than play a song from a computer, you have to try this new hi-md out. I can't tell you how many times i've just pulled a song from a line in stream of a comp, some cat at a library, or recorded a live concert from my md in my pocket then uploaded it as an .wav file. the only player out where you're not reliant on your computer to get music but when you need to you can. give it a chance.

Updated
by feelmaroon (see profile) - March 2, 2005

and i forgot to mention this wonderful bonus!!!
...the thing doubles as a usb plug and play removeable harddrive. just plug it in and it shows up as drive g: or whatever drive you'd like it to.

My Yahoo! RSS Beta Launched

2005-05-13T07:17:00.000-07:00

It's been under development and testing for a while (it even tried to sneak out recently) and is now ready for you to play with. Now you can add nearly any RSS feed to your My Yahoo page. That includes news sites, weblogs, searches, and more. Think of this as the natural evolution of one of the oldest web-based news aggregators.

Why?

Three simple reasons...

RSS makes it easier to track and share dynamic information and has been growing in popularity over the last years. It is becoming an increasingly important technology for anyone who spends time online gathering news or keeping track of friends and family (via weblogs). It's not just for geeks anymore.
It makes My Yahoo better. No longer are you restricted to the content that Yahoo has traditionally provided. It's the next logical step.
And, well, it's just cool. That counts for something too. :-)

The bottom line is this: RSS is big at Yahoo. We have a lot of RSS fans here. We already have RSS feeds for Yahoo News, for the Yahoo Buzz Index, for Ask Yahoo, and so on. And there's more to come after this, I hope.

Some of you may now realize that I cheated. My talk of RSS and Open Syndication in 2004 was really foreshadowing, not just guesswork. Sue me.

Try It

To start, go to add.my.yahoo.com/rss and follow the directions. But before you do, here's some stuff to keep in mind:

This is a beta. There will be bugs. It's not done yet. Really. I can tell you for a fact that there are a few problems with the OPML import. (Yes, you CAN import OPML either via HTTP upload or by providing a URL to a publicly hosted OPML file). It works quite well in some cases but not others. We're working on it. If you report a bug with it, having a copy of (or link to) your OPML file would help a lot.
We're looking for feedback. Of course, you're free to blog it or discuss here too, but if you use the form I linked you'll know that someone at Yahoo is reading it.
There are some docs on-line about the RSS module and for publishers, including notes about the crawler and opt-out.

Since some of you are certain to be too lazy to read anything else about it, I'll make a few more quick points.

The Crawler

The user agent is YahooFeedSeeker/1.0 (compatible; Mozilla 4.0; MSIE 5.5;) and it respects robots.txt as described here. If, for some strange reason, you don't want your content on My Yahoo, block the crawler. It's that easy.

The crawler will not eat up all your bandwidth. It uses an adaptive polling algorithm that attempts to match the typical update cycle for your feed. If it seems to be doing bad things, please say something. If you've been watching your referer logs, you may now that it's been in testing for a while now.

Ping It

Like weblogs.com, Technorati, and blo.gs, and other services, Yahoo's RSS database can be pinged when your blog updates. This ensures that it will be crawled in a very timely manner. The entry point you need to use is: http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2. It's just like the weblogs.com ping API.

If you'd prefer a REST API, it has that too. For example, to register an update for my blog, I'd fetch this URL:

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog

So you can even to it with a simple bookmark if your weblog software doesn't allow you to add more ping targets. Just create that link and drag it to your button bar, bookmarks, favorites, or whatnot. (I'm working on a quick HOWTO for adding My Yahoo pings to MovableType. It's quite easy, really.)

This is also documented.

Feedback

To repeat something I said earlier, this is a beta. Expect bugs. Don't tell all your friends and grandmothers unless you think they're willing to deal with a few rough edges.

Having said that, the folks who have been building the RSS module would really like to know what you do and don't like about it. For example, if you'd like to subscribe to more than 25 feeds per My Yahoo page, say so. If you think we should publish a "top 100 subscribed to feeds" page, say so. (They're all the rage this month, it seems.) Use the form or leave a comment here. I'll do my best to relay any feedback posted here or on other weblogs.

And finally, have fun with it.

[As I've said before in case it's not abundantly clear, I don't speak for my employer on my weblog. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs some serious medication.]

D-World, Let's talk about Digital Music

Converting One off Visitors to your Blog into Regular Readers

Create Conversation

Build Anticipation

Foster Relationship

Get Sensual

Generate Mystery and Intrigue

Involve Others

Obtain Permission

Create Ownership

A Comprehensive StatCounter.com Review

BritneyGoogle.com

(Whataver)Skype pictures contest

cool

cool

Podscope Promises to Index Entire Spoken Podcast Universe

Replay Music Review

iTunes 4.9 Upgrade with Podcasting Suppport

iVideo, what we (and you) are expecting

iPodderX 3.0 Review

Installation and Upgrade

First Glance

iApp UI

Help

Video!

Full Screen Video

Unread Count Indicators

NewsCaster (Text-to-Speech)

.MAC Backup / Restore

SmartSpace

Playlist Builder

Conclusion [4/5 stars, good]

Server Side Sync - the Next Killer Feature

iTunes Competition

Brilliant Playlists

New Music All the Time

The iPod mini Playlist

shuffling Along

In the Mood

Be Exclusive

The Subgenre Playlist

Backup Your Purchased Music Playlist

The Audiobooks Playlist

Go Out and Make Some of Your Own

Smart Playlists

Apple Color 4G iPod 20/60GB Review

06.29.05

MusicMagic Mixer software review

Musicmatch Jukebox 10

iTunes 4.9 with Podcasting

Anapod Explorer

Tekkeon myPower Battery Pack

Tekkeon myPower Battery Pack

Jeremy Horwitz11.08.04

Download.com Review of iTunes

Download.com Review of iTunes

Apple iTunes 4.8

Apple iTunes 4.8

Now with support for video

New in iTunes 4.8 [updated]

New in iTunes 4.8 [updated]

New iTunes adds video capabilities

Contacts and Calendars

iTunes Does Video

Varying the Video

More Stores

Added Security

Apple iTunes 4.7.1

Apple iTunes 4.7

Apple iTunes 4.7

At a glance

CNET editor's review

Installation and interface

Features

Service and support

Basic specs for Apple iTunes 4.7

XPlay 2

xplay from amazon.com

PopUpCop 2.5

Sony MZ-NH1 Silver Hi-MiniDisc Walkman at Amazon.com

Jeremy Horwitz
11.08.04