Circa April
The one you're sure must be made, the worst kind of sorry.
Circa April, for Illustration Friday.
DRM? Boooo!
I still have faith we can get DRM to fall under its own weight and annoyance in the future. It is such a bad idea. I bought myself a chinese generic unbranded mp3 player. Long live unrestricted media management. Oh, and btw, it's also angels and devils for Illustration Friday.
MP4 Digital Player Review
I bought myself an mp3 player. Finally. It was going to be the fourth time than I almost bought one, but this was the definitive one. I had two important rules about the whole subject.
I was close. This one costed me $113.99 USD so I did a bit of cheating there, but I wasn't too comfident carrying around more than the equivalent to $350 ARS in my pocket all the time, and (as it was proved with my spycam) that is an important usage factor. So here it is:
Wow that almost looks like a nano. Yes, it does. It's exactly the same size. The only difference is the buttons, that aren't a smooth scroll like in the real nano, but only five simple buttons; and of course, the luxurious and simple apple UI. Apart from that, the thing is a chinese generic beauty.
You can see it doesn't have any kind of brand, not even one like TOPMARK or POWER or maybe EUROSTAR, nothing. It doesn't even say where it was made. The back is made of metal that loves fingerprints, just like the real one, and the front cover is black. The lcd screen is color, and 128x128 if I'm correct. It also has a very decent refresh rate.
Let's take a look at the features:
So that's pretty much it. The thing has a flash memory of 1GB, which is enough for me so far, an internal battery (which was against my first desires, but then liked it) that lasts for about 5 hours or so of playback, and charges to 100% in about 3, or to 80% in 2 hours aprox. Good enough. It connects through standard USB cable, and charges through that too. It comes with a handy AC adaptor to charge it without the computer, and that was a blessing too.
Oh, it's recognized as a generic external drive by Windows so you can do all the USB stick things you wish, like putting a TorPark there, or maybe MyPodder (very useful). I'll explain any of this further is someone asks me to, but I think this is long enough as it is for now. I've also found an useful forum of user of these kind of players where you can ask for advice or help or find several utilities, test files, etc. They look all different but have the same chipset and similar firmware inside!
UPDATE 1: David found a pdf manual for these kind of generic players, there are usually small differences between models but those are mainly on the graphics. Thanks David!
UPDATE 2: My glass protective screen broke and I fixed it DIY style. Check my post for the whole story, step by step.
UPDATE 3: Due to great demand, I've uploaded my dump.bin file extracted which should be my firmware backup. You can get it at http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H0Y19W9P or http://www.filefactory.com/file/c8c093/
No need to say I don't encourage people to go and change their firmwares, and even in a desperate situation it's more likely mine won't work in yours, but maybe, maybe it helps someone that already knows how to reset and flash it in case of need.
- It cannot be over the $100 USD.
- It should have at least 1GB of memory.
I was close. This one costed me $113.99 USD so I did a bit of cheating there, but I wasn't too comfident carrying around more than the equivalent to $350 ARS in my pocket all the time, and (as it was proved with my spycam) that is an important usage factor. So here it is:
Wow that almost looks like a nano. Yes, it does. It's exactly the same size. The only difference is the buttons, that aren't a smooth scroll like in the real nano, but only five simple buttons; and of course, the luxurious and simple apple UI. Apart from that, the thing is a chinese generic beauty.
You can see it doesn't have any kind of brand, not even one like TOPMARK or POWER or maybe EUROSTAR, nothing. It doesn't even say where it was made. The back is made of metal that loves fingerprints, just like the real one, and the front cover is black. The lcd screen is color, and 128x128 if I'm correct. It also has a very decent refresh rate.
Let's take a look at the features:
- MUSIC It plays MP3s, both CBR and VBR, as well as WMA and WAV. Sorry, no OGG here (I was surprised, considering it's from the eastern hemisphere) so I guess i'm back to Lame encoding. That was a shame. The audio quality is pretty good, and the volume is enough (more than safe anyways) it has some interference which you can notice at very low volume settings and without external noise, coming from the player itself. I guess the quality of the components and the shielding of each connection must have to do with that.
- RECORD & VOICE It records wav at 32kbps and also a compressed strange codec that can be restored with included software, for extra duretion. The quality is not good, of course, it has an embedded mic and a automatic gain that is very strong, which makes it very good for recording a lecture but absolutely useless for a concert. In VOICE you can browse and listen to your recordings.
- FM RADIO Yes it has a radio included, and it's internal, uses the headphones as antenna too, and the quality is very very good. Has 20 memories for stations and an autoscan with customizable threshold. Nice and useful.
- TEXT for viewing of simpe TXT files.
- PICTURE You can see JPGs and GIFs here, browse by folder, etc.
- PHONE BOOK Haven't and probably won't use this at all, you have to manually edit the info on the computer on a special format. It's also too risky to have that info unencrypted on an easy-to-stole item such as that. A cellphone is easy enough.
- GAME Three games to choose from, a Tetris clone named Bricks, one also known called BoxMan, and another called Color Bead. Nice feature for bus trips.
- MOVIE It plays movie clips with sound encoded in AMV format . It's an obscure chinese format but there's am encoder available on the net all over the place, and works. It's obviously not the main use of the gadget, but it's a fun feature that I've used quite a bit to show short clips taken with the spycam and does the job. The compression is quite good too (should be considering it's a 128x128 video) so putting an entire TV episode or even a feature film there is not a problem.
- SETTINGS You can configure LCD brightness, auto power off, clock, encrypted volume, language, and see memory and firmware info.
So that's pretty much it. The thing has a flash memory of 1GB, which is enough for me so far, an internal battery (which was against my first desires, but then liked it) that lasts for about 5 hours or so of playback, and charges to 100% in about 3, or to 80% in 2 hours aprox. Good enough. It connects through standard USB cable, and charges through that too. It comes with a handy AC adaptor to charge it without the computer, and that was a blessing too.
Oh, it's recognized as a generic external drive by Windows so you can do all the USB stick things you wish, like putting a TorPark there, or maybe MyPodder (very useful). I'll explain any of this further is someone asks me to, but I think this is long enough as it is for now. I've also found an useful forum of user of these kind of players where you can ask for advice or help or find several utilities, test files, etc. They look all different but have the same chipset and similar firmware inside!
UPDATE 1: David found a pdf manual for these kind of generic players, there are usually small differences between models but those are mainly on the graphics. Thanks David!
UPDATE 2: My glass protective screen broke and I fixed it DIY style. Check my post for the whole story, step by step.
UPDATE 3: Due to great demand, I've uploaded my dump.bin file extracted which should be my firmware backup. You can get it at http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H0Y19W9P or http://www.filefactory.com/file/c8c093/
No need to say I don't encourage people to go and change their firmwares, and even in a desperate situation it's more likely mine won't work in yours, but maybe, maybe it helps someone that already knows how to reset and flash it in case of need.
Nokia 1100 custom Tehet
Drawn with permanent markers (we'll see how permanent they are!) on the back cover of my loyal Nokia 1100. Long life monocrome, monophonic, simple UIs, minimal keypads, and cellphones with flashlights.