Trey’s Blog

I recently found this guy who had issues with his GoGear unit decided to remove the covers to see what was underneath. Check out the details and pics here.

Thanks, A Day in the Life of Lynx.

I finally brokedown and purchased my very first iPod. I decided against the currently overpriced video iPods as I have heard reports of poor battery life when watching movies on the device. I found Apple.com selling refurbished iPod Photo/Color models for about $200. I could resist and now I have it. I’ve never had a problem with Apple products and this time is no different. I only have a problem with them pricing themselves out of my market. Compared to the other two mp3 players I have owned, this one costs about twice as much and seems worth it for a few features alone. The first feature is the ability to pick up with the last point of listening without thinking twice. My other two always startup and play from the beginning of the playlist or even worse, the menu system. The second feature is not really a feature at all, but proof that iPods are huge. Everywhere you look, iPods and iPod accessories are available. I haven’t check yet, but I’m sure you can found iSomething for sale at the local Walgreens. If you haven’t seen or played with an iPod, find a friend and play with theirs.

I admit it. I’ve been slacking on keeping my first hobby site up to date with the latest models and drivers. I’ll be taking the next couple of days and seeing how much I can get updated, then perhaps I’ll create some new pages and dump some of the useless pages. Perhaps a new design is in order as well. Who knows.

CybershotCentral

As seen at Engadget:

Philips is pushing out two new GoGear HDD players, the 6330 and 1850, that score you 30GB and 8GB of storage respectively. The devices are PlaysForSure, and the 1850 has an estimated eighteen-hour battery life and a debut price of $250, while the 6330 chooses to remain aloof. They both should be dropping in the US sometime this summer.

While I was perusing through the hot deals of the morning, I ran across this new beauty. Toshiba is now a player (punn intended) in the DivX DVD market. The model SD-4980 has DivX and MPEG-4 support as well as HD upconversion via HDMI. Check it out. Did I mention, it is also under $100?

Introducing the DVP-5900.

I just saw this online at CostCo.com and it is only $80. That is not bad for a DivX playing upconverting DVD Player. The manual, as well has a high res photo, can be found here. Buy it at CostCo.

I’m still contemplating getting one for the HD upconversion. I currently have three of the older DVP-642 units, so I would either sell one of those or move it to the last TV I have without one. $80 is not bad for the HDMI feature alone, much less a player that plays DivX videos. Oh… what to do… what to do?

I know Apple may have a large chunk of the marketshare on portable music players, but they are really the innovators when it comes to new and unique design. I think if they lowered to their price within reach of more average consumers, like myself, then they would most definitely dominate the market and possibly eliminate much of the competition. To be honest, I’d love to get an iPod, but they are priced just out of my budget, which says a lot since I probably dump a load of money on gadgets in general. Here is a for instance: I have a Philips HDD070 which does its job well, and only cost $80 for a refurbished unit. I think they sell for $160 new, but that is even too high. For the equivalent iPod, the Nano 2GB, the price is ~$200. If this pricing structure were set at $150/$200 instead of $200/$250, I think that would throw Apple over the top of the market. In fact, if it were priced as such, I’d likely pickup the 4GB for $200 just out of principle. The pricing I’m suggesting applies to all models, except the Shuffle. I don’t think the shuffle belongs in the iPod family. The best iPod out right now is the 60GB iPod Video for $400. That’s $400!! That is the price of a decent camcorder, or half the price of a decent TV. $350 may not make that much difference, but it would be the most expensive iPod on the market.

Side note: If you didn’t see Saturday Night Live last night, the Weekend Report had a parody of Steve Jobs, and they poked fun at the short lifespan of each iPod, meaning newer and better is always around the corner. In the skit, he said the newest release was the iPod Micro, about the size of a miniSD card, which he then joked about it being obsolete by Thanksgiving. Then he pulled another out of his pocket called the iPod Pequeño, about the size of a Pez candy, that would hold 1 million songs and be obsolete by Christmas. After that he reached into his pocket one more time and pulled out nothing apparently, but he had his fingers pinched together and called it the iPod Invisa, which would hold 8 millions songs and float in the air when you dropped it. Anyway, the entire thing was poking fun at the iPod Nano, which was out for a week before the iPod Video came out to take away attention.

One thing to note here is that anything can be a scam, so trust no one.

Free iPods is something I just ran across last week and decided to take a look at for myself. What most people picture when seeing something like this is someone just taking your money or some sort of pyramid scam where the last one gets stuck out. This is actually quite different and ingenius on the part of whomever thought of it first. What is basically going on is commission based sales. Companies like RealNetworks, Citibank and other reputable companies are offering top dollar for marketing and referrals, so a company like freepremiumipods.com will receive commissions for each person they drive to these companies. In comes the iPod. The iPod is probably the most reputable, best designed, and most in demand gadget on the market today. FreePremiumIPods.com is giving people exactly what they want, something (free iPod) for nothing. In most cases, there is a Credit Application you’ll need to fill out and tell several of your friends about the whole deal and everyone can get something for nothing. FreePremiumIPods.com makes there money on the commissions (minus the iPods sent out to those who actually have 8 referrals complete the process as well — this is similar to mail-in rebates where not everyone will follow through).

In summary, the end user is really out nothing, but has the opportunity to gain a free ($400 valued) iPod assuming they can get 8 referrals to participate. That’s it!

I chose the RealNetworks offer for a 15-day trial of their SuperPass for online access to entertainment whatchas and whozits. I’ll post my findings in a couple of weeks to let everyone know how the process pans out.

Check it out for yourself.

For those looking for a way to sync your music files with your Philips GoGear media player, you’ll likely find that MusicMatch is the officially supported tool. However, for those who wish to use this with Linux, MusicMatch is not an option. It only took me two minutes to find this set of tools available for the Linux community provided by the Linux community.

Linux Digital Media Manager (LDMM) has the ability to add and delete MP3s from the device, and manage the album and artist databases. It has a GUI front-end and a straightforward interface. It was written in Python specifically for the HDD060, but should work fine with the HDD070 as well.

openGogear is a suite of tools for working with Philips GoGear HDD0xx MP3 players. Though these devices can be mounted with the standard usb-storage module, these tools implement the file indexing required to hear MP3s. openGogear has a debian package available. JGoGear is the Java-based GUI front-end for openGogear.

PyGogear is obviously written in Python exchanges information about the tracks from a Sqlite database file, usually named MyDb. This program reads the ID3v1 tags from the MP3 files placed on the player and inserts the most important ones in the database. There is no GUI available yet, but it is in the works.

pymaj was rewritten from pyGogear 5.8.4 with some changes and folders support added. Program can read the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags from the MP3 files placed on the player and inserts them in the database. M3U playlists are supported as well.

See my previous post regarding Philips GoGear here.

Update: Ubuntu (Breezy Badger) mounted the HDD070 as ‘Philips MassStorage-Disc: 1.9GB Removable Volume’ available under ‘Computer’. Its actual location is /media/usbdisk/. Under this device, you’ll find the following structure:

/_system/
    /firmware/
        /FWimage.bak
        /FWimage.oke
    /media/
        /audio/
            all mp3 files here...
            MyDb (the file that contains the ID3 index information)
/drmv1pm.tmp

I purchased a Samsung SIR-T451 last week and it arrived today. Sadly, it’ll take some work to get the SR15 antenna I bought from AntennasDirect mounted and connected, so no HD for me tonight. I’m actually very busy with Core Web Technology stuff, so it may be a week or so before I can even consider getting on my roof (and holding on for dear life) to mount my antenna.

Philips has always been one of my favorite brands, but I don’t really care for the Philips/Magnavox branded products. I noticed this little camera (KEY010) about two months ago and I’ve found myself self tempted to buy one at least once per month. I think most of these things would be a ‘nice to have,’ but they might end up being more novelty than anything else. Philips’ GoGear line of consumer electronics has taken the bulky out of quality. They’ve taken products that we all know and love, and shrunk them into tiny devices that allow us to carry more of them around in one pocket. Most of these devices are the same size and shape as a pen drive. I’m impressed with the camcorder. More information About GoGear.

KEY010 : 2 Megapixel Digital Camera (Froogled at $69.96)

Ready to wear, Ready to go

• Fashionable neck-strap
• Ultra lightweight magnesium body
• Small and wearable - 45 grams

USB Plug & Play

• Direct USB for easy file transfers!
• Direct battery recharge via USB

Your pictures, your data on the go

• Store and carry your data files
• Snap up to 300 quality 2 Megapixel pictures
• 128MB internal flash memory

KEY014 : Up to 8 hours of music (Froogled at $89.55)

Ready to wear, Ready to go

• Small and wearable - 31 grams
• Ultra lightweight magnesium body
• External battery pack
• Intuitive neck-strap remote control

Easy, intuitive music experience

• SuperSkip™ navigation
• Direct USB for easy file transfer!
• Direct battery recharge via USB
• Backlit LCD display

Your music, your data - on the go

• 256MB: 8 hours of music
• MP3 WMA playback
• Store and carry your data files

KEY019 : MPEG4 Camcorder + photos + MP3 (Froogled at $149.99)

Ready to wear, Ready to go

• Small and wearable - 60 grams
• Ultra lightweight magnesium body
• External battery pack

Smart camcorder with direct USB

• Microdisplay Viewfinder
• Direct USB for easy file transfer!
• Direct battery recharge via USB
• 5-Key in-cord remote control to easily control your music

Multimedia anytime, anywhere

• Up to 25 minutes of MPEG4 video
• Snap up to 200 2 Megapixel pictures
• Enjoy MP3 playback
• 128MB internal flash memory
• Store and carry your data files

HDD077 : Up to 1000 songs and FM Radio (Froogled at $149.99)

Small and light makes it truly wearable

• Ultra lightweight and strong magnesium body
• Fashionable neck-strap - wear it everywhere!
• Dress up your player with colorful groovy stickers

Easy, intuitive music experience on the go

• Simple and easy-to-use interface menus
• SuperPlay™ provides hassle-free one-touch jukebox playback
• SuperScroll™ navigation finds songs in a simple, fast way

Your music, your data - on the go, everyday

• 2GB (up to 1,000 wma songs) capacity for music and data on the go
• More music built-in FM radio
• USB mass storage to store and carry your data files
• 10 hour battery life

HDD120 : Direct MP3 Recording (Froogled at $183.60)

Capture all your favorite music

• Record directly to MP3 via analog or digital line-inputs
• Make voice memos in MP3
• High-Speed USB2.0

Easy, intuitive music experience

• Simple and easy-to-use menus
• SuperScroll™ navigation

Your music, your data - on the go, everyday

• 20GB: up to 10,000 songs
• Store and carry your data files
• 10 hour battery life
• Super-slim design fits perfectly in your pocket

About a month ago, I spotted this mp3 player mentioned on a blog and I couldn’t figure out why it hadn’t been marketed yet. I’m guessing this company spent most of their time securing a deal with Wal-Mart because they seem to be the only ones selling this little gem.

mobiBLU’s DAH1500i is now considered the world’s smallest mp3 player, which has a cube shape about the size of a quarter (USD). It comes in two different storage sizes (512MB and 1GB) and six different colors (Black, Pink, Blue, Silver, Orange and Red). For something so small and the technology being used here, you’d think you’d pay $200+, but that is not the case. Wal-Mart is selling the 512MB model for $99 and the 1GB for $129. Obviously the 1GB is the better deal and most everyone else thought so too because it is completely sold out now. Check out the line-up here at WalMart.com.