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i-Pod?


Father Ted

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A fe years ago I had an Archos GMNi MP3 player, and it was bloody ace, 20Gb held pretty much all my spoken word stuff and music, but it was not reiable and died a death quite quickly (lookin at evil bay this seems to be quite common) Theen i bought a ZENv which is fine, but has a nasty habbit of playing stuff in any old order (which is a PITA with regards y Hitch Hikers MP3's all 154 of them...) Then I bought a Sony affair that was just crap and refused to play a lot of my stuff...So Im thinking about an iPod, do they play pretty much anything or are they limited, will they play files in the order you named them or by the track number that was assigned when they were ripped? Do I have to get everything through i-Tunez?

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Dunno, I use an old IRiver H300 which plays every file format in the world, probably even 78rpm 8) You rip the music using Musicmatch or Windows media player then drag and drop the files to the player using regular windows explorer. It's even got a line in so you can go straight out the back of your home amplifier and record from records or tapes direct.Sadly as it's bigger than a credit card and doesn't play video (who is so desperate to watch a video they'll put up with a 3 inch screen?), IRiver discontinued it a few years ago. 20 or 40Gb versions still pop up on ebay though and you can get new battery kits if you're in the mood to refurbish it.

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I have a 2nd gen 20gb iPod, so probably considered either 'well shit' or even OMG RETRO by young people, but it does the job nicely.3 years in and never had any issues with it. Very battered now too. :lol: Does everything you need it to FT. You need the iTunes program to manage the music on it, but you can bung stuff into that from any old source - not like you have to download everything from the i-store or anything.

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iPods are probably the most limited audio player out there. You ideally need iTunes installed on your home PC although there are workarounds if you're a nerdy geek. It's based on syncing with your home collection rather than just dumping files to it, which really gets my goat, and you can't export files from it back to your PC easily either. Just too closed for me.You also pay loads for the Apple logo, which these days seems to mean "I'm going to break soon and you'll hate me for it".I'd look for another make - the iRiver Spinn is the one I fancy at the moment, got a really nice screen and a nice control method. There's also some Sony OLED-screen walkmans just released which are meant to be quite nice. Finally I'm told the Cowon S9 is really pretty, and has good sound too.Depends what features you really need - are you likely to drop it lots? Flash memory over HDD in that case. Do you like wireless headphones? Some newer ones have bluetooth for just that. Need a big touchscreen for stubby fingers, or do you prefer seperate buttons for navigation, play, stop etc?

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Personally I would avoid an ipod like the plague. They have to convert all your music into aac files (I think its that) and they are over priced for what you get. Also iTunes is the largest pile of wank EVVOOORRRR! It's great on a mac but clunky and slow on a PC. I hate it.Just got the wife a new Sony player. Sony have realised that being picky about what they will play was a bad idea. They also realised that having to use special software to upload with was also a bad idea. This thing is simple drag and drop. You can use Windows Media Player too to upload stuff to it. Seems to do the job + you can watch video on the tiny screen. Great 4 watching foreign films with subtitles :-|

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I've had a couple of ipods....and original 20gb type which I had for about a year or so and the current one is a 30gb ipod video which I've had for 2 years.I like them - dead easy to use and (touch wood) not had a problem with either. Scrolling through tracks/albums/artists couldn't be easier. Brilliant for the car too, got a griffin itrip - just plug in, stick the ipod on shuffle and thats it for the journey.I think apple sell refurbed ones from the istore fairly reasonably priced.

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Missus bought me my first ipod last year for me burfday init, the first one died within a couple of days when I connected it up to the car stereo (i have one of those head units that charges the ipod and allows you to control the ipod from the head unit) but got a new one under warranty and now turn everything off when connecting.Itunes is a big pile of wank, maybe because I'm not a geek and seem to have that old man syndrome where operating the most basic electrical devices becomes frustrating to the point that I can't be arsed. You don't have to buy tunes from itunes-out of all of my tracks I think only one of them was purchased from itunes, I have bought some of their tv shows though but itunes is rather expensive. The alternative is to download for free but I have neither the time, patience or ability to do that so most of the tunes on my ipod are just ripped straight from my cd collection.If anyone knows how to transfer ipod contents to your hard drive after wiping clean the hard drive I'd be interested to know.

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Itunes is a big pile of wank, maybe because I'm not a geek and seem to have that old man syndrome where operating the most basic electrical devices becomes frustrating to the point that I can't be arsed.

I am pretty much a geek and I think that iTunes is a big pile of wank too.
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Itunes is a big pile of wank, maybe because I'm not a geek and seem to have that old man syndrome where operating the most basic electrical devices becomes frustrating to the point that I can't be arsed.

I am pretty much a geek and I think that iTunes is a big pile of wank too.
iTunes is a massive piece of toss, badly coded, scatty and bloody annoying.

 

I have an OMG WANK 4G which apparently is 'massive' and 'shit' because it hasn't got a colour screen that drains the battery flat in 8 seconds should you want to skip tracks. It will play MP3s as it was made before the Apple toss bags decided to be fussy about file formats.

 

I never managed to match the battery life claimed by corebollocks, and the HD crashed twice which meant I had to run it flat before it would reboot. Also the supplied earphones are the biggest pile of shit in the known universe. Fucking Gameboy earphones have a better bass response than those things. I even tried those Shure E2cs, and they were barely any better. Also, why the fuck is there no 'on' button?

 

The best piece of software I can recommend for an iPod of that age would be YamiPod, you can drag and drop stuff to and from the iPod as it reads it like a hard disc. Interface isn't too geeky either.

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Meh, I have the cheapest of the cheap (1GB Shuffle thing which cost £25, a present from my wife last Xmas) and while iTunes is a faff, I've copied every track (not whole CD) I like from my collection and still have about 600Mb left of free space - about 7.5 hours of music is currently on it. I went to the Pound Shop and got a tape adaptor as I still have the factory stereos in both my 405s, job done (and ideal for the estate as it only gets radio reception when you are parked directly below a transmitter).Having said that I'm sure there are better MP3 players around for the money, but this setup works well for me.

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I'm well into my tech, and use a netbook or my phone to provide tunes on the go.So while I don't have an iPod, from all the press and web pages I digest consensus seems to be iPods are overpriced and the lack of ease replacing batteries is an issue. Creative MP3 players seem to get good reviews though.

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I bought my first pod a couple of weeks ago. I love it! :-)I-tunes isn't all that bad really, its useable enough to do what you need to do.I paid £145 for a 16g nano which is big enough to store all the music I have bought in the last 20 years and then some.I probably spent that much on batteries for my previous pound shop quality Alba mp3 player, and that only held about 50 songs. Pod isn't full at 3500.

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Apple have always been very clever with their products, marketing them with aspirational values and prestige, no matter how flawed, expensive and arsey the goods are. The ipod still has that 'wow' factor and is very intuative to use - I think I'm right in assuming most apple phones and music players come with no instructions. Ipods have a simple logical interface and apparently a huge amount of research has gone into making the touch screen experience enjoyable but it has some pretty severe constraints, for example you can only download/access/delete music through your own machine. The inaccessable battery too is an issue, but can be solved through so called specialists. The Itunes application itself works well enough, I don't tend to buy music through it, I simply use it as a hub to store/upload music and films. To the cynic its an overpriced constricting, pretentious, glorified portable hard drive, to others its a vital piece of useful kit. I bought a cheapy tesco's mp3 player (512mb for under a tenner) to listen to music while I was working in the clay studios at uni, a couple of years back and thats all you'll ever need if you just need a music player, but if you're into the user experience then I'd get an ipod.

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If anyone knows how to transfer ipod contents to your hard drive after wiping clean the hard drive I'd be interested to know.

Officially, you can't - this is what infuriates me. Apple want your music to all be stored on your PC, but will then sell you an iPod big enough to hold it all in one go. But if your hard drive dies and you start your collection again, when you next connect your iPod it'll merrily delete all the stuff on it.There are a few solutions though, EphPod rings a bell as something that supports 'wrong-way' transfer. They're quite buggy though.95% of other music players just act as an external drive (look for one that offers Mass Storage Support), so if you bork your computer you can just copy all the music back off again. Plus other docs too, you can use it as a portable drive and carry round pictures etc if it floats your boat.iTunes is bloated, poorly designed and is the enemy. End of. Even Media Player is easier to use!
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I've got an iPod, about four years old and a bit battered but works fine. battery life can bit a bit short but as I mainly use it in the car or around the house that doesn't really concern me. From what I use it for, iTunes is fine as far as I'm concerned and I'm quite happy with it.

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Ipods are like Sinclair stuff used to be - you never know if it will work when you first start it up :lol: . Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't. If it dosen't you send it back and spin the roulette wheel again with the next one! I've never moved beyond a Discman, don't really have any interest in 'computer file' music.I do know from friend's machines (all types, not just Ipods) that they sound like shit when put through a decent home hi fi speaker, much worse than CDs. For this reason I don't see the point of domestic Ipod docks at all, particularly Bose ones that cost £300 or so.

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See, another thing that future generations will miss out on. Kids will never again see endless strings of cassette tape blowing gently from a hedge whence it has been luzzed after being unravelled by a 19.99 motorworld tape deck. Just like they will never see white dog poo, or have to find porno by combing hedgerows ditches & railway sidings.

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Kids will never again see endless strings of cassette tape blowing gently from a hedge...

Just like they will never see white dog poo.

Posted Image

 

Mine have, we had a family outing to see this pile..

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I love cassette tapes, mainly because it feels like you have to make a bit of effort when fast forwarding and rewinding. None of this "next track" stuff.

 

However for mobile music pursuits I tend to use the Autoshite equivalent, a Sony Hi-MD player:

Posted Image

 

This was the last gasp for the Minidisc and to be honest a very good one - basically they got rid of the feeble copy-protection system of "NetMD" so you could just transfer freely from the PC with no fuss, but the main point was that you could now get 1GB discs which can store about 20 hours of music in nice quality. I'm still on the single disc that came with it and can play all my old regular discs too!

 

I made the leap to Hi-MD about a year ago - some catalogue shop was closing down and with staff discount I could get the best one they had for something like £15 (down from the original £200 odd). They had two so I got both of them, just in case.

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I've had Ipods in the past but I-Tunes is infurating. It just doesn't do what it should do, Apple faggots.When you click stuff or try and drag etc. it just won't behave as a pc program should and frankly I don't know how they get away with it. Might be fine for the Apple nerds but for anyone else it's toss. :-)

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Thanks for the replies chaps, im still as confused as ever but its given me food for thought. The Hi-Md looks quite interesting but trawling the web I cant find one as cheap as your s Dan... But will research it a bit more and et you know what I eventually buy. The main thing is something that will play every episode of H2G2 in the order I numbered them, not the trck number assigned when they were ripped,Ahh, c-90 tapes - much better in that respect.

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I bought a 64mb Creative MP3 player for 100 quid in 2001. (!)Missus bought me a 120GB 'Classic' IPod for (I think) 180 quid at xmas. I've nearly filled it. Apple make really quality stuff that is built well and -works- in the current market where everything is plastic and throw-away. I'll keep this one for a while.

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Kids will never again see endless strings of cassette tape blowing gently from a hedge whence it has been luzzed after being unravelled by a 19.99 motorworld tape deck. Just like they will never see white dog poo, or have to find porno by combing hedgerows ditches & railway sidings.

Ah the joys of finding a manky old copy of Fiesta or Razzle in a wooded area, halcyon days...halcyon days :D I think someone should start a campaign to randomly drop porn into wooded areas (maybe by Hercules) so that part of our heritage is not lost forever and that future generations of hormonal young chaps can enjoy a soggy picture of a Razzle Pile-Up.
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The main thing is something that will play every episode of H2G2 in the order I numbered them, not the trck number assigned when they were ripped

Have you just changed the name, or have you right-clicked on the track, gone into "properties", clicked on the tab on the right("summary"), selected "advanced" and changed the track number in the metadata? :wink::wink:
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The main thing is something that will play every episode of H2G2 in the order I numbered them, not the trck number assigned when they were ripped

Have you just changed the name, or have you right-clicked on the track, gone into "properties", clicked on the tab on the right("summary"), selected "advanced" and changed the track number in the metadata? :wink::wink:

??Que?? :?

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