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The iRiver iHP-120 that I ordered for xmas finally came yesterday and it goes without saying that Ive been starting it through my version of audio boot camp. No pictures yet, thatll be today when I get ahold of a friends digital camera, but here are my initial impressions. Im not going to make any of them too long, or an any order, as I dont want to start writing a review yet .
It fades in/out just like a hand fade for those of you who know what I mean - The package is well put together for media production. You can buy x of these off the shelf, hand them to your specialists, and have great sounding interviews, reports, notes, whatever come back the same day.
There are modes that are switched using an A-B button on the side of the unit which act as a GUI Fn Key but all major decisions switching to the FM radio station, deleting a file, etc are mapped to long key holds.
Pity the joystick on the unit seems so much clunkier than the iPods scroll wheel. Edit: I didnt get that you were talking about the main unit instead of the remote unit until after I posted. But my opinion still applies, I dont know if a jog dial would have been better as everything is very well tied to a nice UI. It should also be noted that Im basing use of this feature off of the MiniDisc unit that I use for recording, as I have never used an iPod. Might get to in a month, but its hard to compare a unit to something youve never used. Personally, the main unit is so well put together that I dont think you need a secondary control except as a reader. For the There are three wheels on the side that work fine for Navigation, Volume, and something else. There are also seperate hold buttons for the main unit and the hand unit-so you can put the main unit in your pocket and still be able to use everything else. Dunno if this is standard, but it was easily comprendable coming from a MiniDisc with the same feature.
Hey Skyfalcon, I ordered the iHP-120 from NewEgg and according to Fedex tracking, it should arrive here today by 4:30pm Pacific. Im truly excited to see what this swiss army knife of MP3 players can do. Ill play with it for the day and then post my impressions as well.
I like to play mine on shuffle so i dont know how the battery life is. But It lasts at least 10 hours and they say after 5 years of 2 hours play a day the battery will still last 80 of the original charge so thats damn good if you ask me.
Shuffle play is great i use it all the time and you can select how much variety you want to use in the shuffle A couple of other things. It has a great optical out and you can use the EQ settings to sound GREAT on your surround sound ysstem when hooked to the stereo. The remote can do everything and is a great addition reducing the clutter while changing sounds when walking or running. There is no on the fly playlist yet but im sure that is in the future. I am very happy with this player and ipod is going to have to step it up!
I imagined that would be tough to do without a database thus needing software to transfer the songs. No on-the-fly playlists is kind of a bummer, since thats one of the few iPod features I like and use.
Oh, you can read text files, or so the manual says, I havnt actually done it. Also, you can install really non-intrusive software to do the database thing so you can sort my artist, album, genre, and song name. Basically, you install it, then in Explorer, you right click on the IHP drive and do like re-create database or whatever and it does it. So, I just transfer my songs like I would to any other hard drive, then do that little thing and my database is updated.
Just out of curiosity, are you listing those as major features in comparison to some other player? I dont know about others but iPod mounts as a hard drive as well though you cant load music that way Enjoy your new toy .
Also, you can install really non-intrusive software to do the database thing so you can sort my artist, album, genre, and song name. Basically, you install it, then in Explorer, you right click on the IHP drive and do like re-create database or whatever and it does it. So, I just transfer my songs like I would to any other hard drive, then do that little thing and my database is updated.
And it does not recharge off the usb connection Yes, but will it fuction? Nope, not that I can tell, just get a connected screen while it transfers And yes, mine just came in, so I can now answer questions based on experiance rather than from just having read 8921349823498 reviews p .
Hooray to finding a NewEgg package on my doorstep just about an hour ago, loaded with electronic goodness. Inside: Logitech MX700 mouse, Func optical mouse pad, and the holy grail of Godly goodness, the iHP-120 from iRiver.
First impressions of my new MP3 player: Will you marry me, you tiny little black box of musical magic? First of all, the goddamned, sonofabitch, hard to open plastic clamshell package that the unit came packed in deceptively held a lot of accessories and other assorted stuff.
Alls I did was plug the USB cable up to my PC, the iRiver was immediately recognized, I transfered some WMA music files, and that was it. The included earbuds are functional, at least until I get some more loot together to buy some Shures or something. The remote is genius, but I dont think Ill be using that a whole lot I hate having more wires than I need, but well see. The backlit-in-blue screen is easy to read for me at least and the menu screens are easy to navigate through for those with half a brain.
And important for people like me who listen to albums when you play an album does it sort the tracks by name or by ID3 track ? I really hate seeing 01 - Blah Blah on the restricted space of an LCD where just Blah Blah will do.
Im assuming iRiver does not have such restrictions so it is an exception to the rule and practically a feature. I was thinking that he meant DRM on the files themselves rather than the ease with which one can extract the files from the player.
When it updates the db it reads in all the id3 info and you can choose to either display the filename or the id3 info. In either case you can browse by filename/directory structure, but you can only browse by album/artist/genre/etc if you build the db. The db takes extra time to load after you turn it on, up to 30 seconds if the hard drive is full. Otherwise it loads up in less than 10 seconds if you just want to browse by filename/folder. So far I have been very happy, I filled up the hard drive in a bit over an hour it gets 47megabytes per second with usb2 on my comp.
Yup, it acts just like a usb hard drive with zero software installed on it. Matter of fact it enables a recycle bin and system restore if you are using xp ug, had to turn that crap off. The only software this thing comes with is something that adds a single right click option to the hard drive that shows up that allows you to reindex the database after you change whats on the hard drive. Note you only have to reindex if you want to make sure the id3 info is current, you can always browse by file/directory. For newbies this might be a bad thing, but for people who have well tagged and organized mp3 collections already its ABSOLUTELY FRIGGAN PERFECT. The only way it could be any better is if the option to index the id3 info was built into the player, but apparently it doesnt have enough horsepower to do it. I know nothing about WMP, I take it you mean windows media player? And I take it to mean you CANT stand all the shitty software these companies throw at you. In which case the hp120 is for you, because as I pointed up above, its about as good as it gets as far as no software .
I understand the aggravation, which is why I chose this unit and am so damn proud that one company got it right. You can even install software on this thing and run it, albiet slowly if it requires any data transfer, like a 20gig thumbdrive. Oh, and like a certain cute pink, female Power Ranger I met, the iRiver looks a hell of a lot better in person.
PeterB Ars Tribunus Militum et Battlefront Moderator et Subscriptor Tribus: Orcalopolis The views and opinions expressed in this post are strictly those of its...
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