[Jonathon Watkins]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3652487.stm

The BBC is carrying a story about consumer preferences for digital media players. "The perfect size for a portable music player is one that can hold 1,000 songs, a study suggests. A survey carried out by Jupiter Research has found that almost all the consumers questioned were storing no more than 1,000 songs on their home PC. Jupiter said digital music players with capacities of 5,000 songs will provide too much space for most people."

Too much space???? :duh: Pardon? Is there such a thing? 1000 songs equates to around 4Gb. The same size in fact as the new generation of Microdrives and Compact Flash cards. Funny that. :wink:


Large enough for you?

"Consumers were also wary of gadgets that gave them too much storage space, such as those made by Creative, Archos and Dell. But the report said that almost half of those thinking about buying a portable player, 45%, would like one that could play video. The report speculated that this could lead a push to players with bigger hard drives on board. Other features that matter to consumers are rechargeable batteries (55%), small size (52%) and the ability to connect it up to a PC (49%). Few of those questioned had a preference for the format of the music being stored."

There they go again – too much space! I own 30Gb of music (in MP3 format ripped at 192kbs). How am I meant to fit that on one of these' perfectly' sized players? However give me a 4Gb Microdrive for my Pocket PC, or better yet, a Pocket PC with a built in hard drive, and I'll reconsider. All my media needs in one device? Ta very much. :mrgreen: How about you guys? What size is 'ideal' for you and in what circumstances?

[Jonathon Watkins]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3652487.stm

The BBC is carrying a story about consumer preferences for digital media players. "The perfect size for a portable music player is one that can hold 1,000 songs, a study suggests. A survey carried out by Jupiter Research has found that almost all the consumers questioned were storing no more than 1,000 songs on their home PC. Jupiter said digital music players with capacities of 5,000 songs will provide too much space for most people."

Too much space???? :duh: Pardon? Is there such a thing? 1000 songs equates to around 4Gb. The same size in fact as the new generation of Microdrives and Compact Flash cards. Funny that. :wink:


Large enough for you?

"Consumers were also wary of gadgets that gave them too much storage space, such as those made by Creative, Archos and Dell. But the report said that almost half of those thinking about buying a portable player, 45%, would like one that could play video. The report speculated that this could lead a push to players with bigger hard drives on board. Other features that matter to consumers are rechargeable batteries (55%), small size (52%) and the ability to connect it up to a PC (49%). Few of those questioned had a preference for the format of the music being stored."

There they go again – too much space! I own 30Gb of music (in MP3 format ripped at 192kbs). How am I meant to fit that on one of these' perfectly' sized players? However give me a 4Gb Microdrive for my Pocket PC, or better yet, a Pocket PC with a built in hard drive, and I'll reconsider. All my media needs in one device? Ta very much. :mrgreen: How about you guys? What size is 'ideal' for you and in what circumstances?

[Tom W.M.]

4GB is ideal? Give me a break. If I get a hard drive MP3 player, I want to put all of my music on it—and preferably keep it only there. That way I could save a whole lot of HD space on my PC, and have all of my music consolidated into one device (No more confusing differences between collections—yay!). The price difference between 4GB and much larger size players isn't enough—if I thought that any of these devices were worth the money (for me) at these prices, I'd get the bigger one.

[jonathanchoo]

I have to agree that 4Gb is too much just for music unless people start ripping their music up to 256kbps bitrate.

But I don't care about music much, I have 250 minidiscs to play on my Sony MZ-E900 with a 40 hour battery life.

What I care is video. That is why I am keenly awaiting Archos' latest AV500 series with its 480x704 high resolution screen and build in 40Gb HDD running LinuxOS.

[droppedd]

and like of course has to be said to any post like this.

"640Kb of RAM should be enough for anyone."
-bill gates 1981

in all honesty, i have a 1.5 gig mp3 player and it's fine for my needs, even though i encode at fairly high quality (~206 kbps average VBR mp3s). It may be a little short for, say, a weeklong business trip, but for that a 4 gig player would still be plenty.

The only reason i'd ever need a bigger HDD player is if i'm keeping movies on it or using it as a digital camera photo wallet (like the archos with the CF drive). I mean, i have 42 gigs of mp3s. while having the choice to play all of them whenever i wanted would be nice... just having a selection of a few dozen is plenty, thank you very much. i'd rather save on the size and cost of the player. and synching the player every week or two to choose music isn't that big of a deal.

oh and this should show how wonderfully developed the tastes of the mp3 player market is (not to mention the brilliant survey design):

"and the ability to connect it up to a PC (49%)"
huh? how are the other 51% planning to get mp3s onto their jukebox?

[DrtyBlvd]

63.8G here; and most of that at 128 to be honest (For the moment, anyways)

I have a 20G iPod, and wish I had the 40. :roll:

[that_kid]

65 gigs here but I rip @ 256k but I still have thousand of records and a few hundred more cd's to rip. I have a 40 gig ipod and I wish it were 120 gigs.

[jonathanchoo]

Originally Posted by droppedd

i'd rather save on the size and cost of the player. and synching the player every week or two to choose music isn't that big of a deal.

"and the ability to connect it up to a PC (49%)"
huh? how are the other 51% planning to get mp3s onto their jukebox?

I want a mp3 player as light as my minidisc player at 60g with a battery that last 40 hours.

There are a few mp3 players on the market that can record mp3s from a CD player source (probably analog signal) or through its built-in FM/DAB radio. What we need are digital line-ins for recording from CD decks digitally.

[Pat Logsdon]

Originally Posted by droppedd

and like of course has to be said to any post like this.

"640Kb of RAM should be enough for anyone."
-bill gates 1981

Not actually true. :wink:

I rotate ~40 songs to my 256mb SD card about once a week, and it's starting to become tedious. For the amount of stuff I have, I think a 15GB iPod would be just about right. I'm afraid I'd fill up 4GB too quickly. Now I just need to actually GET that iPod... :mrgreen:

[GoldKey]

I want to be able to carry everything. Also, I expect my MP3 player to far outlast my PDA. So really 120 GB seems like it would cover what I have and leave room to grow. If we add video to the mix, again, I want everything, 1 TB does not seem out of the realm of possibility.

[oom]

why does everyone on these boards think they are a "normal" person. :wink:
I think there is validity to these claims.
I am in the process of buying a player. I allready have a cellphone, digital camera, PDA, and soon a player.
How much more crap do I need to carry around?
Also, though I would love to carry around my whole collection, when was the last time I listened to Thomas Dolby.
I really only listen to 3-4 albums at any one time for weeks on end.
I bet most "real" humans have not even ripped a CD, so when asked if carying 1000 songs is enough, their answer is yes.
Most of my friends with I-pods or clones never really listen to all thier content anyway.
Remember we here are freaks, not normal, to be shuned and have fingers pointed at us.


craig