07-09-2004, 02:00 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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The Gadgeteer Reviews Bluetake's Stereo BT Headset
"It's hard to review a product that is a first in its class because there's nothing to compare it with, no standard of excellence that it needs to live up to. Such is the case with the Bluetake's new i-PHONO BT420EX stereo headphones, which are the first Bluetooth headphones on the market...Wired headphones can be cumbersome. I listen to my iPod daily, and there have been many instances where I've either gotten up out of my chair and not remembered that I had the headphones on, or I've managed to snag the wires on the arm of my chair. Usually when this happens, the headphones are pulled off my head, and I'm startled. Argh! Needless to say, I wasn't going to turn down an opportunity to review a set of wireless headphones when Bluetake contacted me about them."
Not only are these one of the first pairs of Bluetooth stereo headphones to hit the market, they are also bundled with an adapter that enables devices that don't have BT support (or that lack the necessary BT stereo audio profiles) to utilize them, much like Jabra's solution. I can't wait for Pocket PCs to natively support A2DP, which should enable seamless stereo listening... but in the meantime, you might want to check this review out.
Update: Geekzone's also posted a review here, and Mauricio shows off a iPAQ 4155 connected to the Bluetake dongle. 8)
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07-09-2004, 02:31 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 51
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cant wait until they work with a PPC. the price is steep but as soon as a set comes out that works with a PPC id be willing to pay $100 for a good set of wireless headphones. and by the time they come out with the set that works with a PPC the price should have dropped to around that range hopefuly.
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07-09-2004, 02:57 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 718
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The iPaq 2200 doesn't support bluetooth headsets out of the box, though with a registry hack, they can. Also, the Dell Axim X30, iPaq 5555 and Asus A716 support bluetooth headsets via the Widcomm stack. I used an iPaq 5555 and a Asus A716 with a Jabra headset to listen to audio books. The question is, will this headset work with these PPC's I just mentioned? I don't know about that A2DP profile, but if its just an issue of redirecting audio via BT, those PocketPC's should work, shouldn't they?
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07-09-2004, 03:40 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 437
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The devices you've mentioned all use the Bluetooth Headset Profile.
This profile is configured for mono-sound headsets with less-than-stellar sound quality.
The new range of Bluetooth stereo headphones that are coming out have their own profile. If I remember correctly, I think it requires Bluetooth 1.2 to use, so I don't think any current Pocket PC will handle it directly.
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07-09-2004, 03:55 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 270
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Very Cool. I wonder when Apple will integrate Bluetooth in to the iPOD. It seems like everyday there is a new cool Bluetooth device.
Sean
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07-09-2004, 04:12 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 718
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Quote:
Originally Posted by R K
The devices you've mentioned all use the Bluetooth Headset Profile.
This profile is configured for mono-sound headsets with less-than-stellar sound quality.
The new range of Bluetooth stereo headphones that are coming out have their own profile. If I remember correctly, I think it requires Bluetooth 1.2 to use, so I don't think any current Pocket PC will handle it directly.
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Figures. How about someone make a BT 1.1 headset that works with products that are actually out now? Grrrrr.
Actually, now that I recall, the site listed a bunch of phones that work with the headset. And all those are BT 1.1, so the headset must support BT 1.1. I assume BT 1.2 is downward compatible with BT 1.1 devices?
I also remember that there was a "beta" headset you could buy from a company in Korea I think. They used a DSP on the headset to help compensate for BT 1.1's slow transfer rates. So, I think it can be done. It's just that no one wants to apparently.
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07-09-2004, 05:03 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DaleReeck
Figures. How about someone make a BT 1.1 headset that works with products that are actually out now? Grrrrr.
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They can't. BT 1.1 doesn't have enough bandwidth to handle raw uncompressed audio streams, which is what the old profiles (Headset, Handsfree) do. :|
Quote:
I also remember that there was a "beta" headset you could buy from a company in Korea I think. They used a DSP on the headset to help compensate for BT 1.1's slow transfer rates.
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This, again, would require compression on the Pocket PC, i.e., driver/new profiles.
--janak
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07-09-2004, 05:33 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 27
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At first, this didn't sound so interesting, since I would like to listen to my iPod and have incoming calls from my cell phone go to the headset too. I thought that I would have to have a cellphone-music player, or cellphone-PPC to do that. Well, I looked closer at Julie's review and the specs, and it seems like it does do that. Very cool! The specs show that up to 5 devices can be paired to the headset. Now I want this.
I'd also like to use this for TeamSpeak while playing games. Normal headset cords are annoying.
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07-09-2004, 05:34 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 109
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Oh for crying out loud, just how unwieldy and expensive can they make this?
A FAR better and cheaper solution would be to use a small FM broadcaster (Like the i-Rock) and a small FM radio headset. There's the added bonus that this set up doesn't drain your PPC's battery by using bluetooth, in addition to the batteries for the dongle and the headset. The whole setup would be the same size, if not smaller than that ugly dongle and headphones. (AFAIk there are some frequency restrictions in Europe that prohibits these devices from being sold -- that's one minus)
Why are they still contriving to use bluetooth in places where BT gives no advantage over the older way of doing things, other than making it more expensive? The latest one I heard was using BT in home theaters for the speakers -- completely idiotic when you are just trading one wire for another and then the speakers have to be battery powered. Who wants their speaker batteries craping out in the middle of a loud movie?
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07-09-2004, 06:09 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 315
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hmm, so it uses a codec (SBC, what ever that is, never heard of it) to get stereo quality sound out of the 1mbit of bw bluetooth offers. But it requires hardware support from the bluetooth adapter to use it, a proprietory profile that nobody actually has yet. Is this not the most worthless thing youve seen? Why can't they make a ppc driver? it shouldnt need any fancy profile, just a data connection over blutooth, and let the driver or program handel the routing of audio to it.
pass.
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