Wired: "Cannibals Descend on MP3 Players"

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,62509,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5' target='_blank'>http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,212...tw=wn_tophead_5</a><br /><br /></div>"Digital photographers have found a source of cheap microdrives for their cameras: Creative Technology's MuVo2 digital music player. Like Apple Computer's iPod mini, the MuVo2 is based on a 4-GB microdrive from Hitachi. But while the Hitachi microdrive retails for about $500 when sold as a storage device for digital cameras, the MuVo2 costs about $200. As someone put it on a website forum, you get the microdrive for more than 50 percent off, and a free pair of headphones."<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/89_f.jpg" /><br /><br />This story has been kicking around for over a month, so I'm a little surprised that Wired is just picking it up now. If this sounds tempting, you'd better act fast: I read a comment from someone who contacted Hitachi, and they're starting to put a new version of the hard drive in the MuVo2 that won't work in other devices, just like the one in the iPod mini. 4 GB of storage...nice! But I shudder to think what this would do to the battery life on my camera - I think I'll stick to my 2 GB worth of CF flash memory that I carry with my camera (1 GB x 1, 512 MB x 2). Anyone tried this hack to get the 4 GB micro drive?

[24va]

Shouldn't this be a wake up call to Hitachi? They CAN sell the drives for $200!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lucan]

Wow, I realize electronics are sometimes overpriced but this is ridiculous. These 4 GB drives are WAY overpriced.

Lucan

[Hx4700]

Did it. Got the player overnight from PC Mall last week for $199+S. Just took a few minutes to open it up and then format the drive with card reader and PC (use FAT32 with 32k sectors is suppose to enable fastest response time).
Many people on the camera forums have done this. Many have then inserted a 1gb microdrive back into the player to revive it. Some have been successful with CF cards of 256m to 1gig (I haven't!). Seems to be hit and miss on the brand and size of card. Wish I could get one of my CF cards to work. The player comes with earphones, a nice belt case and two (Short and Long) sync cables and a PC music player thats looks promising.
Also, the 4gb is supposed to be better on battery life than the Hitachi 1.5g. Go figure...
A Google search will give several sites with pictures and instructions for the surgery.
Ron...

[GoldKey]

Shouldn't this be a wake up call to Hitachi? They CAN sell the drives for $200!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Agreed, they should see that they could sell a ton of these at that price instead of trying to figure out a way to make the drives not work in other devices.

[Pat Logsdon]

Wow, I realize electronics are sometimes overpriced but this is ridiculous. These 4 GB drives are WAY overpriced.
I agree - that's a HUGE markup, especially if you consider that for Creative to make money, they'd have to buy these things at a price of between $50 and $100 per unit. 8O

[DrtyBlvd]

:D Did it got it Battery life fine...

Lemme find the thread again....

Here we go: http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23567&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30

Capacity? 1041 8M pictures :D 3hrs 7m movie :D or 52mins at the max 'Fine' resolution... 8O :D

[IIIsynthtaxIII]

This is incredible. 8O I haven't heard about this, but would love to do it.

Who else here has done it and had it work?

Am I guaranteed if I buy a MuVo2 to get one that will work? When do they plan on screwing us by changing the drives?

So the card inside the MuVo2 works in ANY compact flash slot? Has anyone tried it in a 2210? (That's what I've got).

Thanks for the feedback, the quicker the better because I'm off to try and find one of these!

lllsynthtaxlll

[Ben Stark]

I'd like to see the source saying Creative will change the drives to the type like the mini iPOD has. I'm willing to bet it's just another eBayer trying to drive up prices.

I take it an MD in "IDE" mode won't work in a PPC then? I'd never heard definite word. The MuVo2 drives are in "memory" mode.

[DrtyBlvd]

Ben -

Nope, they are now soldering them to the board... pics at the Sony forum on www.dpreview.com

Don't follow the reference to IDE, but it works fine in my 55 and my camera too :D

[Ecks]

nice mod!!

[johncruise]

If this sounds tempting, you'd better act fast: I read a comment from someone who contacted Hitachi, and they're starting to put a new version of the hard drive in the MuVo2 that won't work in other devices

It takes some considerable amount of time for Hitachi to change it to something else+Creative qualifying the new format&implementing it. The way I see it, Creative will most likely get a high demand from market which may cause them to ramp up the build volumes+orders. If this happens, I don't see Creative switching to any format soon.

We got a lot of time to wait for somebody to come up with a result on how much this 4GB would drain the PPC (plus some other test).

[Ben Stark]

Ben -

Nope, they are now soldering them to the board... pics at the Sony forum on www.dpreview.com

Don't follow the reference to IDE, but it works fine in my 55 and my camera too :D

Haha, those solder pics are so fake it's pathetic. You're the first person I've ever heard of thinking they were real. :mrgreen:

[DrtyBlvd]

:oops:

[SuperPaqMan]

I took my Hitachi drive out of my ipod mini. I can format it and use it in a USB cf card reader with my laptop. But the drive is not recognized if I put it in a cf to pcmcia adaptor and put it directly into the pc card slot. It is also not recognized by my ipaq. I dont really know why this is. There has got to be some kind of hack to allow this drive to be seen outside of of a usb card reader. Any ideas??

[rdrose61]

Did it also...

Ordered one through Amazon ($175 with a special discount) as soon as I saw the first posts about this. It was backordered for a month and I was afraid they would change the hardware before mine came.

It was ordered as a birthday gift for my daughter. It came in a couple days late but fortunately it still had the standard 4GB Hitachi MD. I swapped out with my 1GB IBM MD and everything is great.

My daughter now has a pretty nifty MP3 player (holds over 300 mp3s with the 1GB MD) and I have a 4GB MD for my PDA and camera.

I notice no difference in battery usage 4GB MD vs. 1GB MD.

[MichaelA]

I did it several months ago when the news first hit the streets -- ordered direct from Creative. The microdrive works fine in my ASUS A620BT, and I haven't noticed a significant change in battery life. It's a tad slower to access than a CF card, but nothing I can't live with.

It certainly makes playing Playstation games a lot more convenient. :)

[Christian]

Did it also...

Ordered one through Amazon ($175 with a special discount) as soon as I saw the first posts about this. It was backordered for a month and I was afraid they would change the hardware before mine came.

It was ordered as a birthday gift for my daughter. It came in a couple days late but fortunately it still had the standard 4GB Hitachi MD. I swapped out with my 1GB IBM MD and everything is great.

My daughter now has a pretty nifty MP3 player (holds over 300 mp3s with the 1GB MD) and I have a 4GB MD for my PDA and camera.

I notice no difference in battery usage 4GB MD vs. 1GB MD.

Amazon lists the 4GB MuVo2 as not having been released yet. Several other websites I checked say the same thing. Am I checking for the wrong product?

[hrianto]

This is just economic law.... Anyone can go to HITACHI and negotiate the 4 Gig price. I bet if you say that you want to buy them in quantity of thousands from year to year and you show them the money then they will give you that thing for $100/unit or maybe way less.

[KidKomputer]

I did it the week the topic was first posted on this site. Ordered direct from creative. Works in my 2210, pc, and digital camera just fine. Put an old 1gb microdrive in its place. It is an ok little Mp3 player and driverless operation is good for transferring files. If you do winter sports I highly recommend http://www.burton.com/Burton/gear/products.asp?productID=357 as a companion product.

[JonnoB]

Has anyone tried putting in a standard solid-state CF flash card into the MP3 player? I have a 256mb spare card that I never use... and I don't care to have that many songs on my MP3 player... but I would like to get a 4GB MD to accompany my existing 1GB CF flash card.

[rdrose61]

Amazon lists the 4GB MuVo2 as not having been released yet. Several other websites I checked say the same thing. Am I checking for the wrong product?

I have no idea why Amazon now lists as not released. They had it before.

[MichaelA]

Has anyone tried putting in a standard solid-state CF flash card into the MP3 player? I have a 256mb spare card that I never use... and I don't care to have that many songs on my MP3 player... but I would like to get a 4GB MD to accompany my existing 1GB CF flash card.

Certain brands work fine and certain brands of CF can't be formatted in the MuVo. I was unlucky, I guess. Neither my Viking 256MB nor my SimpleTech 512MB cards worked in the device. It doesn't hurt to try though -- neither of my cards were damaged, they just couldn't be formatted by the MuVo.

I've read enough postings online to indicate that Viking and SimpleTech cards simply don't work with the device. Kingston cards also reportedly don't work. SanDisk cards seem to work, in general, as do Lexar cards. Poke around online and do some research -- there's a lot of good information out there. Unfortunately it's not really all in one place.

I've been toying with the idea of picking up another CF card to use in the MuVo. Currently I just have a gutted MuVo shell at home. I suppose I could sell it on eBay for $60 (reportedly that's what the empty devices are going for), but I'd like to eventually use it as an MP3 player.

[Christian]

I don't know why its listed that way now. I just checked over 30 online stores and it is out of stock everywhere. I'm wondering if it would be a bad idea to order one now, perhaps the backorder is due to the change in drives? I'm in no hurry but obviously don't want to get a "defective" drive. :wink:

[packetstorm]

Got one of these when the hack was first resleased after the holidays. Works fine in my E750.

Great to not have to worry about storage on my PDA anymore 8)

[felixdd]

They only talked about it on Screen Savers last night. Man they're slow :p

[foldedspace]

Likely Wired and Screen Savers want to avoid getting in trouble with adverstisers. At this point, they can point to several other sources as having broke the story.

The economics are probably best explained by lots of people buying MP3 players vs. few people buying CF hard drives. But someone there should get the message that they are stifling their own profit margin by overpricing them.

[AndrewLubinus89]

So would it be too risky to buy one off ebay for the drive? I would love the get one of these for movies/games/music and such :D. Well, if it doesn't work I have myself a nifty mp3 player :/