[Swigger]

I'd sell mine for ~$350 used, but

1) I have an obligation to keep it for at least 8 weeks.
and
2) I love it too much.

 

[dcfly]

It looks like a nice alternative for someone trying to avoid the trendy iPod, but that weak headphone output could be a real problem. I'm eagerly awaiting some reviews.

 

[purk]

Yep, the 5 mw/channel is the only thing stopping me from order it. We need more review of this unit. When will the new iRiver (10 gig) be released in U.S.?


Purk

 

[fappar]

Quote:

Originally posted by purk Yep, the 5 mw/channel is the only thing stopping me from order it. We need more review of this unit. When will the new iRiver (10 gig) be released in U.S.? Purk

that should be enough for my sony v6s... yay! if not, my little cmoy is tiny and stuff.


the ui is superb, anyway. screw ipod!

 

[purk]

Quote:

the ui is superb, anyway. screw ipod!

What is the ui? I have an iPod and the headphone out is pretty accurate. However, I miss the fun factor of other players, when I listen to iPod. I think the iRever will be one of the best sounding HDD period. I'm counting for its arrival.

 

[fappar]

Quote:

Originally posted by purk What is the ui? I have an iPod and the headphone out is pretty accurate. However, I miss the fun factor of other players, when I listen to iPod. I think the iRever will be one of the best sounding HDD period. I'm counting for its arrival.

user interface, dawg.

Quote:

Originally posted by Swigger Hrmm... I can describe the UI of the HDD100. All the buttons are digital. There are 5 buttons on the front. The power button to the right side just below the LCD, and 4 buttons in a diamond-shaped manner. The top and bottom buttons are used for previous song and next song respectively. They are also touch sensitive. This works very well when you are scrolling through your library, and when you're scrolling through the menu, you can master a light then heavy tap without taking your finger off that allows you to scroll two at a time. It doesn't take much of a learning curve and is very useful I can't imaging using anything else. When scrolling through artists, albums, playlists, etc, using the lighter pressing of the top or bottom buttons scrolls through like you'd expect (pretty fast). There is 0 acceleration, though. I actually like it this way. When you hold the button down all the way, it goes faster, and the letter that you are scrolling through pops up. Very helpful indeed. The left and right buttons are not touch sensitive. They are from switching through menus, going into submenu's, and changing modes. It's a simple forward, backward button. When you are playing a song, you can change from the default Song Title+Time Elapsed Screen to the Song Title+Spectrum Analyzer Screen. VERY fun to look at, though it moves slow enough to not be entirely useful -_- Hope this helps you all some

 

[fappar]

one last thing... i read in the goodguys product description that data transfer is achieved through p&p via windows explorer, but is this just a secondary means of transfer? is there a dedicated program for mp3 transfer?

 

[Brian Stevens]

The Phillips HDD100 is an adequate hard drive based player with a few flaws that will turn most folks off. The price of the unit is on par with the apple ipod at $400, however, it was $350 for a week only at the Good Guys and I had to show them the Sunday ad for it for them to give that price to me-shame on their better than average customer service. They also did not offer me an extended warranty on the item, which the sales rep and I found a little strange so he made some calls and asked around and sure enough one was not going to be offered any time soon.

Opening the small package I was a turned off by Phillips decision to save money and not include a manual. I like most people are not the most tech savvy people around so I¡¦m a little curious as to why they would omit this, but oh well they did include a quick set-up card. The bean counters at Phillips probably decided that this product has a specific target group that knows how to download software onto a computer and retrieve the three manuals off their website.

After downloading their Digital Media Manager software and reading over some of their manuals I hooked the unit up to the supplied USB2 cable and it caused the unit to freeze. Odd, but being one of the first units I didn¡¦t think anything of it and reset it according to the online directions. Everything looked good for go after that but as soon as I hit the browse button it refused to open up my shared folder and my ¡§my music¡¨ folder, which has a few thousand MP3¡¦s on each downloaded @ 192 and 256 from IRC, Kazaa, WinMX, and ones I had ripped from my own CD collection. I called their tech center and after a few minutes of waiting the lady nicely and honestly told me she really knew nothing about this unit and would have a tech who did call me in ten minutes. For some reason I believed her and waited by the phone for an hour before I decided to head out and get something to eat. While I was out the tech did call and gave me a brief explanation on what the problem was and how to fix it and told me to call again at his department if I still had the problem, which was related to deleting my jukebox from Dell and installing it again off their website. All was fine expect that the jukebox refused to load and told me that the HDD100 was not hooked up, which it was. So I called again and the tech and I ran through each and every step and for some bizarre reason it would not read the HD100 even though the Phillips Digital Media Manager said it was and recognized it. All the tech could tell me was to return the unit for a new one-yipper skippers.

Being somewhat crafty (even though I know very little about computers) I put in a Shania Twain CD and ripped it at 256 and put it in a new file which for some strange reason the Digital Media Manager was able to read. Being somewhat excited I quickly transferred it over to the HDD100, which was painless and quick. I quickly plugged in the supplied phones and off I was. This is where I found my first flaw in the unit itself; the play list took a second or two for each command or move something I did not expect after scrolling through on my wife¡¦s ipod I also bought or my iriver ifp-390t. It also made a low but noticeable sound every time I scrolled through the list, which I also found strange.

The second flaw and in my opinion the one that puts the nails in the coffin is the unit¡¦s 5mw/channel output. At first I wondered if there was something wrong with the unit as it could not possibly be turned all the way up, but I turned it all the way down and back up again and there was nothing wrong with it ƒ¼ I thought about hooking my HD600¡¦s and my amp, but I reconsidered knowing that in no way was I going to get attached to a portable unit that could hardly push the supplied ¡¥phones it came with. It sounded decent about what I expected from a portable, but if this was going to accompany me on the flight or at a hotel room it had to at least play as loud and as clean as my iriver 390t, which for all reasons save the HD is a much superior product.

Its 2:35am and I¡¦m beginning to forget about some of the other little nuisance I had with this product and my eyes are heavy so I¡¦ll cut it off here. I never gave it a full in depth listening so I¡¦m afraid others will have to fill in on this part, but my initial listening left me wondering why would Phillips skimp on the amp and why is the S/Q noticeably not up to par with the ipod or iriver with the same track ripped at 256?

 

[Swigger]

Hrm... I may have a second opinion.

I also had problems installing the software. When I first got on the unit my computer was occupied. So I plugged it into the wall, dumped everything out of the box, and put everything back in. Apparently, I didn't pack it too well, because my CD was bent and unusable when I tried to install. I had to wait the weekend out until another kind beta tester sent me a .zip with the software.

After the software was installed, I found it easy to transfer all my songs. The software uses Digital Rights Management, but it isn't the harsh Rights Management you'll find on an iPod. You can upload songs from any computer with the DMM software installed. However, you can only download songs onto the computer they were uploaded to. Any recordings you have made can be downloaded onto any computer. Speaking of the recorder... With line in recording, it splits the tracks into 2 to 3 minute segments to cut down on memory usage. No problem for me, as with simple splitting and joining software it takes about 15 seconds to put together 25 of these segments.

Also, as a warning to all of you that want this instead of iPod.
This unit's firmware is in the early stages. You're going to have to wait a few months until this unit is PERFECT. The iPod has had 3 years to perfect it's firmware, and the same can be said about the Nomad Jukebox version. When I had my old Nomad Jukebox with the original firmware, there was a 10 second pause in between tracks and it took 2 minutes to boot up. The firmware will improve, but you can't expect everything to be perfect in the first firmware. That's why I'm beta testing, I'm actually providing input to Philips on what to do with their firmware.

Finally, the unit does sometimes freeze. It's happened to me about once every other day for the past 2 weeks. This is when I am transporting it in my pocket, cutting the grass, unplugging it, etc... I think it's semi-acceptable for this to happen once in a while in the first firmware, but I don't expect it to happen in the next one, for sure.

To answer a previous question, you can transfer data files through Windows Explorer, and you may (!) even be able to install a Linux or Windows OS on the data partition and boot up anywhere. You'd have to have a pretty nice motherboard to do that, though. You can upload mp3's to the data partition as well, but they won't show up on the player.

To conclude, I would like all Head-Fi members who may buy the HDD100 to give me reccomendations on what I should tell Philips to improve with this product. I've told them about the weak headphone output, the freezes, and the firmware improvements that need to take place. But I need your help to expose all the flaws

 

[purk]

Thanks for taking all the beating guys. I appreciate your comments. So, I'll have to pass this unit and enjoy my iPod then. I hope the new iRever is as good as its look.

Purk

 

[Swigger]

*Shuns Purk for his lack of daring when it comes to purchasing mp3 players*

 

[MadDog5145]

I do not see how this UI is any easier than the iPod's. Through the description it looks more cumbersome. I am too waiting for Iriver's unit to come out. They did exceptionally well with their mp3/cd players and flash-based players, so this HDD player should not be any different.

 

[Serpentine]

This was posted on the main page .. but just needed to comment on "looks hardly get you anywhere in this world anymore. " ...

Which world are you living in?


-Exit