[Mr.PD]

Hey, I've been watching the MP3 player market for a while. I have seen multi gig hard drive players, 1 gig flash players, and some other stuff. What I haven't seen though is one that would take a compact flash card, or secure digital card. Why not?
I don't really want to wade through 20 or even 4 gigs of music while I'm listening. I want to load up 1gig or less and slip it in and go with it. Kind of like I do with my CD MP3 player, only smaller with better battery life.

Why can't somebody make a player that would read the music from a removable card? Compact flash cards are getting cheap. Why have a player that can only carry 512mb, when you can have cards?

It seem easy to me to just drop my music files on to a couple cards and be set for two days on the road, with a player like those ones that run on a single AA battery.

What am I missing here? Is there a reason why this isn't a good idea? Am I way off with this idea?

 

[Leoml88]

Whats wrong with just getting a minidisc player? You can find one for around $100 and they store around 5 hours of music on each one and the minidiscs are pretty cheap.

 

[Kirosia]

I'm pretty sure there are mp3 players that use cards. I could've sworn they've been around for awhile. I think they're not popular because cards are/were expensive. And these days, why carry around cards when you can just have a big ol' chunk of memory. In regards to SQ and usability, I have no idea.

 

[Morphling]

there are plenty of card only players out there just look around. ever heard of google?

 

[terrymx]

i think the karma 2 is supposed to have this feature.

nex ia

i like the fact that it actually use AA batteries.

 

[jlee1469]

i own the older nomad II, uses smartmedia cards. i believe the first mp3 players made by rio (300, 500) used smartmedia as well.

 

[Edvard_Grieg]

ummmm.....all the rio flash players take SD/MMC cards.....(Cali, Chiba, Forge)

 

[Flasken]

that's a seriosly nice display for a flash player:

 

[GSTom1]

I was given an MPIO (Digitalway)128MB flash mp3 player that also had a secure digital slot that allowed me to expand the player’s capacity. I really didn’t like it and did not read any good reviews about MPIO so I returned it for store credit. I think the Archos Gmini player also had a multimedia card slot but I’m not sure if it’s for storing music or other uses such as copying digital photos.

 

[Watchdog]

I have an MD and rather than flash cards, you could have discs and just bring discs with you. With HI-MD, 1GB per disc.

However if you want to stick with flash, you could get a Rio Cali, Chiba or the new Forge. If you bought the 512MB Forge and added a 1GB SD card, that's 1.5GB of flash you're carrying around.

Of course you could buy a bunch of 256MB cards which are pretty cheap and exchange them.

Boy are good options.

 

[Nospam]

Anyone remember the I-Jam?

It uses MMC (and I presume SD) cards exclusively.

It was nice at the time, but boy is it dated now

 

[Idiot MD]

I would think the lack of a solid market price point would hold this down.

Let us imagine there is a flash card player for relatively cheap like $100. Then add on top of that the cost a 1gb flash card (say another $100). That's the same price point as the 1.5/4gb players. If we go cheaper you can get a good cd/mp3 or md player and if you go higher, you're into the realm of the HDD's.

I don't expect this type of product will fly until either flash memory goes down in cost or flash players gain popularity/need.

 

[Mr.PD]

I kinda wondered if it wasn't the price of cards that kept these things out of the market.

I didn't know that Rio had some models that would accept cards.

I try to avoid those el cheapo brands.

How big are MD players? I have never seen one in person. Also, can I record to a mini disc from my computer?

 

[Edvard_Grieg]

ummm....I don't know that those statements were supposed to 'follow', but the Rio players are not really 'cheap' in the way I think you mean it. If you look at cnet, the Cali gets consistently good reviews (FM tuner, sd expansion etc) The forge is a nice update to it.

 

[lini]

Pontis had and still has a player for SD/MMC & CF(I), the SP600 (http://www.pontis.de/site_e/produkte/pl_600_e.htm), and they also have the newer SP550 for SD/MMC.

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini