Pearl competitor from Philips?

I got this email from Philips earlier today:

In reply to:

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Greetings from Philips Audio Club!

WANTED -- 50 beta-testers!
We're truly excited to bring you an invitation prepared exclusively for Philips Audio Club members. We
are looking for 50 volunteers to test our HDD100, the world's smallest Recording Audio Jukebox. Join the
test and tell us how to make it better.

Philips HDD100 - A universe of music in your hand!
Imagine absolute freedom - having your way…all the way. Weighing just 167 grams, Philips HDD100
has the awesome 15GB capacity to pack your entire music world within its svelte frame. That's more than
3,000 songs on the go! With super-fast USB2 PC connection, you can transfer ALL your music to your
HDD100 - anytime, in no time. A real stunner, the HDD100 is decked in high gloss magnesium and hardened
glass, exuding the hard-core signature allure that's hard to resist. When you move, your universe moves
with you. Not the other way around...

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If you're interested have a look at this link for the Info on the Philips HDD100

Might be of interest to some one here.
Not sure of its actual size though.

Got the same email, signed up for it and I'm sure I'll NOT get picked....I think I've signed up for 5 different Beta programs from Philips and yet to be selected.....

That certainly sounds very cool. I've wanted something like an iPod that can record. We'll have to see what the UI is like, though.

*edit*
Interesting, a 5 band equalizer with genre-specific programmable settings.

I'm betting it won't have insert or append since no one can add that feature for some reason.

Pearl has a comprehensive running order editor, however I don't know if we can come up with anything as sophisticated as the Philips patented feature for - wait for it - scrolling through a list! That one must have taken months.

Rob

Pearl has a comprehensive running order editor

Will have!

If it's not available out there, it doesn't really have any features yet... or at least, it matters little to the consumer what features an unavailable product has. Mind you I haven't even checked to see if the Phillips unit is available.

Richard.

It's not available, they're only just inviting entries for a beta programme lottery. That probably puts in a similar time frame to Pearl.

Rob

Pearl has a comprehensive running order editor

I think we'd agree the empeg doesn't have a "comprehensive" running order editor? Is there any chance of 3.0 having this same comprehensive running order editor?

Matthew

I should have said anyone except the empeg team since you guys made the only two products I can find insert and append.

Hopefully someone will release the pearl and keep making the central.

I think we'd agree the empeg doesn't have a "comprehensive" running order editor?

You can replace/insert/append/enqueue content from a hierarchical playlist structure into the running order, and remove from it by track, artist, album, year or genre. What products do you know of with more comprehensive control over running order?

Pearl has much the same feature set but because of the larger UI you can do all of that without interrupting playback, plus you can browse through the running order. Because Pearl has soup views on the player the content selection is more powerful, but then, it doesn't have hierarchical playlists (will the world ever be ready for the feature we developed four years ago?). There's also another neat feature but it wouldn't apply to the car player anyway.

Rob

You can see roughly how HUGE it is here

Pearl doesn't have hierarchical playlists...

Oh No! I hope you're not serious! that's the exect reason I got rid of my iPod and decided to wait for Pearl !
Soup views are great, but NOT if you're using 20gig worth of tracks. then it all turns into one big eh.. soup.
I hope this will change by the time it gets released!

Well, it's 2.5" drive-wrapped-in-electronics sized, as opposed to 1.8" drive-wrapped-in-electronics sized. Quite a nice design, but it's not small!

Hugo

Apparently the Phillips unit has audio in and the ability to record.

In my opinion this feature is essential for any portable audio device that wants to even slightly impact on the existing minidisc market. I don't really think it matters to the average consumer whether it can record digitally or just analogue.

I remember I bought a minidisc player/recorder before getting involved in MP3s and regularly used it to copy music, record live stuff, etc.

The Pearl has no built in ADC, and although we could theoretically add one as an external device, external devices scare off the average consumer and add a huge amount to the overall cost when compared to building it in in the first place.

Soup views are great, but NOT if you're using 20gig worth of tracks. then it all turns into one big eh.. soup

I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. A large number of people use their hierarchical playlists to reproduce something almost identical to soup views - i.e. Artist / Album / Tracks and variants thereof. Of course hierarchical playlists are a lot more flexible but nobody seems to think we could implement them in time for 1.0.

Rob

Ah, but that does mean that it (probably) will get implemented in a future firmware upgrade?

(Jeez, I can't believe I'm already talking about upgrading to a new firmware when 1.0 -and the product itself for that matter- has yet to be released... )

What products do you know of with more comprehensive control over running order?

Well, Winamp. I was hoping you meant you could view upcoming tracks and delete them arbitrarily, which I was hopeing was included in "comprehensive".

Matthew

I'm sorry, but I'm out of the loop. Could someone point me to more info on this Pearl we keep talking about?

Also, I had no idea this Philips unit was so large. That's pretty big, unless it has an amplifier for the line-in. That is the problem with recording on my Archos. If you use the analog, it's too quiet.

And mark me down as someone who doesn't like soup modes

" unless it has an amplifier for the line-in. That is the problem with recording on my Archos. If you use the analog, it's too quiet."

Surely a line level pre-amp can be extremely small?

A large number of people use their hierarchal playlists to reproduce something almost identical to soup views - i.e. Artist / Album / Tracks and variants thereof.

I use hierarchal playlists in many ways other than artist/album.

Here's an example:

I have two playlists, one called "(Low key)" and one called "(Road Trip)". I've found that "Low Key" is always a subset of "Road Trip", because I like having low key songs intermixed with high-energy drivin' songs. So it's best for me to just have a link to Low Key inside the Road Trip playlist so I don't need to update two separate playlists when I add a tune to Low Key.

It also comes in handy with regard to the "Ignore as Child" flag... I can ignore my "(Car Talk)" playlist so the episodes don't come up in shuffle. I don't have to individually tag or hide the episode subfolders, I just drop them in and hit Synch.

I'm currently in a quandary, because I want to fully synch my Rio Central with my Empeg, making them identical. But the Central doesn't have hierarchal playlists or Ignore As Child, so I will lose many of the features I've come to depend upon on the empeg car.

Well, pretty small. After all, most MD recorders are very small, and those have them, don't they? Maybe I just thought they didn't design it well.

I do remember that one company made pre-amps specifically for the Archos (or at least they said they did). Sadly, each one was over $100. They also sold cool little mics that worked well with them, but those were like $60. I've never liked my Archos enough to spend that much on it.