Features:
- Portable audio player, recorder, and hard drive
- Uses tiny, write-only discs which can store up to 500 MB (12+ hours) or music
- Supports MP3, WMA, AAC, QDX, and ASF audio formats
- Upgradeable firmware for next generation music formats
- Includes earbud headphones and rechargeable lithium-ion battery
Description:
Somewhere between Apple's iPod and more traditional MP3 players lies the iDP-100 DataPlay unit from iRiver. While this device costs more than a basic music player, it offers some unique features that make it worth consideration. Employing the new DataPlay media format, the iDP-100 reads music from 500 MB (250 MB per side) optical disks the size of a quarter. Although the disks can only be written to once, they're a fairly inexpensive way (around $10 a pop) to house sizeable chunks of your MP3 library. But that statement's not entirely accurate. Your MP3s first need to be converted to the secure CK format (DataPlay's proprietary content storage format) before being sent to the player. Files in these formats can't be transferred off the DataPlay disks nor played with any other media players except the included iRiver FuturePlayer (Real and Windows Media Player don't offer any support for the new format yet). You can also buy commercial DataPlay disks--they're like tiny CDs--and play them in the iDP-100, but you won't be able to move any music files from these disks to your PC, either. It's one of the reasons that the recording industry is really pushing the DataPlay format, although time will tell how quickly the technology world embraces it. The iDP-100 looks like a silver hockey puck wrapped in plastic, and includes basic buttons for playing, pausing, or jumping back and forth between tracks, as well as a handy jog dial for navigating the interface and selecting play modes, including various shuffle modes. Sound output proved excellent, with no skips or pauses during hours and hours of playback, although the basic earbud headphones included with the player were set aside, as we opted for a better pair. The iDP-100 currently supports only USB 1.1 for connectivity, but even with the conversion and burning as part of the transfer process, we were able to move about 12 MB of files per minute--not a bad rate for any MP3 player. Thankfully, the manual includes a walkthrough detailing the transfer process since it's not intuitive within the software interface. Rather than a Transfer or Send button, you have to click on My Music, then Add Files, then Save in order to send files to the player. As a data storage device, the iDP-100 allows you to load large amounts of files and then easily transport them to another PC, but the burn-once limitation of the disks means that you'll have to buy some extras if you plan to use the iDP-100 extensively for this purpose. DataPlay disks can hold up to 12 hours of music, and its rechargeable lithium-ion battery promises up to 12 hours of play time on a charge, so you should be able to get through most of your tracks before having to come back for more juice. In practice, we were able to get between 8 and 10 hours of play time per charge. The bright, backlit display renders lots of information about individual tracks, including title, artist, and bit rate. A basic equalizer with bass and treble boosts lets users augment the sound output. Other options include adjusting the volume of beeps, turning on a fade-in feature to avoid sudden loudness for the next track, and an adjustable power-off timer. The iDP-100's interface can also be flash-upgraded, allowing the company to add new features or fix any bugs. While you can find many MP3 players for less, the expandable nature of the tiny, removable DataPlay format makes the iDP-100 a tantalizing choice for taking more of your music with you. --J. Curtis Pros: - Vast, removable storage
- Excellent sound
- Rechargeable battery
Cons: - Write-once media
- Proprietary format
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