Rating: 
Summary: WM DRM
Review: It is true that iHP-140 cann't play WM DRM, the music bought online. I have sent a message to i river urging them to resolve this issue ASAP. One way to get around is to use in line recording to record the downloaded music. I tried it, it is very good. But it is a hassel. Some people said you can first burn the music into CD and then rip it into the player.
Rating: 
Summary: iRiver does not support Windows Media DRM
Review: iriver HARD DRIVE PLAYERS do not support WINDOWS MEDIA DRM
so all the songs i payed for on line WILL NOT PLAY WITH THIS
IHP140. TECH SUPPORT SAID NOT TO LOOK FOR IT IN THE NEAR FUTURE
MAYBE NEXT YEAR.
Rating: 
Summary: bad bad sound quality
Review: i just bought mine and regret every penny i spent! The only thing that keep this mp3 player respectable is its features. lots of it. but at the end of the day, if the sound quality would live up to the expectation , then all is worthless. I have compared the sound quality for ihp140 vs. my thinkpad laptop using sony earphone (6-320000hz frequency response). my laptop sounds much better than ihp140, the sound is richer and crispier. when i plug the ihp140 to my car, 03 nissan pathfinder LE factory premium sound, it just sounded like crap. really really bad! i have tried different biterate ranging from 128 - 320(upper limit). but that didn't make too much of a difference. there's no comparison to CD quality sound. so.... i'm very disappointed and going to return it oh yeah, and the LINE - IN has a LOT of noise. when i try to record CD from my DVD player using MP3/320Kbs setting, TONS of noise!!! i just can't stand it anymore!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Incredible features, an extraordinary value
Review: I think this must be the best MP3 player on the market, but it's clearly not for everyone. If you have a huge music collection, if you use both PCs and Macs, if you record voice and sounds, and/or you like to frequently back up all your stuff, this is the one to buy. Amazon has the best price, especially with free super saver shipping. I've found the sound to be excellent, both from downloaded MP3s and tracks copied directly from CDs, across the spectrum of music: opera, jazz, rap, spoken word, and punk. The advanced features of this device are nothing short of amazing, too many to list here. I am thrilled by the FM radio and the internal and external microphone recording capabilities as well as being able to read text files. (These options alone add over [$$$] to the cost of an iPod!) You can hear the whirring of the hard drive only if you are sitting a silent room and put the player up to your ear, something which you probably will never do. Transfer time between Mac and iRiver is great. Mac OS 9 users take note: Although Apple doesn't care about you, because the iRiver is an external hard drive you can easily download your CDs to it directly via iTunes. You can even manage your Mac's MP3 collection and your iRiver's collection through iTunes without much difficulty. I dumped over 1000 songs (about 4 GB) in one swift move onto the iHP-140. The battery life is fantastic, very important if you take long airplane trips. The clip-on remote control is great. I like the black color of the iHP-140 and remote control. It looks like a very expensive cell phone. Too bad the brown clip-on carrying case is definitely not as sexy. I very much admire iRiver's technical service department: I got a super-intelligent techie on the phone in under 20 seconds who very smartly answered several detailed technical questions. (In contrast, it took me four calls to finally get a live human at Apple, who ultimately refused to answer a simple technical question, to refer me to someone else, or to get back to me.) What is ultimately so incredibly cool about this player: you can easily attach it to almost any PC or Mac and transfer files...not just music, but pictures, documents and other files...because it's a hard drive. However, if you don't need any of these features or you are technologically challenged, this player is not for you. My only complaints: If you're a Mac user, forget about your iTunes playlists. Especially if you've got 2000+ songs, instead spend the time to make ten or twenty major lists and subcategories within those lists directly on the IHP100 hard drive. Also, it's too bad the instruction manual is not so good. But this is quite a complex and technically advanced MP3 player, and it's worth the low cost and high value to spend the time figuring out how to use it.
Rating:
Summary: Update
Review: This is a follow-up last week's review. After a full week of putting this device through the paces, I'm happy to say that the 140 works well and is a remarkable little piece of equipment. I whole-heartedly recommend it: the sound quality is excellent, the recording capabilities are phenomenal (and only the Philips HD100 comes close), and the capacity is tremendous. The devil is in the details, as they say, so here are some more specific observations: 1. The whirring sound that was previously mentioned *does* exist, but I had to strain to hear it and this only after a while of trying. It was so inaudible as to be a non-issue, but the external mic that comes with the 140 eliminates this if it bothers you. 2. The recording does stop after 5 hours. The device obviously holds much more than this, so I don't know why this happens. Perhaps it's to periodically save the rather large file (~145mb in MP3/128kbps format.) But since the battery life is about 3 times this, you could simply restart the recording and it will go for another 5 hours, etc. 3. While there's no comparison between the speed of USB 1.1 and 2.0 in my desktop and in my laptop, respectively, in practice 1.1 has not been a nuisance. 4. I use this unit a lot, and a 3-hour charge every 3 days does the trick. If you use it for an hour or two a day, you could go more than a week before needing to recharge. However, since the hard drive reads only periodically when playing, and operates continuously while writing (transferring songs from your PC), you ought to have it plugged into AC when you are doing transfers. Otherwise, you'll drain the battery in 2 hours of continuous hard drive activity. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Practical Review
Review: I have to wonder about some of these reviews. The 140 takes a little getting used to: I spent 90 minutes with the booklet and now can do anything with it, including recording on the fly at any bitrate and with the internal or external mic. The search is pretty good. The unit is smaller than I expected and it sounds very good with my $20 Sony earplugs (the ones that come with it are inadequate.) In addition, and as to be expected, my Bose QuietComfort and Sennheiser headphones sound great with the 140. I don't have USB 2.0 on my desktop (although I have it on my laptop), but even with USB 1.1, the transfer was more than acceptable given how often I will upload or download my entire collection (hopefully not often!) I let it run overnight and my 30gb collection was transferred. All it will require now are fairly quick incremental transfers. Some rumors or things I have read: 1. While using the internal mic to record, there is a clicking or whirring caused by the hard drive starting and stopping.
===> My unit doesn't do this. If what others are saying is true, I don't know why it happens on some units and not others. 2. Battery life is very good.
===> True - it's been running for around 11 hours so far and the battery meter still has two bars on it. It had about 4 hours on it and I did let it run all the way down and then re-charge it, something I recommend to everyone as soon as they get it. 3. Can't delete tracks directly from the unit.
===> I've only had a day with it, and I don't see an easy way to do this, but I'll keep looking. Maybe it's just me. 4. Recording stops after 5 hours. Since this unit can hold many more hours of recordings (in MP3 format) than that, this would be a nuisance.
===> Can't confirm yet, but will test and report back. I can't see ever recording anything for that long, but if true, a firmware upgrade to fix this would be appreciated. 5. The case is awful.
===> True: brown, old shoe-leather looking case sucks and the unit barely fits in there without a struggle. I guess I'll shell out $15 for a third-party case when I find one since I want to protect this $400+ investment. End of day, this is a quality, feature-packed unit that really performs well. That's it for now, will update in a week.
Rating:
Summary: Decent Player - With some caveats
Review: I purchased this player about 3 weeks ago and so far it has performed wonderfully. The only gripes I have are that the system uses FAT32 for the file system. I reformatted as NTFS and found that a Win2000/XP/2003 PC will recognize it as a removable drive, but the player cannot play any music from an NTFS drive. I had to reformat as FAT32 with Partition Magic. No Windows OS can create a partition greater than 32GB (by design). This was not entirely clear in the manual as the page that referenced the filesystem was a bad translation to English. The total usable space is about 37GB. The controls take some getting used to, especially on the remote, but they at least provide you with one. Good sound quality and it was able to handle all of the listed formats and bit rates as they had advertised. So far it has been a pretty durable player and design. In response to "tjwegxx" review above, the beauty is that you don't need any specialized software to load files. Just create a file & folder system on your PC and copy to the removable drive. Also, I use this to transfer large files to & from work. Plug it in and it goes. (Win2000/XP/2003)
Rating: 
Summary: Not ready for prime time.
Review: This product is not ready to work with any online music purchase sites. It will not play secure music files. That is a shame seeing how that is the way the industry is moving. In addition Windows Media player would not recognize the device so I couldn't copy files over that way. The product doesn't come with any media player software so you are on your own to figure out which ones may work. Also the device is hard to operate the control functions were difficult to navigate. The instruction book was of limited help. I promptly returned this item and am now going to try Samsungs 20gb product.
Rating:
Summary: In regards to the previous review
Review: There is a review (check previous) that is placed for each mp3 player giving the positives and negatives of each player, from the ipod to the nomad zen to this player. Yet the review is all based on hearsay. This section is a review for a product that you own or have tried out, not to express your opinion on what you heard from other people. Iriver is a great company and this is a fantastic product. It's just that simple.
Rating:
Summary: Hard Disk MP3 Players
Review: If you read reviews for the 4 main contenders in this market - the iPod, Creative Zen, Rio Karma and iRiver iHP - you'll notice that each has their pros and cons; none are perfect and you should decide whether you want to take to take the plunge now or later. If your view in life is that you are going to pay $x00 to get a device then it must be near ideal - ruggedly constructed, fault proof, good product support, easy to use software - then do yourself a favor and don't buy yet. All the products have drawbacks and are not mature yet; if you expect value and reliability then wait a while. If you are OK paying $x00 for something that can be used now, but is likely to both get better and cost less in the future then try to determine which device is the lesser of evils for you. iPod clearly has the most buzz. Great design and looks cool. Most people love the appearance and praise the touch sensitive buttons. It has a hold button to deactivate the buttons to avoid accidents; however, enough reviewers have complained that the hold button is easily broken and then the device can't be used. Some of the more geeky (non-Apple type) reviewers complain that the scrollwheel is annoying after a while and they resent being forced into this Apple-like interface. Everyone complains about the non-replaceable battery, yet this is the price of sturdy construction. iPod can be used as an external disk, and apparently stores files without problem. However, the music and data are apparently not separated; iPod reviewers complain about "white noise" in random feedback mode that comes from appointments / contacts created on the iPod during synchronization. Synchronizing music among computers, if you have more than one, seems to be an issue; research this before buying if you have multiple computers you want to be synchronized. Reviews for sound quality are generally (but not universally) positive. Reviews of Apple's support are generally poor; they seem to address issues in warranty, which covers a short time after delivery / pickup of item. After that it seems like you're on your own. iPod has no stop button; when new users mention this iPod veterans call it "unnecessary" and "so 20th century". Creative Zen feedback suffers from construction quality, poor product support, difficulty of using the scroll wheel and reasonably consistent feedback about problems with the headphone jack. Construction quality is a difficult item. The Zen has a detachable face plate that allows the battery to be replaced. What is added in functionality (battery replacement) detracts in build quality as the face plate is prone to popping off. Drop if just a few inches on a hard surface and the faceplate pops off (but not if it's in its case). Many reviewers say the faceplate simply didn't fit well so they returned the Zen. Feedback on Creative's product support is universally poor; this is not limited to the Zen, it applies to all the company's products. The scroll wheel is finicky; it works most of the time but there is a learning curve for pressing it just right; new users say they have 50% - 75% success rate; some find it so frustrating that they just return the device. The Creative software is awkward / difficult to use and just plain doesn't load on some computers. Enough people have reported that their headphone jack doesn't work after a month of using the device to believe that Creative has some inbuilt manufacturing or quality control problem. The Zen doesn't support folders so it is not really a storage device; even with third party software that "creates" folders, documents and programs can't be launched from the Zen, so it is not a hard disk, it's a storage device at best. Reviews for sound quality are generally (but not universally) positive. The Zen has no stop button. Veteran Zen users have explained how to stop if that's what you want. The Rio Karma feedback suffers from sensitivity in the hard disk. It seems like movement, even small movement, causes skipping in playback and even the device freezing. If you plan to carry the device around (it is a mobile device, right?) then this is something you might want to think about. Karma gets consistently good reviews for sound quality and connectivity from its docking device, which has RCA output jacks and Ethernet jacks for connectivity. Usability (button usage, feature selection, menu structure, display size and quality) also has good feedback. Repair seems to be an issue; some say the repair don't exist - you just have to buy a new player. Perhaps because of its smaller user base there is also a lack of accessories. Like the Zen, the Karma does not support folders and is not designed to be a data storage device. It only comes in 20Gb; enough for most people, not for those with large collections ripped at high sampling rates. The Karma does have a stop button. There aren't many reviews for the iRiver iHP. Those that have it like it. The only complaint seems to be that the disk rotation is slow, leading to longer delays in some functions (playback and even a slow display of the menu?). Otherwise feedback seems to be good. No comments on reliability, warranty, repairs, accessories. No-one mentions whether there is a stop button, but the photos don't show one. None of these are perfect. If you have the appetite choose the one that you think has the least deficiencies or is best suited to you. Accept that there will be better devices (or new generations of these ones) in a year or two that will cost less. If that is for you then pay the money, learn from the experience and you'll be a more informed buyer when you buy device #2. If you aren't into paying $x00 to learn and experiment, or the cons outweigh the pros, then wait a year or so.
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