Nomad Jukebox 3 Officially Out 254
An Anonymous Coward writes: "It seems that the long awaited Jukebox 3 is officially out. Features include time scaling, to play files at different speeds without affecting pitch, multichannel effects, optical input, wireless remote and two battery ports. Probably not an iPod killer yet, although it has many, many more features and welcome firewire port. Now when will this thing be available?"
www.nomadness.net (Score:2, Informative)
Re:8,000 songs (Score:2, Informative)
Memory
16MB DRAM buffer
20GB hard drive storage (333 hours at 128kbps MP3 encoding)
Required equipment not included??? (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft® Windows® 98 (Second Edition required for SB1394 transfer)/2000/Me/XP
Intel® Pentium II 233MHz or AMD K6®-2 266MHz (Pentium III450MHz or higher recommended for MP3 encoding)
SVGA graphics adapter (256 colors, 800x600)
Internet connection for Internet content downloading or CDDB® support (any charges incurred are the responsibility of the end user)
64MB RAM (128MB recommended)
USB or SB1394 port (found on Sound Blaster® Audigy(TM) series of audio cards)
30MB free hard disk space (more for audio content storage)
Installed Mouse
Sound Blaster® Audigy(TM), Extigy(TM) or Live! for EAX® enhanced MP3 encoding
CD-ROM drive with digital audio extraction support
end thieved content from NOMAD page
I have to buy a new SOUNDCARD to use this thing? I just got my 5.1 Platinum six months ago. I'm not sure a lot of people are going to be up for paying $100 for a new card just to be able to use "SB 1394."
I can get an 10GB iPod with XDrive for under $450. Yes, the storage site is only 10GB, but with true Firewire I can shift files on and off in minutes rather than the hours USB1 takes.
Come on Creative, give us REAL Firewire support!
Wow, the Creative marketing dept passed math (Score:2, Informative)
ika:/home/derek> bc
8000*80
640000
5000*128
640000
Derek
Re:Required equipment not included??? (Score:3, Informative)
it should work with any other IEEE1394 card you might have.
Re:Exactly (Score:2, Informative)
To help in making a fixed pont Ogg codec, see: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ivdev
Re:Required equipment not included??? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I wonder if the battery life is really that goo (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Informative)
I bet the hardware manufacturers would love to implement Ogg- I doubt they like paying licensing fees to Microsoft and Franhofer (sp?) for WMA and MP3 licenses.
I believe the Ogg guy(s) are working on a decoding algorithm that doesn't require floating-point math. I'm out of touch with Ogg land though... check their site.
Nomad 3 Review (Score:3, Informative)
But does the UI still suck? (Score:2, Informative)
Not to mention that the interface menus are laid out inconsistently, and it has two modes you have to switch back and forth between just to create a playlist. The physical button layout is very inergonomic and difficult to manipulate without looking while driving.
I just took my Nomad on a road trip and I honestly had to spend several minutes explaining the interface to my friend (an engineer) just so he could operate it while I was driving. In terms of ease-of-use, it's the exact opposite of an iPod. By the end of the trip we were ready to chuck the thing into the Grand Canyon.
The point of this tirade: don't waste your money on a Nomad 3, at least not unless they've spent a lot of time improving what must be one of the worst interfaces ever designed.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the unit locks up playing some mp3's (possibly the mp3's had encoding errors, but still...), and the Creative PlayCenter software you use to download songs crashes constantly when transferring, even after several upgrades to both it and the Nomad firmware.