Check this out: http://www.digisette.com/


|| loren.cox
|| 080000446

This is one of several practically identical cassette-style flash-based MP3 players. I'm pretty sure these guys aren't the patent holders, so I guess they have a licence.

Rob

And best of all, with a massive 32 MB of onboard storage, you can have more than half an hour of uninterrupted streaming MP3 digital music all in one sitting. Good thing the battery will give you six hours of playing time, in case you want to hear the same music 12 times in a row.

tanstaafl.


"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Now, now... Don't be too harsh...

Remeber who this is aimed at - people who want the convenience of a cassette tape interface. Anyone using that kind of interface should expect about 90 minutes of music per tape. And they also are probably not expecting the greatest audio quality. They just want a "very quick, very cheap and very dirty" way of getting audio to play on their factory stereo... And if they still have those old cassette to 8-track tape adapters, they can even play their MP3s in the old 8-track deck! (Yes, I will admit I am old enough to have seen these beasts, but I swear - I only looked, I never listened... [For those folks outside the US, this was a very poor political / drug joke])

It is a completely different target audience. (From one extreme to the other...) It serves another niche market. Somehow, though, I can't picture them in heavy use - downloading the tracks onto the memory card involves some MP3 experience. My guess is that they are targeting younger listeners who are too young to own their own cars, don't have the budget for a Rio (let alone an empeg), but want to pop the music into the factory decks of their parents' car.



Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (40GB Green)

OK, call me dense, but this is more useful than a 50 cent cassette in what way exactly?

Rob

My guess is that they are targeting younger listeners who are too young to own their own cars, don't have the budget for a Rio (let alone an empeg), but want to pop the music into the factory decks of their parents' car.

That would be a viable market except for this thing costs $250! A 32MB Rio is about half that price. Add a cassette adapter to the Rio for 15 bucks and you have a better solution for less money. I don't see an LCD screen on the digisette and how do you change tracks while it's in the cassette player?

It amazes me the products that make it to market.

-Dylan

Greetings!

That was posted before I looked at the price. I had assumed (incorrectly) that it was cheap. It looked it, and it was the only way the thing could live in the market. When I saw a $250 price tag...

As to it being in any way better than a tape, it isn't...

Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (40GB Green)

OK, call me dense, but this is more useful than a 50 cent cassette in what way exactly?

I know you may not believe it, Rob, but those cassette adapters that you can use to connect a portable CD player to a car tape deck sound quite a bit better than a most cassette tapes. (Now I'm not sure about a metal tape recorded on a Nakamichi pro deck with Dolby C or whatever the latest gadgetry is, but that's not what most people are going to have if they're in the market for a cassette adapter.)

I ran a PJB-100 with a cassette adapter into my car's stereo and it held it's own: not as nice as the same songs on the CD player but not that far off either.

So it sounds like a could be a cheap way to get some good-quality MP3 in a car. Too bad it's not cheap.


Michael Grant
12GB Green
080000266

I think the point rob is saying is that if the digisette has 32 megs, either you compromise quality for length, or you sacrifice length for quality, so this thing is $250... why not spend 0.50 on a casette, record 90 minutes of high quality music on it and play that?

Calvin

I think the point rob is saying is that if the digisette has 32 megs, either you compromise quality for length, or you sacrifice length for quality, so this thing is $250... why not spend 0.50 on a casette, record 90 minutes of high quality music on it and play that?

You may be right---but, like many people, I don't have a cassette recorder. I acquire tapes, I don't record them. SO, I'd stil have to fork over the dough for a decent cassette recorder, and now things begin to look competitive. Don't forget that the recording time to a 90-minute cassette, if you want decent sound quality, is, um, 90 minutes.

And yet I have this surprisingly good-sounding OEM cassette player in my car, (at least when coupled with a cassette adapter for a CD player). So I'd be a good candidate for the Digisette if 1) it weren't quite so expensive, and, the most important reason of all, 2) if I didn't already have a PJB-100 and an empeg :-)


Michael Grant
12GB Green
080000266

So I'd be a good candidate for the Digisette...

Even though it can only hold about 30 minutes of music (at 128 kbps)?

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Even though it can only hold about 30 minutes of music (at 128 kbps)?

Yeah that would kind of suck.... I'd have to expand it before I'd find it useful (at more $$), which is unfortunate. But I'm really siding more with the Digisette as a concept, not this particular execution of it.

Michael Grant
12GB Green
080000266

"So it sounds like a could be a cheap way to get some good-quality MP3 in a car. "

Yeah, but not as nice as toting the empeg into the wife's car and using her tape adapter to the line outs... ;-)

-Zeke

just say you weren't paying much attention...

I can't imagine that the sound quality of this Digisette is very good.


TeeMcBee
Got my Mk2! # 080000143

Well - but if I hadn't a cassette recorder I wouldn't have a tape-deck in the car. I would have a CD-unit. So there would be no need for this Digisette-thing.

This is on the market for about 1 year now. I think it's not that great cause otherwise you would have heard more of it. In my opinion it could only be a temporary solution till the Mk2 arrived - No - Too expensive!

TeeMcBee
Got my Mk2! # 080000143

I saw another companies version of this way back when I found Empeg, guess who won out.

#090000695 Mk2 BLUE 12Gig