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iRiver iHP 120 20 GB MP3 Jukebox Average Customer Review:  Electronics list price: $399.99 -- our price: $291.04 (price subject to change: see help) US | Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France Features Reviews (132)
Having owned this product for a about a month, I am happy to report that I am very, very pleased. I am not going to go over the plethora of features and options in this review, rather I will list some of the things that I enjoy most - in hopes to enlighten you as a potential buyer. For me, it came down to this mp3 player and of course the famous iPod. Although the design of the pod is quite nice, and navigation is a breeze, it is way too simplistic and lacks the versatility of the iRiver. I find the design of the iHP to be quite nice.. with an all-metal exterior and well designed remote (with all the funcions of the main unit - such as track listing, bitrate, etc). When you hold this you get a sense of the sheer quality of the unit. Solid. The main reasons for my purchase are as follows: Long (16 hour) battery life. While the iPod's 4-5 hour life may be sufficient, you never know when you might be yearning for melodic fix with no access to a charger. Optical in/out - line/in out. Very nice to have this at a buddies house and be able to hook up to his stereo (iPod needs docking station for optical out). Also you can hook it up to a car stereo via the tape adapter, very nice. No Drivers. So your at so-and-so's house and she has that set list for your favorite band. Just plug in the player to a USB port and drag the folders to the drive that pops up and your all set. Which leads me to my next plus.. Functions as a hard drive. With no drivers needed for installation, the iRiver functions as a secondary hard drive. You can store data files as well as read text documents on the player itself. Did I mention the HD is made by Toshiba? 'nuff said. Ogg Vorbis support. For those of you that don't know, the .ogg format is a way of compressing music files similar to mp3. Ogg is open-source and is completely free, unlike mp3 (trust me its not a free source). Here is where ogg really shines. You can encode a .ogg music file to sound the SAME as mp3 - but it will take up LESS SPACE. Or (my favorite), you can have it take up about the same space, and sound BETTER. This seems nice but let me tell you, ogg files sound AMAZING on this player. I was very impressed with it. Did I mention that the iPod has copyright protection on a lot of files? Comes standard with a leather case. This may not seem like much, but its a nice case that covers the optical input/output as well has having a nice beltloop. The beltloop came in handy more than I thought it would. Volume fade. May not seem like much, but when you turn the player on, or resume it from being paused, it fades the volume up slowly to the point it was at last. I LOVE this. It is the little things like this that make me proud of my iRiver *wipes a solitary tear from eye*. I could go on and on, and probably should - but other reviews cover the rest and I want to watch Adaptation. So heres the wrap-up. This player sparked me to write the first review I have ever written for ANY product on the internet. I wanted to share with everyone the joys that is iRiver. But what review would be complete without a few complaints, you say? Well.. as much as I love my baby, here they are. Slow scroll speed. You can turn this setting up, but it is still not as fast and responsive as the scroll wheel on the iPod. With over 15 gigs of music on my player already - this has yet to annoy me more than slightly, and is easily covered up by the other features (plus the unit is firmware upgradeable.. so they might even fix this). Neophyte usability. If you are even remotely savvy with electronics (mainly computers/directory trees) you should have no problem. This is more of a warning to those people who are looking to buy this product for the clueless. The setup is not bad by any means, but it is not as straightforward as the iPods. In a nutshell, if you want a solid mp3 player with tons of high-end features, great sound, and lots of depth, buy the iRiver iHP. If you really don't need any extra features, want to spend more moeny for less, and just want simplistic player to get the job done, get the iPod. Seriously guys and gals, this thing is worth every penny. I truly believe it is the best mp3 player on the market. Hope this eclectic review helped someone. G'nite and thanks for such an outstanding product, iRiver. Keep up the good work.
Well I've had this player for about 1 week now and the performance has been even better than I expected. I decided to buy this after nearly 6 months of researching different products, talking to electronic stores, and trying my friends players (all Ipod). I choose the Iriver over the highly publicized Ipod after considering some important factors: 1. User Interface...... Advantage Ipod 5.Features......Advantage Iriver Iriver-fully functional reomte w/ lcd, external mic, Overall... The Iriver is the clear winner here, which is why I choose this. The Ipod is a respectable player but for the price your basically paying for a design and a brand name when you could get a better (slightly less atractive) player in the Iriver. If you want a functional player, but mostly want to make a fashion statement get an Ipod.Bottomline if you really care about music and want the best technology get an Iriver and you will not be disapointed.
However, I am regrettably returning this thing to the store. Why? Because iRiver simply makes it too damn hard to get music onto the device from my CD collection. 1) There is NO included ripping/organizing software. Zilch. Nada. What you get on CD is drivers so a Win98 box can talk to it, and a small program to create the database file so your player can access the music by Artist or Genre or Album or Track Name. (Without the database, you navigate your songs solely with a directory tree.) 2) While you can easily download software that will perform what I am complaining about in 1), no one package will do it all for you. To rip a CD, you have to do the following: (using programs you scrounge up from the internet yourself. iRiver is no help) 3) The filename MUST start with the track name. If it doesn't, the player sorts the files in an album in alphabetical order. (Which is a big no-no for lots of classical music, along with musicals, and classic albums that were simply meant to be played in the right order, like the Greatful Dead.) Too bad this makes the search by track function completely useless. The player is too stupid to use the track number tag in most music files. 4) re: That silly 48 character limit I mentioned earlier. A program that simply truncates the filename isn't gonna work. The track name that CDDB returned really IS the title of the piece. I could abbreviate, but I really don't feel like doing that BY HAND for every CD that needs it. 5) Scrolling: Scrolling through a long list of anything on this device is SLOW. A progressive scroll speed, ala Creative would work wonders. 6) on-the-fly playlists: I used this function w/ my dearly departed Creative Nomad Jukebox 2. All I want to do is queue up several tracks and/or Artists and/or Albums to play. Nope, can't do it. This feature is promised by iRiver "Real Soon Now" via a firmware upgrade, but I'm not holding my breath. I am a geek for a living, but my time is more valuable than spending hours fighting with my consumer electronics. If you already have a pile of neatly sorted MP3's (with short filenames, and tagged with track numbers) on your computer, then this player is great. Simply drag your music collection onto the player and you are good to go. If you have an extensive CD collection you need to rip, you could have a problem. ... Read more Asin: B0000EI9VR |
$291.04 |
Best mp3 Player on the Market. Period.
I REALLY wanted to like this product...
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NCAA Football 2004 Average Customer Review: CD-ROM (17 July, 2003) list price: $49.99 -- our price: $29.95 (price subject to change: see help) US | Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France Features Reviews (103)
First, let's focus on the improvements... The Play Action Pass is certainly better this year than in previous editions. Now, as long as you've started to establish the run you can us play action to fake the defense out. As in real life it doesn't always work so you have to be careful not to overuse it. The kick return teams to a better job of blocking, which is a welcome fix. But at the same time the AI has improved to the point where the almost guaranteed runback days of NCAA 1999 are a thing of the past. Thank god! Some of the new bells are things like school records in which you can compete against some of the great players in your favorite teams history for records like most sacks in a game, rushing yards in a season, etc... You can even go for Joe Pa's all time win record. Finally, the recruiting has been improved to where recruits take into consideration more than just team prestige, and its up to you to try and sell them on some aspect of your program (presige, coaching style, location, etc...). If you are looking for a great college football game, or just a great game, look no further!
Asin: B00009KX77 |
$29.95 |
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PS2 Network Adapter Average Customer Review:  CD-ROM list price: $49.99 -- our price: $39.99 (price subject to change: see help) US | Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France Editorial Review The PS2 network adapter offers both dialup and broadband connectivity toplay PS2 games online. It includes a startup disc with playable demos ofFrequency and Madden NFL 2003, as well as video demos of ATVOffroad Fury 2, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, and Tribes: AerialAssault. To use the network adapter, you need a PlayStation2 game system, an 8 MB memorycard with at least 137 KB of space, and a dialup or broadband Internetconnection with an Internet service provider. The network adapter works withjust about any ISP service, including AOL, AT&T WorldNet, EarthLink,Prodigy/SBC, and Sympatico. Check with your ISP for details. Connect the network adapter to the PlayStation2 system by lining up the unit'sconnectors to the expansion bay located in the rear of the PS2. Once yourhardware is set up, the user must insert the network adapter startup disc inorder to configure the ISP network data and connect to the Internet. Simply gothrough the ISP setup process located on the main menu of the startup disc. Yournetwork configuration data will be saved onto your memory card. The ISP networkconfiguration will work only on the specific PlayStation2 system you used forthe initial ISP setup. Network configuration data is not transferable fromsystem to system. ... Read more Reviews (151)
Let's move on to an easy way to set up a wireless network. When I decided to go online, I knew that I didn't want 100' of CAT5e cable running through my house. Unfortunately, no one had any decent online ideas on how to set it up. So, here's the true story of my wonderful little wireless home network. First, you're going to need a wireless router. I purchased the Linksys BEFW11S4 and I've had no problems at all. It was very easy to connect the 2 desktop computers and the PS2. The BEFW11S4 uses the 802.11b wireless standard. (If you don't know what this means, that's ok....just make sure you purchase a wireless ethernet bridge with the same standard, but I'll get to that). Secondly, you'll need the above mentioned wireless ethernet bridge. I used the Linksys WET11 and the bandwith is superb. (It also uses the 802.11b wireless standard, so it'll work just fine with the BEFW11S4.) Some people knock it in their online reviews, but for online gaming it is more than adequate. There's NO WAY you'll need anymore bandwith playing online than what the WET11 offers. Basically, this little devil plugs into the wall by your PS2. You then run some network cabling (CAT5e) from the WET11 to your PS2 and BAM, you're almost there. Almost there...you'll have to add the WET11 to your home network, but it's also quite simple installation. The BEFW11S4 will auto-detect the WET11 if it's powered up. Then all you have to do is run through the rather brainless ISP (Internet Service Provider) setup. TAA-DAA....you're done! Now go pickup Madden 2003, or SOCOM and get playing! (All products mentioned in this review are available here on Amazon.com and I suggest you get them here. I did MASSIVE comparison shopping when I set this up in October 2002, and Amazon.com had the best pricing...)
Asin: B000051QDD |
$39.99 |
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The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Full Screen Edition) by Director: Peter Jackson Average Customer Review: DVD (26 August, 2003) list price: $29.95 -- our price: $17.97 (price subject to change: see help) US | Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France Editorial Review The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is a seamless continuation of Peter Jackson's epic fantasy based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. After the breaking of the Fellowship, Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) journey to Mordor to destroy the One Ring of Power with the creature Gollum as their guide. Meanwhile, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) join in the defense of the people of Rohan, who are the first target in the eradication of the race of Men by the renegade wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee) and the dark lord Sauron. Fantastic creatures, astounding visual effects, and a climactic battle at the fortress of Helm's Deep make The Two Towers a worthy successor to The Fellowship of the Ring, grander in scale but retaining the story's emotional intimacy. These two films are perhaps the greatest fantasy films ever made, but they're merely a prelude to the cataclysmic events of The Return of the King. --David Horiuchi ... Read more Features Reviews (1847)
Fellowship of the Ring is the most polished film, with its elegant episodic pacing. We start in the idyllic world of the hobbits and flee with Ringwraiths hot on our heels; we rest in Elrond's sanctuary and plunge into Moria; we come out grieving and console ourselves in Galadriel's safe (yet unsettling) dream-wood, and then wind up surrounded by Uruk-hai. This is a quintessential fantasy road-journey containing three episodes within an episode, each beginning in a haven and followed by a dark journey. The pacing is flawless, and the plot unfolds to a perfect beat. Two Towers is the ambiguous film. It's excellent (or at least the extended version is) but structured in a way that the hobbits become sidelined by the Rohan story. As they are the soul of Tolkien's epic, we feel slightly nonplussed at their consignment to B-storylines. Ironically, the film is a showcase for cgi characters Gollum and Treebeard, who manage to steal the show from within these storylines. Return of the King is the most dramatic film, tragic on almost a biblical level, and certainly the most satisfying. I can understand why Elijah Wood calls it "better than one and two combined". It centers on the hopeless mission to Mount Doom, which, as every fan knows, is the heart of the story. Around this we're bombarded by apocalyptic chaos and destruction on the Pelennor Fields, followed by Aragorn's hopeless march on the Black Gate. We finish at the Grey Havens, the best ending in literary and cinematic history, which encapsulates all of Tolkien's themes: courage, friendship, suffering, and passing on. It just doesn't get better than this. Of particular interest is the way Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King share so many dramatic features -- without any sense of formula or "been there before" -- lacking in Two Towers. The Nine Nazgul play a major role (whether on horseback or fell beasts), memorable and menacing villains: Weathertop and the Morgul Vale are easily the most frightening scenes of the trilogy; Flight to the Ford and the Siege of Gondor are the most exciting. Frodo's life is put in jeopardy after being stabbed by the Witch-King and poisoned by Shelob, and there is an "edge-of-your-seat" excitement to the horse-chase and spider-fight scenes not found in the second film. Gandalf plays a major role as his character unfolds primarily through his relationship with a hobbit (Frodo in the first film, Pippin in the third), while his appearance in the second film is really an extended cameo. He has dramatic confrontations at Isengard with his rival Saruman; in the middle film the wizards combat each other only indirectly, through Theoden's exorcism. The Ring often speaks to Frodo -- who puts it on three times, and then once -- but in TT the chief antagonist is somewhat sidelined. The Mirror of Galadriel offers Frodo some terrifying visions (not least Galadriel herself), just as the Palantir does to Pippin. The deaths of Boromir and Thedoen are emotionally intense. Likewise, the Breaking of the Fellowship and Grey Havens are emotional endings which accentuate Tolkien's themes of parting and loss. Two Towers suffers from a lack of protagonist deaths and an emotional "Tolkienesque" ending. None of this is intended to deny that Two Towers is an excellent film (as I said, the extended version certainly is), but the other two films supersede it by virtue of the particular drama contained in the storylines. They're more menacing, exciting, and emotional. My individual ratings are as follows. Fellowship of the Ring -- 97 (5 stars). Two Towers -- 91 (4 1/2 stars). Return of the King -- 99 (5 stars). Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh, and the WETA team deserve more accolades than I'm capable of heaping to the point of overkill. Suffice to say that these films will be treasured as long as, and as much as, Tolkien's classic itself.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, since is a continuing of a story, doesn't stop to introduce us to the quest or the characters from the first part, The Fellowship of the Ring. Beginning right where the first left off, Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) must continue their quest to Mount Doom and destroy the evil One Ring. Hunting them done is the rascal Gollum (Andy Serkis) but promises to lead them in to Mordor secretely. In Fangorn Forest, captured hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) escape from the Orcs and are rescued by Treebeard (voiced by John Rhys-Davies), an ancient ent. Meanwhile, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) enter the country of Rohan. After the miraculous return of Gandalf (Ian McKellan), the four see King Theoden (Bernard Hill). But the king isn't doing too well. He's doing practically everything his servant Grima Wormtongue (Brad Dourif) is telling him. Wormtongue is in league with Saruman (Christopher Lee) and therefore is kicked out of Rohan. Aragorn, Gandalf and Theoden must discuss Rohan's plans to counter Saruman and Sauron. Saruman is preparing for war, as we've also seen in The Fellowship of the Ring. He has been crossing orcs with goblins, breeding the dreadful Uruk-Hai to launch against Men of Gondor and Rohan. Gondor has it's own problems holding off Sauron's evil army. It all comes down to Saruman against the country of Rohan: A war of 10,000 Uruk-Hai against hundreds of Rohan people. Can Men claim a victory against Barad-dur and Orthanc, the union of the Two Towers? The Two Towers, for me at least, had a quicker pace and sharper sense of movement than the more-episodic Fellowship of the Ring. Peter Jackson easily presents a film that will keep your attention for the full three hours. In many ways, The Two Towers is a much livlier film than it's predecessor. It takes a deeper look into it's character's own problems, dreams and future, covering many subjects: The war for Rohan, the war for Gondor, the war for the ents, and possibly the most important, the fate of the One Ring. If The Fellowship of the Ring was a beautiful-looking movie, The Two Towers easily surpasses it visually. With the use of a program called MASSIVE, Peter Jackson and company takes flawless computer animation and simplistically adds it to real-life to create a stunning world. The Battle of Helm's Deep is one of the most memorable scenes of all time, while it uses a fantastic blend of live-action and computer animation. I say it's already got the Best Visual Effects Oscar in the bag. Not just because of the CGI, but with the camera trickery to make the hobbits small and the great backdrops. I am appalled by the number of reviewers saying that this isn't faithful to Tolkien's book. Everyone should know that books and film are two different media, and should be treated as such. Many things in Tolkien's story would've gone horribly wrong on screen. As Peter Jackson said, if you were to film LOTR page by page, faithful to everything, what you would get is a mess. Many don't realize that what works in a book will NOT work on film. Be happy that you actually have a LOTR movie. Many filmmakers would not have been up to transferring Tolkien's story to the big screen. Jackson did make a few unnessesary changes, but he's a brave filmmaker to actually take on LOTR and still make something this good. Quit whining. It might need a bit more humanity, but I'd say the chemistry between characters is much more alive and vivid in The Two Towers than with The Fellowship of the Ring. The relationship shared by Gollum and Frodo, or more importantly, Gollum and Sam, works wonderfully. Aragorn trying to convince King Theoden to go to war and the characterization involving Gimli was exceptionally. The Return of the King will see a lot more of this. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers continues Tolkien's trilogy with very few missteps. It is on every count as good as the first, and in many ways, even better. It could possibly be the most sinister film ever, a banquet of monsters and beasts. It's doing so much better at the box-office than the first, and it easily surpasses it in spectacle. It's still unclear how it will do at the Oscars. Being a sequel, it might not get nominated for Best Picture. However, I'd say it has already sweeped the technical awards. It certainly deserves it.
Asin: B00009APK1 |
$17.97 |
| 1-4 of 4 1 |
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