MP3 Insider 116: Web radio lives on

The Sony B-Series Walkman. What's that B stand for, anyway?

(Credit: CNET Networks/Corinne Schulze)

House of Representatives passes a bill that will protect Webcasters from royalty-related death for at least a bit longer. Also, Donald and Jasmine review the Iriver Spinn, Archos 5, and Sony B-Series Walkman.
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Episode 116

Pandora's safe...for now: http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/09/house-of-repres.html

Iriver Spinn reviewed: http://reviews.cnet.com/portable-video-players-pvps/iriver-spinn-4gb/4505-6499_7-32815502.html

Archos 5 reviewed: http://reviews.cnet.com/portable-video-players-pvps/archos-5-250gb/4505-6499_7-33226904.html

Sony B-Series reviewed: http://reviews.cnet.com/mp3-players/sony-nwz-b135f-walkman/4505-6490_7-33270795.html

Best earbuds for less than $100: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10052158-1.html

--------Listener question: Audio Quality---------

In [Buzz Out Loud] Episode 816 I heard an interesting discussion about codecs, CDs and audio quality in general. As an audiophile, I, like Brian Cooley (and presumably Jason) hate MP33/AAC/WMA files for their quality-reducing compression. Yes, MP3 files can be as good as 320Kbps but .WAV files are 1,411Kbps. Therefore, my question is this: can we just rip our music (we being CD buyers, a dying breed, I know) in .WAV format and maintain the quality we get from the actual CD? This prompts a supplementary question: Will playing .wav files on an iPod or Zune (or other hard-drive based portable PMP) sound as good as playing CDs on a reasonably good CD player, or are they inherently incapable of decent audio playback? --Mark

[Charbax]

Archos 5 browser is 4x faster then iPhone, iPod Touch and Archos 605 WiFi. How can this not be new compared to the Archos 605 wifi? Who cares about smooth scrolling in the browser, if it loads pages much faster then on the iPod touch and the iPhone? Did you actually do some browser tests, like comparatively browsing onto certain pages using one and the other? The Archos displays 2.5x more pixels on the screen, so no constant need to zoom in on all the pages like with the iphone.

Why would you want to play flash videos within the browser? What people mostly do with flash videos is directly hit the full screen button anyways. And the Archos even though it's 4.8" screen is the industry's biggest, it's still much more usable to just watch all flash videos automatically in real full screen so I dunno why you have to complain about that.

If they got problems with certain flash 9 sites like cnet and hulu that have flash 9 ads as pre-rolls, sure they will hopefully fix that, but that can be cause the Adobe Flash SDK is not supporting that type of flash video yet.

All the different companies can create Widget type of stuff for the Archos in the Media Club section. In fact Archos has already thousands of movies available in the media club part of the Interface.

Sure though it'd be nice with Android type third party applications support.

Where is it $60-90 for plugins? You can get all the H264, AAC, Mpeg2, AC3 and HD plugins for $30 in all as a package. Is that the killer part for you? How about NOT having any of those codecs at DVD nor HD resolution on the iPhone nor iPod Touch. Shouldn't that be the killer part?

Did you actually test the battery life? I'm sure you didn't. Check my forum at http://forum.archosfans.com people are testing up to 5h40 of battery life for video playback. It's definitely not worse then the 605 WiFi, it's at least as good.

Archos is saying 4h in specs cause within 1 year of someone using it heavilly every day, the internal battery may reach 300 recharge cycles and its battery life can decrease a little. So the state 4h is to guard themselves against people returning the device within the first year within the warrantee because they would think the battery would be defective.

The new DVR Station has HDMI digital HD output, reason why they had to change the connectors. Most people buying the Archos 5 wouldn't be upgrading from a previous model anyways, so why complain.

It's got much faster much better browser then the iPhone, with full AJAX and flash, (sure still firmware today is beta, but the product is not totally released either yet).

The screen is much better then the Archos 605 WiFi even though it's glossier, it's much more usable outdoors in broad daylight even though it's glossy. iPhone screen is glossy so again why complain?

OK, it doesn't wow you, obviously you are an Apple fanboy.

Less features? what are you talking about, this one has new better accessories. New better DVR Station with HDMI output and component input. FM remote control. DVB-T snap-on. HSDPA USB Dongle. Clearly you have no idea what you are reviewing.