FreeLists / blindipod / [blindipod] Re: The current status of portable media devices in 2007

["Brian Hartgen" <brian.hartgen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Steve

From an accessibility perspective, unless Apple do something radical I don't
think we need to be too concerned about the iPhone.  I have handled one of
those devices and they are extremely touch sensitive and I cannot emphasise
that strongly enough whereas Nokia phones are always OK in that regard.

Personally I use my iRiver for music and Stream for playback as I had a
number of problems with my N91.

Thanks for the message.

-----Original Message-----
From: blindipod-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:blindipod-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Steve Nutt
Sent: 27 December 2007 21:36
To: blindipod@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blindipod] Re: The current status of portable media devices in
2007

Hi Brian,
 
My only addition is let's not limit mobile phones to the N95 for good music
playback.  The N91 came first, then the N91 8GB, now we have the N95, and
soon to be the N82, which looks very interesting.  The N82 has all the
feature set of the N95, but is a candy bar phone, so no slide or flip, but a
flat phone like the N95.  I look forward to seeing it.
 
Nokia are also opening an online music store in 2008 in the UK, and you will
be able to purchase tracks directly over the air, download them and go,
without touching your PC.  The Iphone will also have this ability, but has
no 3G support, so downloads will be very slow.  Not only that, the Iphone is
currently not accessible, and it doesn't look like Apple are doing much
about that one.
 
In short then, I think the Nokia Apple battle is going to be very
interesting in 2008, and I think Nokia have some interesting ideas that may
upset the apple cart <Smile>.
 
All the best
 
Steve

________________________________

From: blindipod-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:blindipod-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Brian Hartgen
Sent: 27 December 2007 16:28
To: blindipod@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blindipod] The current status of portable media devices in 2007


Hi
 
As usual at this time of year, I wanted to try and give a summary of the
current status of our access to portable media devices during 2007, and it
has been an interesting year.  Clearly these views are my own but some of
them may give rise to discussion points on the list.
 
Before getting to that, I just want to say that the Portable Player Portal
is still a site which is well used and referred to not only through
discussions on mailing lists but also within on-line resources which is
tremendous.  I shall continue to update it during 2008 as will be seen
below.
 
I think there were three major milestones during this year and perhaps
several smaller developments which have had an impact in this area.
 
First was the launch of the Zen Stone media player - Creative's take on the
Apple iPod Shuffle you might say.  This is still available for 20 pounds and
is very accessible.  Officially folders cannot be voice tagged, although a
clumsy method of such tagging could be achieved by recording an MP3 file
within each folder voicing its name and ensuring it played first in the
sequence.  
 
I will not document all the advantages and disadvantages of the player as
they can be read on the Portable Player Portal web site, but it is worth
saying that from an accessibility and affordability standpoint this is still
a good quality player for what it does.
 
Next came the Victor reader Stream.  From the perspective of listening to
speech, this is such a great product.  Because it is a specialist player,
you would expect all of its functions to be accessible via speech prompts
and indeed they are.  The recent firmware update to play Audible books is
very welcome and it has to be one of the most flexible players which can
deliver Audible content including its ability to play books at varying
speeds.  
 
I agree with Steve Nutt's recent comments to this list that there are no
specialist players available right now which deliver high quality music
playback that are "feature rich" in that area unless you want to move into
the arena of specialist PDA's.  The Stream lacks many qualities in the music
playback arena and that includes adequate music reproduction quality and
other things which I have documented on the Portal site.  But if you had to
make a choice about a player to purchase which can meet many needs, the
stream is undoubtedly a very popular choice. 
 
Neal Ewers has produced an excellent audio review of the Stream and I will
be writing to ask him whether we can link to it from the Portal site.
 
The third thing I am glad to note is that mobile (or cell) phones, such as
the Nokia N95, are being considered more favourably as portable media
devices.  Such devices are the only current players available which give
you, (in the area of music reproduction):
* Very high sound quality,
* The ability to be able to vary the graphic equalisation,
*   The delivery of features allowing you to vary the playing order,
* To be able to copy tracks immediately to the player without the need for
"voice tagging" folders or individual music tracks, to name but the
principal aspects.
 
When you have Talks installed for example on such a device, you are well
equipped with an excellent music player and it would be difficult to see how
you could improve upon the flexibility given by such a combination.
However, such a solution is expensive and I would find it difficult to
understand a person purchasing this system if he or she was not going to use
it as a phone in addition to a music player.  Moreover, while there is
Audible support available, the last time I looked you could not vary the
speed of the playback which to many of us is a very important factor and
this also applies very much to the playback of Podcasts.  The manufacturers
of the more specialist devices do recognise that important requirement and
some of them such as Humanware give us the ability to vary the speed
according to taste withthe advantage that normal playback can be resumed at
any time to clarify some spoken word if needed.
 
The great thing is that Napster to Go, (Napster Music's facility for
allowing you to download music directly to a portable device and play it),
is capable of being used by a Nokia N95 in particular.  Don't forget on the
Portal site we have a tutorial on getting the most from Napster with a
screen-reader if anyone would like to download it.  A page devoted to the
N95 will also be included in the new year.
 
Moving to other matters, on this list I have not been able to discuss the
capabilities of the Pac Mate Omni's considerable music management and high
quality playback capabilities because it has only recently become available,
but I look forward to doing that in the months ahead.
 
Finally to iTunes.  Very little progress has been made in this regard,
except that a recent change ensured that iTunes would once again function
with later releases of JAWS which helped the J-Tunes product a little.
 
If anyone else has any particular highlights of 2007 I am sure we would all
be pleased to read them.  Meanwhile, have a very happy new year and let's
hope that 2008 gives us even more access to portable audio.
 
Brian Hartgen
 

More information about portable media devices can be obtained from the Portable 
Player Portal.  Please visit 
www.hartgen.org 
and choose the Portable Player Portal link.

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