sgopus said:
I've had some real issues getting a new MP4 player (not apple) getting it
recognized
easily via the USB bus, sometimes I plug it in and it's seen right away,
other times I have to resort to a different USB port, anybody else have this
issue???
Would a straight Apple product be better? and Itunes?
The current player is caller pasbuy yeah it's an apple knockoff.
I don't remember the details now, but there was one motherboard
chipset, where the USB interfaces could not tolerate jitter.
And certain music players were known to have abnormally high
jitter in their USB signals. Now, this would be a fine
excuse, except many other competing motherboard chipsets
had no problem talking to that music player. One suggested
workaround in that case, was to place a USB2 capable hub,
between the music player and the computer. The theory was,
that the USB2 hub would "reclock" the USB data from the player.
I would not expect this to be a prime suspect for most
problems of this type. It was more of an exception. But
it is an example, where two particular pieces of hardware
"don't like each other".
Music players have at least two protocols they could use. The
first players used USB Mass Storage protocol. The music player
would look like a simple disk. Many OSes will already have
Mass Storage support out of the box (WinXP SP1 or later), so
as far as I'm concerned, this is adequate for the music
playing function. It solves the comsumers need, to move
files from the computer to the player, and the
concept of file transfer is easy to understand.
A second scheme is called MTP or Music Transfer Protocol.
It has the possibility of enforcing DRM during transfer,
so may restrict what you can do. It also may require a
driver installation, and not a normal installation. At
one time, you'd download the latest Windows Media Player
application, and it came with MTP. From a consumer
perspective, I don't see anything here which is designed
to help the consumer or end user. It is more for the
music industry than anything else.
The same can be said for Apple products. All you need to do,
is observe how many requests there are for tech support for
Apple stuff, to get some idea how "easy" it is. (I wanted
to do some testing, in my copy of Virtual PC with the Win2K
OS, and Apple doesn't even support Win2K. I won't install
ITunes, directly on this PC.)
Due to the reliability of storage devices in common use,
if I have a fortune tied up in purchased music, I want the
ability to store multiple copies, without having to worry
about what anybody else thinks. I don't want to have
to post to a forum "can anybody help me save my music
collection, I just reinstalled ITunes and can't sync
any more" etc.
I don't own a music player. But if I did, it would have
to be USB Mass Storage type, with *no* syncing software.
Just the ability to copy a group of files, from one disk
to another. And if the Apple store cannot sell me
unencumbered music, then I'd rip it from what few
CDs I've got.
Paul
