Why don't they make...

[indigo_dave]

something to play music from flash drives and memory cards ? Kind of a cross between a boom box (but not as big and kludgy) and a table radio. Something that you can pick up and move to another room (not a laptop with extension speakers). I know there are a very few devices that take a flash drive as almost an afterthougt. But something like a netbook with decent quality speakers that could navigate through mp3 files would be great. I know Apple only has an interest in devices that play their iPods or iPhones or whatever. But I'd think those of us who've bought mp3 players (in my case Sansa mp3 players) that later broke for one reason or another would welcome a music playing appliance that accomodated the media (flash drives and memory cards) rather than a proprietary device.

 

Am I missing something ?

 

Dave

[Richard King]

One of these wakes me up every morning. I guess it would fit in the table radio category.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Buslink-Encoding-Radio-touchscreen-Subwoofer/dp/B000G7XC2A

[techristian]

When you get tired of hearing the same mp3's over and over, there are also the new WIFI radios, which boast "1000's of CHANNELS" I have never had one, but near as I understand these look like table radios that pick up internet radio stations. Of course these will only work in proximity of wireless routers connected to the internet. (near hot spots)

 

 

Dan

[Jeff Leites]

How about this:

 

 

 

* Slot-in CD MP3 playback supports CD-ROM / CR-R / CD-RW.

* SD / MMC card / USB MP3 or WMA playback.

* FM / AM bands.

* Radio Data System (RDS) with radio text, program type, station name, and auto clock time (where available).

* Alarm & Sleep timer.

* Search & Manual tuning.

* Dynamic bass compensation for high quality rich bass.

* Full Menu Display.

* External type

[indigo_dave]

Thanks for the info. I guess these products are close to what I want. Any new purchase probably should have wifi capability along with the USB flash and SD inputs I'd like.

 

Again, thanks.

 

Dave

[MikeRivers]

I've seen a couple of new cars that have a USB connector (for a flash drive) on the radio. It apparently works like a CD player.

[eeglug]

I have a Sansa Clip+ mp3 player which takes a microSD card. It has 4GB internal memory (you can get ones with 8GB internal) and I have a 16GB microSD card in it. It's super tiny and thanks to the card it has a huge amount of my music collection on it (albeit in compressed format). If my current Clip+ dies I can just buy another and slip the card into the new one.

[spokenward]

 

Thanks for the info. I guess these products are close to what I want. Any new purchase probably should have wifi capability along with the USB flash and SD inputs I'd like. Again, thanks. Dave

 

 

There is a newer class of CE products that are known as Digital Media players. Many of these are networked, increasingly they are wifi'd. They are headless Linux boxes that are designed to manage and present media content. They output to HDMI and TOSlink for connection to AV gear.

 

examples:

Asus O!Play

WD TV

 

They support SD cards and USB drives and maybe eSATA.

 

They support a whole spectrum of media types. I see this as the first thing that leads us back to a home media platform after the great wave of portable players.

[blue2blue]

But a lot of folks find it more convenient to simply have a docking station of some kind for their portable player -- why duplicate all that content?

 

Or, for that matter, just plug the sucker into your stereo like an outboard cassette or other device.

 

That's what I've done for years if I needed to (like when powering down the computer, which is my entertainment center, to install devices, dust, etc). And, in my car, which only has an old-fashioned radio and cassette, I use one of those trailer trash cassette adapters which works surprisingly well with my Blackberry -- and has the added advantage of making the car stereo the speaker in hands-free phone operation. So when a call comes in, all I have to do is hit the answer and speakerphone buttons. [OK, that would be easier if the speakerphone button wasn't a micro-chiclet in a field of micro-chiclets. ])

[Anderton]

My current "radio" is an old Pentium laptop. Just about any processor can handle internet radio (the bottleneck is the bandwidth, not the processor) and music playback. So, I ditched XM and listen to the internet (let's hear it for Shoutcast!), and mirrored my Zen media player's files on the hard drive so I can listen to that as well. The laptop really wouldn't be good for anything else, so now it has joined my community of computers as a productive (and entertaining) citizen

[gdoubleyou]

My Audi A4 will play music from compact flash, it's an '06.

 

Now the problem is that today's flash is to large, and isn't supported.

 

[MikeRivers]

 

My Audi A4 will play music from compact flash, it's an '06. Now the problem is that today's flash is to large, and isn't supported.

 

Time to get a new car then, one that can handle 32 GB micro-SD cards. The nice thing about a CF card is that it's big enough to stick a label on so you know what's on it, and it's not so small that it's easy to lose.

[techristian]

My current "radio" is an old Pentium laptop. Just about any processor can handle internet radio (the bottleneck is the bandwidth, not the processor) and music playback. So, I ditched XM and listen to the internet (let's hear it for Shoutcast!), and mirrored my Zen media player's files on the hard drive so I can listen to that as well. The laptop really wouldn't be good for anything else, so now it has joined my community of computers as a productive (and entertaining) citizen

 

So this laptop has become a dedicated internet radio? Do you leave it on or reboot it every time? Wired the audio out to your stereo?

 

Dan

[MikeRivers]

 

So this laptop has become a dedicated internet radio? Do you leave it on or reboot it every time? Wired the audio out to your stereo?

 

I have a laptop that's on all the time, that mostly gets used as a radio, though I have backup copies of things I'm currently working on stored on it along with applications, so I can work on that computer if something happens to the main computer and I don't want to take the time to figure it out at the moment.

 

I have a decent sounding Digigram VX Pocket PCMCIA audio I/O card in it, that goes to a switch box. There's a cable running from that switch box to a receiver in the living room so I can listen there, and also to a receiver in the office. And I can also pipe audio from the work computer into the switch box. I use Total Recorder to record a few weekly programs and either listen to them when nothing else is on, or load them into my MP3 player and take them along when I travel.

 

I'd love to have an Internet-capable car radio. The expensive part to that at this time, though, is the connection.

[blue2blue]

My current "radio" is an old Pentium laptop. Just about any processor can handle internet radio (the bottleneck is the bandwidth, not the processor) and music playback. So, I ditched XM and listen to the internet (let's hear it for Shoutcast!), and mirrored my Zen media player's files on the hard drive so I can listen to that as well. The laptop really wouldn't be good for anything else, so now it has joined my community of computers as a productive (and entertaining) citizen

I have a (not that old) Acer laptop that belongs to friends where the controller governing the built-in optical drive as well as the network i/o (ethernet and Wi-Fi) is apparently burned out (it also wiped out the HDD but I was able to reformat it and install XP from a thumb drive and my USB Wi-Fi thumb adapter works in it). I've been thinking about making it an online media playback machine -- although the fan tends to go into overdrive even watching YouTube vids, so, you know. But for casual music playback it should be reasonable enough. That said, I may just give it back to my friends for that purpose, since they have a big house and only currently have four computers for 3 people... hardly enough it seems to me.

[elsongs]

I would love something like this for my car stereo. I can test out mixes a LOT more easily, rather than waste CDs.

[Richard King]

So, I ditched XM and listen to the internet (let's hear it for Shoutcast!), and mirrored my Zen media player's files on the hard drive so I can listen to that as well.

 

I also ditched XM a while back, but I replaced it with another portable solution, that being a Slacker personal "radio". I've loaded it up with 25 radio stations that I "refill" at any WiFi site. http://www.slacker.com/everywhere/

[FranklinWalker]

i think you get the reason

[MikeRivers]

 

something to play music from flash drives and memory cards ?

 

Long story, short version - They already do.

 

Today I picked up a rental car, a 2010 Camry. I was connecting my MP3 player to the radio in preparation for a drive from LAX up to Solvang (my first actual studio consulting job in a long time - come on, folks, get out your wallets, you KNOW you need me!) when I noticed a USB connector next to the mini phone jack buried all the way at the back of a dashboard compartment. I mentally filed that as something to play with when I had some time, but just made the connection that I know worked, and headed up the 405. Discovered that my new GPS doesn't say zeros very well. It told me to take the "four-west-five" and then the "one-wewst-one" freeways.

 

Anyhow, this player has an internal rechargeable battery which usually plays for about 7 hours. I charged it fully before leaving on the trip, and played it about four hours on the cross-country flight, figuring that I'd have enough battery left to last for the 2-1/2 hour drive. In less than half an hour on the road, the battery died. (remind me to rant and rave about the live of a device like this is the life of the built-in battery).

 

When I got out of range of KKJZ-FM, I stopped for lunch and on a lark, plugged the USB port on the MP3 player into the connector in the Camry. Pushed a couple of more or less obviously labeled buttons on the radio, and darn if my music didn't start playing. I had a good trip the rest of the way up, and the battery in the playwer was getting a charge in the process. Very cool. Apparently it's smart enough to find and play MP3 and WMA files (according to the legend on the radio). When I get some clothes on, I'm going to try it with a USB flash drive with some WAV files on it.

 

Now if I could only figure out how to invert (black-to-white) the display on the radio so I can read it in daylight as well as in the dark, my life would be a little closer to complete.