DigitalAudioPlayer
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XM will "vigorously defend" Innos against industry suit
XM is firing back against the recording industry's lawsuit over the Pioneer Inno's ability to temporarily store copyrighted material, stating rather boldly in an open letter to its customers that "we will vigorously defend these radios and your right to enjoy them in court and before Congress, and we expect to win." Claiming that the record labels "don't get it," XM argues that consumers have always been free to tape over-the-air content from a variety of sources, provided that they restrict those recordings to personal use. What's more, the Inno doesn't even let you transfer recorded content to other devices, and deletes all of your tunes if you drop your XM subscription, so it's already much more restrictive than the recording devices faced by TV and terrestrial radio broadcasters. Instead of actually expecting XM to pay $150,000 for each song recorded by Inno users (which would probably amount to at least several billion dollars), it's more likely that the music industry is using this suit to coax XM into joining rival Sirius in coughing up additional licensing fees. Also, a note to XM PR: despite your suggestion that the record labels are attacking sat radio owners at the expense of a war on the "real" pirates, we think that the industry is both well-prepared and well-equipped for a multi-front conflict.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
MobiBlu Cube 2 gets specs, pricing
Diminutive DAP manufacturer MobiBlu has just released the specs for their latest miniature wonder, the 24 x 24 x 24-millimeter Cube 2, which improves upon its predecessor by letting you view photos on a thumbnail-sized, 64 x 48 pixel OLED display. Unfortunately for our love of machine translation, the Korean Cube 2 website lumped all the specs into an un-translatable image, but the sprinkling of English words indicate that there's not much more to this model than we already knew. Coming in 512MB and 1GB flavors, the 18-gram player features MP3, WMA, and OGG music file support, direct recording from the FM tuner, crossfading between tracks, USB mass storage capabilities, and the obligatory digital equalizer settings, plus the ability to hang it from your ear. Pricing is set at $154 and $192 for the half- and full-gig versions, respectively, but there's no word yet on when we'll be seeing this new model 'round these parts.[Via DAPreview]
NTI Comodo's NP-950 DAP with in-dock VoIP and DJ functions
Talk about a convergence device-- not only does NTI Comodo's new NP-950 digital audio player perform the obligatory playback and recording functions, it can even act as a VoIP "handset" or broadcast tunes DJ-style over the Internet when docked in its USB cradle. Being marketed as the "Universal MP3 Player" in conjunction with OpenCast, this model is available in 512MB or 1GB flavors and supports MP3, WMA, ASF, and WAV audio tracks, WMV and AMV video files or JPEG/BMP/GIF photos on its 1.5-inch LCD, as well as English, Korean, Japanese, or Chinese eBooks. We're not really sure exactly who's being targeted with this unit -- whose price and release date are unknown -- since you can't store all that much content on it, and the chat/broadcast features seem more gimmicky than useful.
Cowon's 4GB iAudio6 DAP reviewed
Cowon's gotten some rather mixed reviews in the past for their line of iAudio DAPs, but the outlook seems mostly positive for the upcoming hard drive-based iAudio6, with Anything But iPod finding very few flaws in the diminutive player's design, features, or performance. Especially impressive is the 1.3-inch OLED screen, which gets high marks for both color depth and clarity -- ABi calls it "simply brilliant" -- and makes watching XviD-encoded movies almost bearable on such a small display. The iAudio6, which we first spotted at CES, can handle up to 4GB of MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, or WAV-encoded tracks on its .85-inch drive, but it's the drive that leads to one of the few knocks on this model, which is a noticeable lag time between operations. Other nice features include USB host capability for device-to-device file transfer with other UMS-enabled hardware, software that automatically tags certain tunes with the corresponding lyrics, line-in and voice recording, and surprisingly powerful output that can drive even large headphones. If you don't mind a bit of a delay when recording or changing tracks, or a bit of eye strain when watching your flicks, then the iAudio6 sounds like it'll make for a solid purchase whenever it becomes available Stateside.[Thanks, James]
Kane Kramer: "world's biggest failure" for losing DAP patents
We thought the matter had been resolved earlier today when our President credited the government with developing the technology that led to the iPod-filled world we live in today, but now another claimant has come forward in an attempt to recoup his "rightful share" of a billion dollar DAP market he may have helped create. British inventor and furniture shop manager Kane Kramer is currently consulting lawyers to see what, if any, recourse he has to enforce patents he filed in 1981 for an iPod-like device but which he subsequently lost control of due to reported boardroom coup. The patents, which describe a three-and-a-half-minute-capacity digital audio player with a screen and central navigation controls, eventually became part of the public domain after Kramer's company dissolved and he was unable to raise the money required for renewing them across 120 countries. Kramer, who is most definitely aware of the riches he lost out on, says that the runaway success of iPods specifically and DAPs in general surely makes him "the world's biggest failure."
Teclast's other "dual core" DAP, the T19
We see a lot of digital audio players pass through here, but Teclast is one of the first manufacturers we've seen to incorporate a separate processor for audio decoding. Just weeks after we spotted their first so-called "dual core" DAP, the C150, comes another PDA-esque model called the T19, which has the same dedicated Wolfson WM8750 decoding chip as the "C" but adds a 1GB option into the mix. Besides MP3 playback, the "T" features MPEG-1 video support, and sports extras such as an FM tuner, line-in recording and voice recording, along with an eBook reader, dictionary, and calendar. Probably only available in China for the time being, the T19 costs 77 or 90 dollars worth of yuan for the 512MB and 1GB versions, respectively.[Thanks, lionc]
