Somewhere between Apple's iPod and more traditional MP3 players lies the iDP-100 DataPlay unit from iRiver. While this device costs more than a basic music player, it offers some unique features that make it worth consideration.
Employing the new DataPlay media format, the iDP-100 reads music from 500 MB (250 MB per side) optical disks the size of a quarter. Although the disks can only be written to once, they're a fairly inexpensive way (around $10 a pop) to house sizeable chunks of your MP3 library.
But that statement's not entirely accurate. Your MP3s first need to be converted to the secure CK format (DataPlay's proprietary content storage format) before being sent to the player. Files in these formats can't be transferred off the DataPlay disks nor played with any other media players except the included iRiver FuturePlayer (Real and Windows Media Player don't offer any support for the new format yet). You can also buy commercial DataPlay disks--they're like tiny CDs--and play them in the iDP-100, but you won't be able to move any music files from these disks to your PC, either. It's one of the reasons that the recording industry is really pushing the DataPlay format, although time will tell how quickly the technology world embraces it.
The iDP-100 looks like a silver hockey puck wrapped in plastic, and includes basic buttons for playing, pausing, or jumping back and forth between tracks, as well as a handy jog dial for navigating the interface and selecting play modes, including various shuffle modes. Sound output proved excellent, with no skips or pauses during hours and hours of playback, although the basic earbud headphones included with the player were set aside, as we opted for a better pair.
The iDP-100 currently supports only USB 1.1 for connectivity, but even with the conversion and burning as part of the transfer process, we were able to move about 12 MB of files per minute--not a bad rate for any MP3 player. Thankfully, the manual includes a walkthrough detailing the transfer process since it's not intuitive within the software interface. Rather than a Transfer or Send button, you have to click on My Music, then Add Files, then Save in order to send files to the player.
As a data storage device, the iDP-100 allows you to load large amounts of files and then easily transport them to another PC, but the burn-once limitation of the disks means that you'll have to buy some extras if you plan to use the iDP-100 extensively for this purpose.
DataPlay disks can hold up to 12 hours of music, and its rechargeable lithium-ion battery promises up to 12 hours of play time on a charge, so you should be able to get through most of your tracks before having to come back for more juice. In practice, we were able to get between 8 and 10 hours of play time per charge.
The bright, backlit display renders lots of information about individual tracks, including title, artist, and bit rate. A basic equalizer with bass and treble boosts lets users augment the sound output. Other options include adjusting the volume of beeps, turning on a fade-in feature to avoid sudden loudness for the next track, and an adjustable power-off timer. The iDP-100's interface can also be flash-upgraded, allowing the company to add new features or fix any bugs.
While you can find many MP3 players for less, the expandable nature of the tiny, removable DataPlay format makes the iDP-100 a tantalizing choice for taking more of your music with you. --J. Curtis
Pros:
- Vast, removable storage
- Excellent sound
- Rechargeable battery
Cons: - Write-once media
- Proprietary format
1 Great Product
This product works really well and is simple to use. The programs are simple to install and use. The dataplay disks are tiny, but not impossible to use. Yes, the shape is a bit awkward, but I became accustom to it and knew what it looked like before I bought it, like anyone who would research an mp3 player would do. In addition, it says directly on the package "write-once media." Yes, it is more expensive than burning your cds, but it's also smaller, more portable, and a great concept. If you want something that's smaller but is rewritable, get a minidisc player. Otherwise, this product is fantastic.
2 non rewritable
This is by far the worst mp3 player I've every used. The disks are expensive 10 bucks a pop, and the non rewritable. MUST I SAY MORE!!!!
3 AN OASIS(looks good far , dust close up)
I saw the idp and it looked great 500 mb the closet mp3 player to it was a 256 ram version from a different company costing around .... I saw the small "CD" and thought it looked like a great deal.
The set up was a little confusing but that didn't bother me too much
Next step was to download mp3 and transfer them to the idp-100
the speed slow but again i could live with it.
I relized i didn't like a song that i had transferred to the player and opened up the E: drive on the computer to remove the song, no problem right?
After i removed the song i disconnected it from the usb cable and found out that the song was still on the player.
DID I DO SOMETHING WRONG , i looked through the book that came with the player (no sign of how to remove songs) then i went to thewebsite and looked at a FAQ and found out that the player was a "write once device and that there were no intentions to introduce rewritable media"
WHAT this looks like a scam I thought the definition of a mp3 player was the ease to organize,transfer and manipulate your own music.
If i wanted a cd player i would have bought one.
I plan on returning my unit
4 Dataplay DID NOT GO OUT OF BUSINESS
the previous comment is false. the company has recently become partners with other companies such as Toshiba, Samsung, and Universal pictures which has actually expanded the possibilities of the media. many music artists, such as Britney Spears and N'Sync, are actually coming out with albums on Dataplay disks in mp3 format(with more than just songs on the disks).
5 DataPlay has gone out of business, don't buy this product
Interesting product, but DataPlay went out of business on 10/15. There doens't seem any future for this product. I wouldn't buy it.
see story
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-962131.html?tag=fd_top_2
6 What the heck were they thinking?!
I just got this player, and I'm thinking I've bought an [spendy] hockey puck.
Problems:
- It is rather heavy and bulky. That's amazing considering the media is incredibly light and small.
- The hardware does NOT support WMA (or even a CKWMA). The jukebox PC software does (big deal!)
- You can't drag and drop music to the unit. You have to use the supplied jukebox software (FuturePlayer) that is unintuitive, is mostly for playing PC based files, and provides a few unobvious features for sending music to the player (you'd think it would be the raison d'etre no?). And it provides very little control over the layout of the files placed on the unit.
- The special Dataplay filesystem is buggy and causes XP to immediately reboot if you do the wrong thing. It gets out of sync with the unit, and things start getting strange. Like the same folder showing up twice.
- The music layout accessed in the player doesn't seem to correspond with the file layout shown when using Explorer.
- It is write once, but the filesystem allows you to "delete" files by maintaining 2MB for updated file lists. The space is gone of course. But, for the life of me I can't figure how to delete a music file. Those are "access denied".
- The unit frequently has a problem being recognized by XP (power cycling the player seems to clear that up).
- It insists on playing a song every time you insert media, or disconnect the USB. How about letting ME decide when and what I want to play?!
- It is difficult to insert and extremely frustrating to remove the media. There's a curved little rubber cover that is hinged on one end, and that gets in the way.
- The recording to the unit is painfully slow. Why didn't they put in USB 2.0?!
- And of course they are being careful to tone down the fact that this format is being pushed by the media giants. So, it is designed to minimize your flexibility.
The sound is great, and the media has some promise. But you have to get past a lot of problems. Dataplay and iRiver need to go back to the drawing board try again.
Considering how ultimately players become only slightly larger than the media, the possibility of a player unit that is 1.5 x 1.25 x 0.25 inches, and 500MB is a couple of bucks a unit, is quite appealing.
7 Awesome Player
I've had this player for a couple of weeks now and the more I use it, the more I like it. I've been in the audio field for over 15 years and this player really delivers great sound quality, better than any other MP3 player that I've used (around 20). It takes me less than 2 minutes to burn an album and I can fit 6 CD quality albums on 1 little Disc. I've also experienced no problems with skipping or vibration problems like I've seen in a couple of hard drive models. You really can't go wrong with this player.
8 Data Play stinks
(Money) for a player is not the big problem...the issue is (Money) for a non re-writable disc. I decided to get the Archos Jukebox Multimedia...has 20GB of storage and even play's Divx videos/movies on the little screen on the Unit. Why would you want to worry about carrying extra discs?
9 Avoid this product!
Please read the editorial review. Pay attention to the product limitations and to the fact that "recording industry is really pushing the DataPlay format".
Do not buy products witch limits your rights to use music, that you paid for, the way you want. Buy Archos or other products which are open and do not limit your rights.
10 smaller isn't better
all the technology aside....I couldn't handle the disk itself, you can't even see what you're doing, it's friggin impossible to load, hard to eject, great if you're a gnome, but for us HUMANS....like eating with an itty bitty fork. Hey you can take the itty bitty fork everywhere. and be just as frustrated, everywhere.
11 Quite a nice player ...
OK. I've been using this iDP-100 for just a few days. I've used 3 MP3-CDP's (my first one is Genica, remember that ?) since its first days in the market and I came to realize that I need a more compact one during my working out, lazy time in my office etc. It's a real pain in the neck to carry a huge CD player around.
However, all the flash memory based players were virtually not my cup of tea because I prefer to carry big library of music. (Even 196 Mb is not enough). Eventually I narrowed down my choices to hard disc based players like iPod (PC version, I only have windows), Archos or Rio Riot or 8cm MP3 CD player from Philips (right ?) or this one using DataPlay media. iPod PC version is however, still too expensive and other two guys are as heavy and cumbersome as CD players. As for 8 cm CD player, I wanted to stay away from it since it should also have relatively short battery life just like the other CD players (a few hours or so).
So iDP was my only choice left. The device is still not satisfactory small, almost the size of a 8 cm CD player, but not bad to carry around with the beltclip provided. The worst thing with this IDP might be 'NON-REWRITABLE DISC' and relatively expensive price of media as compared to blank CDs these days.
However, when I found myself paying special attention on the choice of music uploaded to IDP (of course I should be more considerate than writing on $$$ blank CD.), and you know what ? it was funnier than burning tons of mp3 CDs !! Reminding me of all those good old years when I try to copy the tunes from vinyl records to cassette tapes. Of course I am pretty sure that the price of this dataplay media ($$$ per piece) will go down if the market embraces this new format.
For all the other things, like the conversion of mp3 files to iDP specific files (.ckmp3) and compatibility problem with other computers (once mp3 files transformed into iDP specific files, they cannot be played in PCs without dataplay's Futureplay software), I do not really care about them. I have alreay have the files as PC-compatible mp3 files in my PC ! Also since I do not want to use iDP as a portable storage device (because it's not rewritable, I don't want to waste my $$$/500 Mb space for just a vehicle only), the file transfer problem from iDP to PC, the other reviewer mentioned, was not a big deal for me either.
OK, the sound quality is better than other mp3 players around (maybe it's from the good earphone they provided ?), the battery life is far longer than the mp3 CD players (because the motor is small ?), the small size and with the price I paid for the player (the price shown here is quite expensive, but I think you can find it cheaper somewhere you know ^^) I would not hesitate to give it 5 stars.
12 Quite a nice player ...
OK. I've been using this iDP-100 for just a few days. I've used 3 MP3-CDP's (my first one is Genica, remember that ?) since its first days in the market and I came to realize that I need a more compact one during my working out, lazy time in my office etc. It's a real pain in the neck to carry a huge CD player around.
However, all the flash memory based players were virtually not my cup of tea because I prefer to carry big library of music. (Even 196 Mb is not enough). Eventually I narrowed down my choices to hard disc based players like iPod (PC version, I only have windows), Archos or Rio Riot or 8cm MP3 CD player from Philips (right ?) or this one using DataPlay media. iPod PC version is however, still too expensive and other two guys are as heavy and cumbersome as CD players. As for 8 cm CD player, I wanted to stay away from it since it should also have relatively short battery life just like the other CD players (a few hours or so).
So iDP was my only choice left. The device is still not satisfactory small, almost the size of a 8 cm CD player, but not bad to carry around with the beltclip provided. The worst thing with this IDP might be 'NON-REWRITABLE DISC' and relatively expensive price of media as compared to blank CDs these days.
However, when I found myself paying special attention on the choice of music uploaded to IDP (of course I should be more considerate than writing on $$$ blank CD.), and you know what ? it was funnier than burning tons of mp3 CDs !! Reminding me of all those good old years when I try to copy the tunes from vinyl records to cassette tapes. Of course I am pretty sure that the price of this dataplay media ($10 per piece) will go down if the market embraces this new format.
For all the other things, like the conversion of mp3 files to iDP specific files (.ckmp3) and compatibility problem with other computers (once mp3 files transformed into iDP specific files, they cannot be played in PCs without dataplay's Futureplay software), I do not really care about them. I have alreay have the files as PC-compatible mp3 files in my PC ! Also since I do not want to use iDP as a portable storage device (because it's not rewritable, I don't want to waste my $$$/500 Mb space for just a vehicle only), the file transfer problem from iDP to PC, the other reviewer mentioned, was not a big deal for me either.
OK, the sound quality is better than other mp3 players around (maybe it's from the good earphone they provided ?), the battery life is far longer than the mp3 CD players (because the motor is small ?), the small size and with the price I paid for the player (the price shown here is quite expensive, but I think you can find it cheaper somewhere you know ^^) I would not hesitate to give it 5 stars.
13 More than just an MP3 Player
Dataplay's product is amazing for the fact you can save almost any digital content.
14 One of the worst choices
To cut to the chase, I recommend you avoid this product. I thought it looked really neat and would be a great player... wrong. It is advertised as fitting in the palm of your hand but it feels clunky because of the superfluous plastic square casing over its hockey puck body. Ergonomics aside, the main problem is that it is so technologically backwards. With IEEE1394b and USB 2.0 available for some time now, IDP 100 is all but digging its own grave by using an antediluvian first generation USB. Especially since the 500 MB capacity of the disks is relatively large, it takes forever transferring information onto the player. The estimated throughput is 12mbps but it feels slower than that and in the realworld that translates to a lot of tapping your fingers (compared to my firewire devices). Secondly it's really not practical to use IDP as an external storage device because you can't transfer files from it to your computer, it's a one way street that is extremely frustrating since you can't transfer your music to a different computer using the IDP. That's great for music companies, but bad for honest consumers who buy music and are entitled to listen to it. For ($$$), the IDP is totally outclassed by several other players including the Apple ipod. Even the Archos jukebox would be a much better choice. Basically IDP is a cool looking device that has serious flaws when examined closely. I am not a sound expert, it sounds good but the lack of speed, flexibility and its expensive price make it a total dud.
