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Music Media

Samsung's "Yepp" MP3 Player 52

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-we-want dept.
TwoSticks writes "Samsung has announced `` yepp,'' which they claim is the world's smallest MP3 player. ``The size of a calling card (58mm x 85mm x 17mm), "yepp" comes with FM radio, telephone directory and recorder function.'' " Available later this year, no price listed. 40 megs of storage with a smart card for more.
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Samsung's "Yepp" MP3 Player More

Samsung's "Yepp" MP3 Player

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  • Re:the big lie (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Waiting for a Gigabyte of storage on a portable mp3 player will take to long or be to expensive if done by solidstate memory.

    If done by cdrom or mini hardrive or some other spinning media you lose what I consider to be the biggest advantage in a portable mp3 player- no skipping.

    When I'm out agressive rollerblading I want to be able to listen to some kickass music and not have the player skip everytime I hit a jump a little too hard. The anti-skip on a cdplayer DIES under this kind of stress.


  • Diamond is attempting the same thing too. Don't consider this a let-down - just purchase one early. :)

  • Hmm, I'm seeing this thing only allowing you to download music from them or their affiliates, a nice way to build a monopolistic empire, eh?

    But its just software that would prohibit that, right? How many hours will it take for people to get around it?

  • Why on earth would anyone want a phone directory incorporated to a portable MP3 player?

  • Battery life, size and usable life of the machine are more important to me. Spinning media seems nowhere close to solid state in these regards.

    Personally, Samsung has a bad track record with me. There's always something horrible about everything they design. I bet this thing will have a battery hatch which breaks easily, or a volume control which crackles... something dumb like that marring some great piece of engineering.

    Just look at the useless Java on their website... There's a prime example.

  • Don't know why nobody found this one on Wired News:

    Thomson is investing in MP3 [wired.com]. Thomson owns several of the patents on MP3 technology, so it looks like they're going in the right direction.

  • It seems like it can only record from the FM radio and a mic. The mic is probably mono, and it probably records at 64kbs from the radio.
  • Check out http://www.yepp.co.kr/product/prod uct_frame.html [yepp.co.kr] for more info on the cards. 8, 16 and 32 MB SmartMedia cards are available.
  • The player looks nice, but check out the info on their encoder: http://www.yepp.co.kr/product/pro duct_body05.html [yepp.co.kr]. That looks like the killer product to me.
  • Has anyone else found the storage capacity, and general memory in these things to always be described a little decptively? Typically they quote music times using a 64k/s format, and the 64MB Nomad is just the 32MB version with a 32MB smartmedia card bundled.

    Now the "Yepp" is only expandable with "Yepp-cards" (smartcards). Notice it doesn't say smartmedia cards, just smartcards. Why would you need smartcards? They're for things like tickets, electronic wallets, etc - I know, I'm wearing one on my wrist as I type (Swatch Access). How much are they going to cost, and when are they going to be available, and what sizes?

    Only the 64MB Rio Special edition appears to be quoting size, and total size when expanded, in MB - without any deception. (even then, they have fudged the play time on occasion)

    Kris.

    Win a Rio [cjb.net] (or join the SETI Club via same link)
  • The encoder's not that great a product - you don't want to have to encode more than once, so you have to have somewhere to put all the encoded files. Smartmedia cards might be coming down in price, but they're not that cheap yet. So, what should they be encoded on? A CD or DVD drive that can encode MP3s direct to the computer's hard drive would be a better tool - it would save hours on my computer...

    Kris.

    Win a Rio [cjb.net] (or join the SETI Club via same link)
  • I've been considering getting an MP3 player for some time now. If their copy protection turns out to be innocuous or circumventable I'll probably get one. Not the "deluxe" version though. (I've got a Pilot for my phone numbers, thank you very much) I hope I won't have to re-encode all my CD's...
  • To my understanding, MD uses a compresed format, so it does not have the same raw capacity as a CD. Thus, even if you used mp3 compresion on it, you would probably not get much more playing time than a regular CD.
  • I refuse to pay for a player with less than 64M of storage (default). Have you seen the prices on flash ram? I'll settle for 64M on board if the price is cheap, like $100, but I'd like to see 96M or 128M players the standard. I listen to 128 bit rate MP3s, and most people I know listen to 128kbps or higher. 128kbps is almost a ratio of 1M per minute, so 64M is not enough to even hold one album at 128kbps.

    If MP3 players continue to be subject to the economics of flash ram, I feel that the concept of cd players that can read mp3s straight off of a cd will become more viable. Sure, the current portable players have a large benefit because of no moving parts (no damned skipping, no need for shock protection), but I'd be ecstatic if I could carry around 650-680M of MP3s on a cd and play it on a portable player.

    Plus, CDRs are so cheap compared to flash ram. So right now, I'm pretty much shying away from until a well priced, "high" storage player is released.

    '90 minutes of 128K data for $150'? That'll be great...

  • This player was announced a long time ago. I bet Samsung just felt like they had to do something so that people wouldn't give up on the whole thing. It appears that no major features have been added with the exception of a phone/address book which is just about the strangest thing you could put in a walkman. Aside from that it really isn't too much different from the Rio. Add to that the fact that Creative's Nomad [nomadworld.com] is exactly the same and I'm pretty disappointed with this offering. Oh well, back to the drawing board.
  • You are failing to consider the benefits of
    combining anti-skip technology and MP3 compression.

    In fact, an entire single track could be read
    off the CDROM in a matter of seconds and held
    in the antiskip buffer ... so that
    you could be jerking around wildly 90% of the
    time -- even more (using a 2x, 3x or faster cd
    player), and still listen to the music with no
    skipping.
  • I don't imagine a "secumax" version of a ripper would be the plan, as a ripped song from a CD is still pirated (based on license for use). If I had a "secumax" based player, what would stop me from listening to your mp3's?
    Sure, there are ways they could make your mp3's only work on your yepp.... as to protection schemae, check the jargon file.
  • Most kids these days carry around their CD-cassette-whatever walkman and their cell phone. It would make more sense to have the phone book built into the cell phone but oh well.

    But, they don't have watches so they still need to stop you and ask for the time.
  • To be able to call your layer when you will be busted for playing illegal mp3s ;-)
  • What would be much better is a MD-MP3 player. Sony's MD format is much more convienient for a portable player, and it's capacity get close to that of CD.

    What this basically would be is the same as the current crop of MD players, except trashing the proprietary encoding algorithm and formats for MP3. They could be built to the same size, which is pretty small, and have the convenience of MP3 formats (i.e. save/format/etc from your computer).

    Doing the same thing with CD or CD-R would be OK, but they are 3x the size. A MD-MP3 player would be something you keep in your pocket.
  • Creative Labs is marketing the Yepp to the North American market as the Nomad. I got to play with one at Internet World a couple of weeks ago. Very sweet machine. This unit can even record and encode voice! It's also rechargable, and has its own cradle.

    I spoke with the guy about their claims that it stores an hour of audio in 32Mb. He conceded that they have to claim that because Diamond claims it too.

    They were selling the 64Mb units at the show on preorder for $150. I took the plunge....


  • SecuMax? Wazzat? I worry when someone tries to decide for me what constitutes "unauthorized".
  • All I want is a disc-man kinda player that will play cds as well as cd-rs full of mp3s. I think I remember a slashdot story on here a while back about that exact type of thing, but I haven't heard anything about it since.

    Man, that would be great... I could fit my 3 gig collection onto about 4 cd-rs... 50 hours of music! On 4 cds! Crazy playlists! And if I had 4 cd-rom drives in my computer, I wouldn't have to use up all that space on my hard drive, I could just leave the 4 cds in the drives all the time!! OMG!!!

    Ah, it's nice to fantasize. = )

    Ian.

  • OK, I've been wondering this for a while, but is the Yepp actually the same part as Creative Lab's Nomad?

    http://www.nomadworld.com/ [nomadworld.com]

    They look identical in some screenshots. The press release from Creative [nomadworld.com] does list estimated prices at $170 for a 32M version and $250 for a 64M version.

    - Mike

  • I've wanted to get into
    Binaural recording. This thing
    would probably work great, put the
    whole works in a hat.

  • mp3/digital random access walkmans will replace
    tape walkmans and cd walkmans, internet or no.

    it looks like samsung are going to lock this product into some kind of online service that they provide. bugger that. and bugger the
    rubbish like mp3.com -- i just want a better
    way to listen to my CDs!
  • what software have used to make bunaural beats?
    i have only make simple sin wave ones...
    which are nothing compared to monroe institute's. [monroeinstitute.org]



    nmarshall
    #include "standard_disclaimer.h"
    R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
  • AC: When I'm out agressive rollerblading I want to be able to listen to some kickass music and not have the player skip everytime I hit a jump a little too hard.

    So let's make a CD player with a meg of memory -- that way it can read far enough ahead that you'd have to be shaking it for quite some time before you'll hear a skip.
    --
  • The thing reproducing the sound would be considered a moving part and depending on
    volume could consume quite a bit of power so 10 hours doesn't sound too unreasonable for a 3-volt system to me.
  • asb asked why on earth anyone would want a phone directory incorporated into an MP3 player.

    Here's my answer to that:

    Though I normally don't like all-in-one devices (too often they are of the toaster-with-integrated- flashlight variety), this one seems a little more like a friendly, possibly useful bonus that some other silly additions.

    Of course, it would be better if there was a good all-in-one device, smaller than a Palm Pilot and with a PS/2 port which had a full-featured MP3 player in addition to all the other things that such devices can do.

    5 years from now ... ;)

    timothy
  • the joy of mp3s is having access to all my muisc bits without those annoying cd atoms. 40 megs, 10 songs? great, now i'd need as many smart cards as cd's.

    More, actually, many, many, many more. The latest I heard on SmartCards (pick your vendor) was that there were cards that could hold 128k. These were referred to as *large*. Yeah! One second of audio! whoopee! Of course, it would take around a minute to read all the data off of it, as well. Damn things are slow, and a pain in the ass to write code for. Apparently 1mb cards were in the works, but still...
  • Should read:

    Pricing has not yet been determined, but it can be expected that pricing will not be far from the $199 retail price mark unless you are an American buying it in the Yongsan Electronics market [koreaexim.go.kr]. For you, the price will be double

    ;o)

  • that's cool. let everybody come up with their own security scheme. make everybody's life hell. i didn't check closely, but i'm assuming that you'll have to rip the mp3s with their software to get the security. you can't have a player that doesn't play unprotected mp3s since you can't expect every mp3 ripper to support *every* security scheme there is, making this thing security a PITA. and the more trouble something is to the end user, the less it'll get used. hopefully end of story.
  • What I'd really like to see is one that reads Zip disks (or whatever turns out to be the replacement for A Big Stack Of Floppies) to a memory (which could just be plain volatile RAM, since you can just reload from the Zip disk if you lose power). That combines the advantages of having everything in memory (no skips, longer battery life) and the advantages of CDs (portable media, easy to load a new playlist).
  • At 58mm x 85mm x 17mm, or about the size of a calling card (a pretty thick calling card, no less), the Yepp is pretty small....but perhaps not as small as the u-fi [206.239.210.91]. Too bad it isn't quite available yet. Check out the pictures! This thing is sweet....worth waiting for, I think.

  • the big lie (Score:3)

    by lsmarso ( 17248 ) on Wednesday April 28, 1999 @10:14AM (#1912138)
    Once again, a portable mp3 player manufacturer makes wildly exaggerated claims about storage capacity.

    40 megs = 160 minutes of music?

    That's closer to 50 minutes worth of music,
    substantially less than a full length CD, at
    MPEG 1 Layer 3 128Kbps.

    Like the Rio ad campaign, Samsong is using the
    assumption that your files are 64 Kbps or less, which is FM radio quality or less.

    They may have software that will help you turn
    128Kbps files into more highly compressed files.
    However changing from one compression rate to
    another can introduce distortions you don't get
    converting from original source directly to the
    lower rate.

    Hang on for an MP3 player that hold a GIG,
    possibly a CDROM filled with MP3s. That
    will be a revolution.

  • More Info (Score:5)

    by Roofus ( 15591 ) on Wednesday April 28, 1999 @09:50AM (#1912139) Homepage
    I found this on their web site. Take This as you like:

    Q:Does Yepp play MP3 songs that are illegally available over the Internet?

    A: The Yepp currently has no method to detect whether an MP3 file was downloaded from a legal or illegal web site, just as a paper copier machine is not able to differentiate between text that is being copied with or without the consent of its copyright owners. Through its SecuMAX(TM) technology, Samsung is forging ahead with ways to help protect copyrighted music and it will also participate in RIAA's SDMI initiative to identify a solution to this problem.


    Q: How much will Yepp cost?

    A: Pricing has not yet been determined, but it can be expected that pricing will not be far from the $199 retail price mark.

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