Today, the 31st of January Edigital changed the availability of the Odyssey 1000. They have 1000 units in stock and another shipment on the way. The units look promising from the little company!

In development is a calendar option for the firmware and Ogg encoding support. Edigital is also very open in adding new encoding formats and they desire to change the units to match the needs of their customers.

As the Odyssey 1000 was mad available for purchase on their webpage, within 15 minutes they had 62 orders. They expect to be sold out with these first 1000 and then all orders will be put on back-order for 2-3 days while their next shipment arrives.

Now all that's left is for someone to get a hold of one and post a review. Mine will be in my position on Monday, so expect to hear from me again.

Peace out!
Lordmusic

sweet

Don't speak too soon... it might suck more than going to an amusement park with an epileptic pregnant mother with high blood pressure and heart disease!

lol... I'll see for myself.. I've ordered one

eDig's latest products were good though... Look at the reviews on the Odyssey 100, 200 and 300...

Yeah, well, damn e.Digital. I ordered it next-day air on Friday, but they use DHL which doesn't deliver on Saturdays (other than by special extra super-expensive arrangement not offered by e.Digital)!! WTF! Why can't they use UPS or Fedex!? I've been waiting over a year and now I have to wait until the workweek begins when I won't have time to play with it until next weekend, when I should have it right now having paid $20 extra for next-day air. Arghhh!!!!!!!!!!

Note The O1000 DOES NOT SUPPORT ID3 TAGS. Download the product manual from the edig website and read. Also, in order to get the VoiceNav to work right, you have to rename all your MP3s to "song name.mp3" and then organize them in directories (like artist name) and subdirectories (like album) on the player. There is no auto-indexing of all your files based on ID3 tags, like the iPod and Nomad Zen do. Because there is no ID3 tag support you won't be able to point-and-play a particular Genre, Composer, etc like you can on iPod/Zen. All the MP3 players for the last few years support ID3 tags - so you can see detailed information about the song while it plays. But not on the O1000.

man i missed the days when this site had the lastest news on players now it bearly does, what ever happened to the hardware section?

I'm working on it.

I read the product manual austonia talked about from their site. He's right. I'd have to rename all my mp3s. Which i have steadily been ripping for the last two months into artist - song title. No ID3 support. Man that's dissappointing for me. The directory structure indexing requirement seems cumbersome. I'll be interested to hear what you guys who bought one have to say. After reading the manual i doesn't seem like the player for me.

Well, I bought one on Friday but it won't arrive until Monday. But unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to give you a review, because I want to save the $50 restocking fee by returning it unopened

After reading the manual and learning about the stupid directory and filename requirements/limitations, as well as the Voice Nav limitations, PLUS the fact that they now admit is is both bigger and heavier than the iPod, I will have to go spend the extra on the iPod, which I have been putting off for a long time because of my faith in the Odyssey. I really did want to have the built-in radio, but forget it.

georgegliddy - Well if you decide to buy an iPod you should be happy with it for about a year... or less. The permanent recargeable battery wears out... perhaps due to a program that runs continuously even when the unit is off. Many users report the battery loses its charge after an hour or two, sometimes less. Hope this helps!

EnwTheGood Damn. an epileptic pregnant mother with high blood pressure and heart disease! That's gotta be a sucky trip. I got asked to go to an amusement park by a this girl. I show up to her house and she says, "oh yeah, my exboyfriend and mother are going too." I can't believe i went. Turns out though it was the exboyfriend that was pissed because he spent 4 hours riding rides with this girls 58 year old mother. No exactly epileptic, pregnant, and high blood pressure but pretty bad.

Personally I don't care about ID3-tags, since I've properly named all my MP3's and I don't care about genres or all the extra info that scrolls by. I don't want to take the time to edit all ID3-tags and categorise them into genres just to see too much info scrolling by.
I also see VoiceNav as a nonsence-feature. As if I'll be using it at work or in a full train; people'll be staring at me

The ID3 tags aren't just for showing you info - it's for sorting your songs.

I have "properly" named all my songs by including the artist, album, track #, and track name all within the filename. For the most part I do not separate them into separate subdirectories, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna do that and rename all of them just to match eDigital's plans on how I should organize my MP3s.

yeah i have to agree with george. i rip stuff using cddb directories and the tags are written automatically. And i have a batch tag editor so all of my tags are fine. I notice in the manual they had songs named like "purple haze.mp3" instead of "Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze.mp3" Now i'm definitley not deleting the artist from all of my songs and making a separate artist directory for every song. I'm not sure but i think that would mean for every artist has to have a separate folder. I have hundreds of artists with one song. And god what a nightmare for some of the one hit wonder songs i got. I have 3000 file ripped so far and i'm not renameing all of them. I agree with coyote on the voice nav. I had it on my cell and it was horrible. Even when it worked i wasn't going to talk to myself on a crowded train. worse with the ambient noise on the train you had to scream into the mic. Could you imagine if i'm playing some old 2 live Crew on the train and me hollering, "PLAY! ME SO HORNY! ME SO HORNY!MEEEE SOOOO HOOOOORNY!"

Regarding ID3 tags, this from management today...
" RP left me a voicemail in addition to the email response I got from him concerning ID3 tags. He basically said that ID3 tags by themselves are not difficult, but combined with VoiceNav, the engineering becomes quite complex. He said they consider ID3 tag support important, but decided that it wasn't worth delaying launch of the product for it. He also said that the engineering of the two features together is pretty much done, and they will be releasing the upgrade in about 4-8 weeks, after final testing."

May I also state that the VoiceNav feature works exceptionally well, even in crowded noisy situations. You don't have to train it at all, just speak normally and it will work like a charm. My MXP 100 contains this feature and it is really cool. I'm happy to have it while driving in my car... makes it easy (and safe) to find and play a song while driving.

Comparison chart for iPod, Zen, and Odyssey 1000
http://www.austonia.com/PDAP.html

Pics of the O1000 and compared to iPod, Zen
http://www.austonia.com/pics/O1000/index1.html
check out the crappy, unusable case you get with the $350 Odyssey

pics of current and upcoming gigabyte+ Digital Audio Players :
http://www.austonia.com/pics/juke/index1.html

good work austonia. word of advice. on your pic pages you may want to shrink the file size of the pics so the pages load at a reasonable rate. I have a really fast cable and it took a long time. maybe it's the server. Just some constructive criticism. nice work.

nice impressions. very informative.

Nice job on that review!!!! Thanks!! And thanks for reaffirming my decision to return my Odyssey to get an iPod instead.

austonia - What is so crappy about the case for the Odyssey? What is so good about the case for the Zen or iPod? It looks just fine to me and the large LCD screen beats the stuffing out of the tiny Zen screen. georgegliddy - enjoy your iPod until the permanent battery wears out in about a year or less...LOL! Yes, the battery in the Odyssey IS replaceable... the case can be taken apart at the screws but the company would prefer the owner to send it in for replacement. How do you replace the iPod battery?

TIA.

To take care of a possible failure with the iPod battery, I'm just gonna get a 4 year extended warranty from Best Buy. It will cost about $40, which is worth it I think.

Wow... Sweet site austonia!!!

Schoolboy's my ass at hardware...

Any of the bosses want to hire this dude?

moxa - keep in mind that e.Digital has touted *a lot* of things that havn't come true. Since no one has had the O1000 battery replaced, it's speculation at this point, regardless of what e.Dig may have said recently. About the case, that is self evident, look at the pics. It's thin vinyl and pathetic looking. I mean its obvious they put a lot of effort into the design of the Odyssey, then they give you a retarded case to put it in. I keep my other players in thier cases all the time (protection) so it does matter what that looks like.

I have seen many third party ipod cases available especially in Apple magazines. I must say th Odyssey case was unimpressive. But it is missing a remote. Who wants to take it out of their pockect to adjust the volume everytime and change tracks, etc. With some of the smaller capacity players you can actually navigate with the remote. I hope that comes with some of the players released later this year. I was really surprised about the size. It looks larger than i expected.

Besides the ID3 tags / directory structure issues, can anyone comment on the unit itself? Sound quality, controls etc. Anyone who purchased one hate it? Love it?

Looked at the Archos Jukebox Recorder 20?

It is not mentioned in here?

20 GB HD USB 2, Digital and Analog line in
Battery’s can be replaced!

Look at the spec’s and the price.

http://www.archos.com/lang=en//products/prw_500278.html

It’s a nice player, not as stylish as the Ipod and a bit weighty.

But with to open source OS Rockbox (Free of course!) it’s worth looking at.

www.rockbox.haxx.se


The newest member of the family has a built-in FM radio and can record from this

Sorry if this is the wrong thread to talk about this boys, but I just wanted to let you know.

First review of ODYSSEY 1000
I got my ODYSSEY 1000 last Thursady(feb 6, 2002) through DHL overnight delivery, opened box, pluged in, so far I have nothing to complain, this is one mp3 player has what all user asking for which are feature, functionality and easy to use. Mp3 sound qulity are superb with WOW sound effect, the mp3 player option are one of the best, it has play all, play folder, play subfolder, repeat all, repeat folder, repeat subfolder, repeat track, shuffle all, shuffle folder, shuffle sub folder...anyway you like, another reason I like it is that it has a big scroll wheel in the middle of the player, because many of my mp3 songs, some have high volumne and some have low volume when ripped form cd, tape or another media, now after I connect to my tape adapter in my car, everytime when I need to adjust volume, I just simplye scroll the big scrool wheel in the middle of the mp3 player, then the blue screen would light up at the same time when I adjust volume. The sound recoder and radio work very well, and the player is made in Korea, consider many of today most of flat panel monitor are made in Korea. the only bad thing is that the voice navigation is almost impossible to use, so far I only get voice command "next" worked, and you have to speak loud to the mic when surrounding is very quite, assume you doing this in a crowd area, people might call police on ya. so I guess this technology need little bit more time to become mature. Besides that, this is almost perfect mp3 player which has all the feature I've been waiting for, mp3, radio, mass storge, usb 2.0, recoder. that's why I ordered it as soon as it came out.

A couple more observations. The requirement that all MP3s be in a 2nd level directory (not 1st, not 3rd or other) is annoying. The player also has some stability issues - it's gone into a continual reboot-cycle a few times. The boot up time is way too long, at least 13 seconds. And no sleep mode. Sometimes the delay between songs can be as long as 10 seconds. When playing a track it only shows the time elapsed, not the total track length. The track time jumps around crazy if the MP3 is VBR type. Fast forwarding is at a constant speed that takes forever if you are trying to get far into a track. The "back" button doesn't work after you select a track to play, you have to use the "Menu" button to exit the way to the main menu. Not having an in-line remote makes this player best for keeping it on the desk not in your pocket. The VoiceNav feature works fine but I never use it, when would you need this?? Can't play tracks by Genre because it doesn't support any ID3 tags. On the positive side, battery life is good at about 10 hours and the scroll wheel is nice to change the volume of the player very quickly, like when I'm at work and someone needs to talk to me.

Austonia,
Would you buy the odyssey again? It seems like it has a ton of issues.
Zach

silverg... Out of my Zen/iPod/O1000.. I prefer the O1000 to take to work because it is built to be used on a desk, as opposed to in your pocket. So i take it to work and plug into cheap speakers I keep there. A big advantage is the scroll wheel on top : I can change the volume very quickly. This is important at my job because I need to be able to hear phonecalls, talk to other people and my super, etc. The radio is good for one show i like to listen to in the morning. However I really prefer the iPod for taking out and around town, its much smaller, lighter and has the in-line remote. My GF likes Zen the best because she likes the playlist feature so she just load up the songs/artists she likes and set them on random play.

New player from e.Digital released.

The new FL100 records directly from FM radio!

It works with PC or Mac, and it's also a digital voice recorder. Upload your personal art for display on the LCD screen.

The FL100 includes 256 MB of embedded solid-state Flash memory (enough to hold 4 hours of music), plus an expansion slot for your MMC or SD Card. Great features, great looks, and a very affordable price

FL100

The new 256 MB Flash-based Digital Music Player, on sale now!

$199.99

Product Dimensions:
40mm x 79.54mm x 14.2mm
Weight: 41.5g (without battery)
This personal digital music player features:

256 MB Built-in flash
SD Card (MMC) expansion slot
FM Radio
FM Recorder
Digital Voice Recorder
MP3 & WMA file support
Sophisticated mirrored front
Customizable Power Equalizer
Start-up LCD screen uses your custom art!
3-Line LCD
Blue-green backlight
PC & Mac Compatible
Plug-ins for: iTunesTM3, Windows MediaTM Player, and RealOneTM player
Multi-language display
To order now, or to see more detailed features, go to: www.edigital-store.com/fl100.html. The FL100 is available exclusively through e.Digital's online store.

The FL100 Includes All These Standard Accessories:

Carrying case with belt clip
Stereo earphones
Mini-USB 1.1 cable
Wrist strap
Installation CD and user's guide
One AAA Alkaline battery

Subject: Only a fool would buy an ipod over an Odyssey 1000
From sinacull
PostID 240727 On Wednesday, February 26, 2003 (EST) at 8:27:03 PM

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I have had my O-1000 for about a month now and let me tell you it is one fine piece of engineering. The two major reasons I would buy it over the ipod include a much lower price and the ''mass storage'' feature. The first reason is self explanitory the second feature is the overwhelming reason to buy an O-1000. I just transfered my entire music collection to my new computer quickly and easily. I didn't even need any software. I just plugged my player into my new computer and dragged and dropped the whole collection into the computer. I can go over to my friends and drag and drop their music collection into my 0-1000. Right there I have paid for my edig Odyssey 1000. You can't do that with an ipod. Backing up files and photos is a drag and drop cinch. The O-1000 is a clear winner.

MOXA thanks for your idiot SPAMMING about another e.Dig rebadge product (FL100) in the Odyssey thread. And by the way, You CAN transfer music to/from any PC with an iPod. Look up "Ephpod" sometime. lol.. you really know your stuff huh.

Cnet review of the Odyssey 1000. 8 out of 10.

http://electronics.cnet.com/electronics/0-6342420-1304-20845399.html

austonia - Thanks for YOUR idiot spamming of the iPod, Zen, and whatever else on the e.Digital Odyssey board.

Cheers!

yeah i read that cnet review. One thing they made a point of contradicts you moxa. you said, "I just transfered my entire music collection to my new computer quickly and easily." But the article clearly says,

"The app is still too picky to deal with most people's music collections in their natural states. If you haven't ripped or downloaded any music before, this is no big deal. But most people looking for a player with this much capacity already have tons of music organized in multiple methods, and rearranging even 10GB of music to the desired directory structure takes hours--trust us. Compared to Apple's iTunes or even average file-transfer software, Music Explorer is a major pain."

Austonia is right. There are some third party programs that allow you to transfer files to and from an ipod to multiple computers. As for that FL100. That has been out for a little while. I don't know much about it but i didn't know edig made it. Because Digitalway's MPIO has the same player under their name. http://www.mpio.com/product/product_info.html?id=17&category=1 Even the player on the Edigital site says mpio on the player which i found peculiar. http://www.edigital-store.com/fl100.html My friend bought an odyssey 1000 player and i used his. I must say i'm glad i didn't. it almost 5 hours to get the player mostly full after recreating directories. And yeah its less expensive. But its heavy and you surely can't jog with it comfortably like an ipod. And with no in line remote you really have to keep taking it in and out of your bag or pocket. Not much fun considering it's size. my cd player even has a in line remote. Now if you donn't want to be active and let it sit on a desk hey great but i move around alot. My friend sent his back and just swallowed the restocking fee. A note on the cnet review. I noticed what i suspect are alot of fake use reviews especially the early ones with only one or two lines saying its the greatest player ever, blah blah blah. You know, without any details. I wouldn't be surprised if someone with a vested interest in the player put those their.

ZDNet reviews the Odyssey 1000... 8 out of 10!

http://www.zdnet.com/supercenter/stories/review/0,12070,589685,00.html

Moxa. That is the same review as the one you posted a link for before. Word for word, by the same author. There is nothing new. CNet Networks owns zdnet. What do you work for Edigital or something?

Here is an interesting article titled. "MP3 Insider: It takes a village to beat the iPod" http://electronics.cnet.com/electronics/0-3219397-8-20917251-1.html?tag=sd It's written by the same guy who wrote the cnet/zdnet review. Made some interesting comments.

"Apple has a clear advantage...To see how much harder this sort of integration is within the Windows world, consider the new iPod clone that I just reviewed, the eDigital Odyssey 1000. This hard drive-based player has more features...for less money, but loading MP3s onto it, especially initially, involves an inordinate amount of work...your time is too precious to spend all weekend reorganizing your 20GB music collection into a bilevel folder tree (with the Odyssey, all files ideally need to be inside an album folder, and all the album folders need to be contained within artist folders)."

the article goes on to make points about bad software by the hardware makers and basically says they may want to have 3rd parties write the software.

Thanos - I don't disagree with you here. I believe the company will be coming out with an upgrade for this in the very near future.

Good Moxa. I just thought you were sounding a bit biased. It just seemed a bit farfetched not to give the ipod some credit. Aside from price and battery life its pretty damn good. not perfect. but pretty good. As for edigital upgrades, I don't own one so it doesn't affect me but the better their product, the better the competition must be. So i hope they fix that for their customers sake and the sake of competition.

e.Dig promises a lot of things that have not come through. 6 weeks later, still no firmware update to fix all the Odyssey's bugs or provide ID3 tag support. Considering how late to market it was they should have spent 5 minutes beta testing this thing. Since they havn't been selling any players in the last month (they only had a few hundred initial units), why don't we have software updates by now? Do yourself a favor and get the iPod or Nomad Zen instead, much more polished products (www.dapReview.com)