To be honest, I have no idea about the Fuze video future. I haven’t used that part of it since before the New Year. At first, I threw some video podcasts on there, out of the need to play with my new toy, but it quickly became apparent that it took almost as much time to load them onto the Fuze as it did to watch them. And frankly, the screen size being what it is, I never even considered anything beyond 30 minutes in length for it.
I use mine for the great music playback, I like the sound, seeing the album art is nice, and I have a few photos in mine still, but I primarily wanted it for the sound and expandability. If my Clips had card slots, I would probably sell or give away my Fuze, because the form factor of the Clips is more useful to me…it’s just that they max out at 8GB.
I certainly could see why you would wish to return your Fuze…it’s clearly not what you wanted it to be, and I’ll not try to talk you out of returning it. I do, however, question getting an iPod, given your preference for open source and distaste for proprietary items. As far as audio open source, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC are as good as it gets, assuming you have hardware that supports them…and iPods don’t, unless you find an older model that you can run the alternate rockbox firmware on. Video, I’m not well versed in.
Anyways, I wish you luck in your search. :smileyvery-happy:
Well said, Martian, Thanks for that level headed well-reasoned reply.
Excellent points including about the iPod (non-open source), although I believe the iPod may be Unix based (definitely not not open source).
As for video, I don’t really spend a lot of time watching video on such devices, but thought it would be handy to have. I do already have the Nokia N800 which is a pretty amazing little Linux based handheld device (not only plays many native codecs of video as well as MP3 but also does WiFi Skype & web browsing etc etc), but the more compact form factor and likely longer battery life of the Fuze seduced me into an impulse buy which (as is to be expected for such spontaneous behavior) has now caused second thoughts. And the Nokia, albeit quite small, is not as tiny and weightless as the nano-like Fuze.
The packaging clearly labelled as “MPEG-4” compatible was the final seduction that caused me to purchase the Fuze. I agree with you 100% that if it takes as long to compress as to view, it’s not going to happen on my computer (add to that the fact that the Fuze has to be connected to the computer while this happens, and that the resulting video is ONLY compatible with the fuze and cannot be used elsewhere PLUS is not as readable…well, it’s not acceptable to me).
By the way, regarding the lock up issue, I forgot to mention earlier that although the work around mentioned above does allow shutdown of the device, it does not release the audio app that plays MP3/Video (in other words, it was locked in a fatal embrace with the video file and made MP3 playback impossible - (another reason I voted in another thread for a way to stop or shut down MP3 playback). I had to connect to a real computer and delete the video file so I could get my MP3 player back. Not a pretty site. Honestly, I think I would make an excellent beta tester for hardware and software because i seem to push things to their limits and find problems right away that more laid back folks that only drive around cautiously never encounter. :smiley:
Anyway, I haven’t yet decided what to do with my Fuze - I suppose the smartest thing would be to return it and wait until the ‘perfect’ device is made (see my wishlist below) but I do like a lot of things about the Fuze and could possibly rationalize having another nice expandible mp3 player.
best,
Dell
Wishlist:
*Expandable memory - preferably with the most standard, least expensive media (e.g. standard size SDHC rather than micro)
*Compatible with open source (Ogg/etc) audio and video …as well as some de facto standards (like MP3 audio, h.264 mov video, etc)
*Don’t require proprietary video compression (if it takes as long to compress as to view, it is not going to happen for me)
*Video in standard 320 x 200 size (I know, it’s a iPod size, but why fight a losing battle)
*Reads media files without special software to load them - this would allow cross-platform use (Mac,PC, Linux) by simple drag-and-drop
*Must allow hold (lock) of all keys
*No features listed just for the sake of listing them (i.e. they barely work but not really)
I hope they add a option to remove album art from the main audio playback screen–I HATE that there’s this big generic icon of nothing sitting there (as 99% of my songs have no images), wasting space that could be used for text information rather than scrolling it.
