Creative Technology today said it has been awarded a U.S. patent covering the way it organizes music on portable media players, an approach that it says is used on competing devices such as the market-leading Apple iPod and iPod mini.

The patent covers the interface the company has used since its earliest digital music players, such as the Nomad Jukebox. Based in Singapore, Creative Technology has a U.S. division in Milpitas, Creative Labs. It organizes the music on the portable player by broad categories, allowing the listener to select a general heading, such as “artist,” and navigate through successive screens to find a particular song.

Creative Labs President Craig McHugh said the company will aggressively protect its intellectual property, and is exploring both legal and licensing options involving other companies — Apple in particular — that use the same music menu on their MP3 players.

“The patent application was to protect our invention,” said McHugh. “As you can see … the invention is significant.”

McHugh went out of his way, in a conference call with reporters, to portray Apple as a late-comer to the digital music scene, even though the popular iPod line dominates the U.S. market for portable players with a 70 percent share.

He said Creative shipped its Nomad Jukebox MP3 player in November 2000, fully 12 months before Apple introduced the iPod in October 2001. He said Creative applied for its patent on Jan. 5, 2001, significantly earlier than Apple’s application in October 2002.

Creative also makes the Zen digital music player.

“When you look at those screens, they do look awfully familiar,” said Phil Leigh, president of Inside Digital Media in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Last month, patent officials rejected an Apple Computer application to patent its iPod digital-music player because rival Microsoft had filed a similar application five months earlier. Apple plans to appeal, however, so it will not be required to pay royalties to Microsoft for every iPod sale.

mercurynews.com

Illegal copies of original MP3 players made in China are rampant worldwide, seriously distorting the market.

telecomskorea.com reported Tuesday, during a recently IT show held in Brazil, Chinese companies brought out a large number of MP3 players which are illegal copies of original products made by Regincom, Apple and Samsung Electronics.

Fake iRiver N10: The earphone-cap is not removable, while there is a USB port on the side.

Fake iRiver iFP-900: Color LCD is replaced by OLED.

An illegal copy of iRiver iFP-300: iFP 300’s exterior without LCD.An iRiver version of shuffle.

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It could be the solution for anyone trying to give up their iPod. A surrogate mp3 player carved out of wood has been created by a Dutch artist to mark a new exhibition featuring bronze laptops filled with genetically modified grain.
The artist, known only as Pii, claimed that his “PiiPod” solves the problem of mp3-related muggings and the risk of deafness by being “specially designed to be unable to play music and sound files”. Crucially, however, the recycled wooden device still delivers an iPod-style “fix” by producing a bulge the size of a personal music player in the carrier’s pocket.

Pii, who creates familiar objects from unexpected materials, said any satire was in the eye of the beholder. “I am trying to make people think about what they are missing out on by spending their free lives and transportation periods - travel - locked into their own musical worlds. People do become addicted and dependent - whether there are really health problems or not. It is a basic part of treatment for any serious addiction to attempt to provide a substitute of some kind.”
The PiiPod was created to celebrate another sculpture inspired by Apple that forms the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Spectrum gallery in central London. Twelve bronze casts of laptops set out on tables laid with knives and forks make up a piece called Laptop Dinner, in which the model iBooks are stuffed with GM rice and corn.

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Logitech has introduced the Wireless Music System for iPod, which lets users wirelessly connect their iPod or MP3 player to a stereo or speaker system, share their digital music and control the music using their player as a remote control.

“The goal with this product is to make it easy for portable music player owners to share their music collections through their high-quality home-entertainment speakers,” said Logitech’s Ray Weikel.

The System is a two-piece, plug-and-play solution: a music transmitter connects to any portable music player’s standard headphone port and a music receiver plugs into a home stereo receiver or multimedia speakers through an RCA port or a 3.5 mm jack.

The music transmitter sends audio streams directly to the receiver at a range of up to 10 meters (33 feet).

Logitech plans to have the Wireless Music System for iPod available in the U.S. and Europe beginning in October. The suggested retail price is $149.99 in the U.S.

synthtopia.com

The company that owns Rio Audio, makers of the Karma and the Carbon MP3 players has decided to quit the portable digital audio player market citing poor sales of its Rio MP3 player line.

D&M, who also own the Denon, Marantz and McIntosh brands said it will no longer make any more Rio products after 30 September.

“(The) decision to shut down the Rio business followed a determination that the mass-market portable digital audio player market was not a strong enough strategic fit with the company’s core and profitable premium consumer electronics brands to warrant additional investment in the category,” the company said in a statement.

With the announcement comes the realisation that won’t be a follow up to the Karma that always seemed to be on the cards.

Rio has been involved in the MP3 business since the players first started appearing in 1998.

pocket-lint.co.uk

Loud rock music contributed to hearing loss among baby boomers, but MP3 players are poised to make the problem much worse for the next generation.

These devices, which pump music through headphones directly into the ear canal, enable the user to overcome the rumble of the subway or the drone of an airplane engine without drawing angry shouts of “turn it down!”

As a result, they easily desensitize the user to dangerously high sound levels. A CD player and a Walkman do too, but MP3 players such as the iPod pose an additional danger.

Because they hold thousands of songs and can play for hours without recharging, users tend to listen continuously for hours at a time. They don’t even have to stop to change a CD or a tape.

Baby Boomers Listen Up

Longer Listening, More Damage

Since damage to hearing caused by high volume is determined by its duration, continuous listening to an MP3 player, even at a seemingly reasonable level, can damage the delicate hair cells in the inner ear that transmit sound impulses to the brain.

“Studies have shown that people exposed to 85 decibels for eight hours tend to develop hearing loss,” Brian Fligor, ScD, of Children’s Hospital in Boston, tells WebMD. He found that all the CD players he examined produced sound levels well in excess of 85 decibels.

“Every time you increase a sound level by three decibels, listening for half as long will produce the same amount of hearing loss. The kid who cuts my grass uses an iPod. The lawn mower noise is about 80 to 85 decibels. If he likes listening to his iPod 20 decibels above that, he’s in the range of 100-105 decibels. At that sound level he shouldn’t listen for more than eight to 15 minutes.”

But if he’s like millions of other iPod owners, the boy probably listens for several hours a day, placing a large noise burden on his hearing even if he turns it down when he’s not cutting grass.

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iRiver has anonced a 5Gb version of its H10 MP3 player to offer its customers 2500 songs on the go. The H10 [5GB pure] is from the same mould as the H10 [5GB] and features a colour display, touchpad, aluminum casing, space for 2500 songs and perfect sound quality, however iriver has removed the FM radio to save on import costs.

The player also features a clock/alarm function, a built-in microphone for voice recording and a removable, rechargeable battery for up to 12 hours playback time.

Thirty equaliser presets and for audio enthusiasts, a manual equaliser enables the sound to be customised to the users exact requirements. Multi-codec playback guarantees support for a variety of formats, including MP3, WMA and ASF.

Theregister report: “MP3.com was back in court yesterday, having failed to secure a settlement with Universal over its violation of the major music label’s copyrights. ”

Back in April, MP3.com was found guilty of distributing music from Universal, Sony, BMG, EMI and Warner - the world’s ‘big five’ record labels - without permission. Since then, it has paid Warner, BMG, EMI and most recently Sony through the nose - analysts reckon the figure is around $20 million per label - for the rights to distribute their material and to settle out of court.

Last week, the original copyright trial judge, Jed S Rackoff, imposed a limitation on the level of damages MP3.com must pay, but with Universal the only remaining plaintiff, observers doubted whether MP3.com would have to face the court again.

Yesterday, however, it did, as the procedure by which the damages the company must pay are to be reckoned was begun.

That said, both MP3.com and Universal believe a deal can be reached before it becomes necessary for the judge to impose a penalty upon MP3.com. The current trial is set to determine the degree to which MP3.com’s infringement of the labels’ copyrights was wilful. Inadvertent copyright infringement draws a lesser penalty than deliberate violation.

APPLE plans to buy as much as 40 per cent of Samsung’s flash memory output for its new flash-based iPod Mini MP3 player.

Apple is expected to introduce a 4GB version of the iPod Mini that uses NAND flash memory instead of a hard disk drive in time for the Christmas season.
“To support production of its flash memory-based iPods, Apple has booked as much as 40 per cent of the NAND output of Samsung for the second half of 2005, according to our industry sources,” iSuppli analyst Nam Hyung Kim said.

“We’re not sure now many of the new iPods Apple can sell this holiday season, but 40 per cent would be the maximum in terms of their demand,” he said.

South Korea’s Samsung is the world’s largest producer of NAND flash memory, used in hot-selling MP3 music players, digital cameras and high-end mobile phones, commanding a 55 per cent share of the market.

Apple shipped 6.2 million iPods - about 1 million more than Wall Street’s expectations - in the fiscal third quarter ended June 25, as its net profit jumped five-fold.

A Samsung spokeswoman declined to comment, citing customer confidentiality.

Apple already buys flash memory chips for its iPod Shuffle player from Samsung.

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With most new flash-based MP3 players not offering expansion options, Lexar has taken things into their own hands by releasing a bare-bones player powered by SD cards. At $49.99 without any bundled cards, the LDP-200 supports MP3, WMA, Microsoft DRM, and also works as an SD card reader. If you’ve already got a lot of SD cards lying around and want a cheap little player, this could be the ticket. If not, you may want to shop around; a little more cash will get you a lot more flash.

Lexar LDP-200 Reviews

Livedigitally reviews the Lexar LDP-200 and write - ‘Lexar’s LDP-200 is well suited for the newbie who wishes to get into portable MP3 audio, without committing serious funds. College students with smaller music collections, and wishing to avoid being heart broken when they lose their Apple iPod Color which retails for $450 should look at this player. Overall, the Lexar LDP-200 player has one major thing going for it- price. For $49, plus the cost of a memory card, there really is nothing else out there. I’ve recently seen 1 GB memory cards on sale in the $60 range, so for just over one hundred bucks total, you can have a 1 GB MP3 player, with a screen. I don’t know of anything else with that kind of capacity in that low price range. The nice blue screen, included quality earbuds, and standard AAA battery power sweeten the deal.’

CNET Reviews reviews the Lexar LDP-200 and gives it a ‘Good’ rating. They write - ‘It’s not spectacular, but the LDP-200’s simplicity and reasonable price tag make it a great choice for MP3 newbies and for those with extra SD cards. Uses removable SD cards for storage; supports DRM-protected WMA files; easy to use for novices.’

Lexar LDP-200 Press Release

From the Manufacturer
Ideal for consumers looking for a compact, easy-to-use digital music player, the Lexar LDP-200 offers a convenient and simple user interface, versatility and portability. Music is stored on SD memory cards (cards are optional) and accessed using the player’s SD card slot–providing users with unlimited storage capacity. Using multiple SD cards, users can create favorite music playlists, and manage entire music libraries stored on removable SD cards. For added flexibility, the LDP-200 also serves as an SD Card reader, making it a handy data transfer device. The LDP-200 is powered by one AAA battery, which provides over 10 hours of battery life.

Lexar LDP-200 Features

User-selectable play mode (10-second intro, normal)
USB 2.0 High Speed for fast downloads
Supported formats: MP3, WMA, WMA DRM, Janus DRM when available

Lexar LDP-200 Specs

Product type– Flash player
Digital player supported digital audio standards– MP3
Mfr estimated battery life– 10 hour(s)
Audio system built-in display– LCD
Remote control– None
Slot(s) provided– 1 x SD Memory Card

What’s in the Box
Lexar digital music player, earbud headphones a lanyard/necklace, a USB extension cable, a user’s manual, and warranty information.

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