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Slacker Portable Radio

Michael Brown — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:22:47 -0500

Just when we’d concluded that there was nothing new under the sun when it comes to digital music players, along comes the Slacker Portable Radio to smash all our preconceived notions. This $200 device takes the music-discovery innovations pioneered by Pandora and Last.fm and puts them in the palm of our hand.

The hardware works with Slacker’s Internet radio service, but you don’t always need to be tied to a live Internet connection for it to work. Using your PC you can populate the radio with either pre-fab radio stations or create custom stations by populating them with your favorite artists. Slacker’s software will then identify other artists of the same vein. You can fine-tune each station by adjusting how aggressively it exposes you to artists and songs other than those you’ve identified as your favorites, how often it plays popular songs versus those closer to the fringe, and whether it plays only current tunes, just the classics, or some combination of the two.

Once you’ve done that, you download the stations and a batch of songs (in AAC Pro v2 format) to the Slacker Player via USB or an 802.11b/g network. The device supports WEP and WPA Wi-Fi security for connecting to your own network; and thanks to a recently announced partnership with Devicescape, Slacker Portable Radios can automatically connect to free Wi-Fi hotspots in participating hotels, airports, and restaurants (including Starbucks and McDonalds). (Firmware upgrades such as this are automatically pushed out to the player whenever it connects to a network.) While you listen, you can press a Heart button to identify songs you really like and a Ban button to mark the ones you don’t. The player will upload this information when you connect to the server, and Slacker’s music-discovery algorithms will take them into account while selecting your next batch of songs.

Audio quality is excellent, and the music is free but interspersed with advertisements. The optional paid Slacker Premium service eliminates the ads and the limit on how many songs you can skip per hour. Subscriptions range from $7.50 to $10 per month, depending on the length of your contract. We reviewed the 2GB Slacker Player, which has enough memory to store 15 radio stations and 1,500 songs, with 500MB left over for your own music (in MP3 or WMA format, including WMA Lossless) or, if you’re a subscriber, songs you’ve marked for retention in the player’s library. Slacker also offers 4GB and 8GB models that sell for $250 and $300, respectively.

The Slacker Player is chunky for a flash-based device, but the huge display (4-inch diagonal with 480x272 resolution) makes the size worthwhile. All that screen real estate allows for not only easy-to-read menus but also the display of lots of information, including artist biographies and album reviews sourced from All Music Guide. The screen goes dark after 30 seconds (a battery-conservation decision), which is barely enough time to read all that great material. You can tap a button to reactivate it, but we recommend changing this value to 60 seconds or even indefinite).

The player has two buttons on one side, four on the other (one of which is integrated into a wheel), and two on the top, a configuration that requires two hands to navigate. (And we feel compelled to mention that the On/Off/Lock button feels sloppy and cheap.) You’d think all those buttons would make the Slacker difficult to navigate, but the user interface is easily mastered. The Playlist function, on the other hand, is nearly useless in its current iteration—but for us, the Slacker Player’s big attraction is that we don’t need to make playlists.

UPDATE: This story was edited on April 7, 2008 to reflect a new firmware update that resolved our complaint about how long the display remains active.

Zune Gets Bigger, Gets Smaller, Gets Social

Mark 'Marcus Soperus' Soper — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 23:06:05 -0500

Microsoft's original Zune digital music players came in a variety of colors, but only one size: 30GB, making them too expensive for some users, while not providing enough capacity for other users. The one-size-fits-all days of Zune are over: on Tuesday, Microsoft announced three new models:

4GB (flash memory) for $149.99
8GB (flash memory) for $199.99
80GB (hard disk) for $249.99

The slim 4GB/8GB models share a common chassis that features a 1.8 inch screen, while the top of the line 80GB version includes a 3.2 inch screen, up from 3 inches in the original Zune.

New Navigation, New Features

Members of the "Zune 2.0" family all include the new Zune Pad touch-sensitive navigation button, wireless sync via Wi-Fi home networks, and improved wireless Zune to Zune sharing. You no longer need to worry about the old 3-day time limit for playing back songs you receive from other Zune owners - it's history. And, you can pass along songs you've received to others (but the 'play three times and out' restriction still applies).

Brown is the New Gone

Brown, the most derided color choice in the original Zune lineup, didn't make the cut. New 4GB and 8GB Zunes will be available in pink, red, black or green, while the 80GB model will be available in black.

Windows Zune + Windows Media Center for Vista = TV to Go

The new zunes can sync with Windows Media Center for Vista's TV recordings, crunching them down to a suitable size for playback wherever you go.

Getting Social

With the new Zune Social social networking site, Microsoft brings the "it's all about me, my friends, and my tastes" attitude to digital media. Zune Social users can create Zune Cards, which will reflect their creators's tastes in music, post messages to each other, and get recommendations from other users. Think MySpace meets MyMusic.

New Digital Media Goodies Coming to the Zune Marketplace

The Zune Marketplace is also being redesigned: it will feature over 3 million songs, over 1 million MP3 songs (no more nasssty DRM, precious!), music videos for sale, along with free video and audio podcasts - all in a new interface.

Kicking Planned Obsolescence to the Curb

If a 30GB Zune (either one you own now or one you'll grab on sale) is big enough for you, or if brown's your favorite color, don't feel left out. Wireless sync, better Zune to Zune sharing, and TV to go features are coming to your Zune via firmware upgrades. And, to sweeten the deal still further, existing Zune accessories as well as eight new ones from Microsoft fit both old and new Zunes:

Zune Home AV Pack. Home Dock with three faceplates to accommodate each Zune device, wireless remote, AC adaptor and composite AV output cable (ERP $99.99)
Zune Dock Pack. Home Dock with three faceplates to accommodate each Zune device and AC adapter (ERP $49.99)
Zune Car Pack. Redesigned FM transmitter/charger and dashboard grip pad (ERP $79.99)
Zune Cable Pack. Sync cable, composite AV output cable and audio cable (ERP $39.99)
Zune Premium Headphones (ERP $39.99)
Zune Leather Case (ERP $49.99)
Zune Sync Cable (ERP $19.99)
Zune AC Adapter (ERP $29.99)

See the new accessories here.

If you're tired of replacing accessories whenever you upgrade your digital media player, Microsoft's "let old and new share the new and the old" attitude is refreshing.

Thanksgiving Turkey with a Side of Zune

The new Zune models, websites and accessories will be available in November, but Amazon.com and CircuitCity.com are ready to take your preorders - now.

The End of DRM, But Not Control over Music?

Mark Soper — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:20:24 -0500

It's been three years in the making (since May 3, 2004, to be precise), but Microsoft has now won a patent (number 7,266,697, for those of you keeping track at home) for what it calls 'stealthy audio watermarking.' In plain English, this new technology is designed to enable a song vendor to keep track of the origin of a digital music track, no matter how many times it's converted to other formats or distorted.

Beating 'Plausible Attacks'

According to ArsTechnica, the technique is designed to defeat a series of so-called 'plausible attacks' as identified by the RIAA, including sucessive digital/analog and analog/digital conversions, MP3 and other lossy conversion techniques, frequency response distortion, and others.

An End to DRM Without Losing Control? Implications of the Patent

If Microsoft's patent works as well in practice as the description states, it could enable music vendors to dump DRM via encryption without losing control of their content. As discussed previously here, some major music vendors are already selling unencrypted MP3 audio tracks as a premium-quality, more flexible to use alternative to standard encrypted WMA audio tracks. However, without watermarking, vendors can't be sure if their music is being redistributed en masse by purchasers. Digital watermarking can fix that, especially if each download is individually watermarked.

Beating 'Big Brother'

Although watermarking digital audio tracks doesn't run the risk of "I can't play this on my device" the way that current DRM methods do, it's still a potential privacy invader. Don't like the idea? Do something old-fashioned: create your own digital music tracks from your own CD collection. If you originate the digital music, the only 'watermark' you need to worry about is the one you left on the jewel case from setting a cold drink on it during the ripping process.