iriver IDP-100 DataPlay Enabled Digital Audio Player

by iRiver

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006F7OY
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #411,993 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Somewhere between Apple's iPod and more traditional MP3 players lies the iDP-100 DataPlay unit from iRiver. While this device costs more than a basic music player, it offers some unique features that make it worth consideration.

Employing the new DataPlay media format, the iDP-100 reads music from 500 MB (250 MB per side) optical disks the size of a quarter. Although the disks can only be written to once, they're a fairly inexpensive way (around $10 a pop) to house sizeable chunks of your MP3 library.

But that statement's not entirely accurate. Your MP3s first need to be converted to the secure CK format (DataPlay's proprietary content storage format) before being sent to the player. Files in these formats can't be transferred off the DataPlay disks nor played with any other media players except the included iRiver FuturePlayer (Real and Windows Media Player don't offer any support for the new format yet). You can also buy commercial DataPlay disks--they're like tiny CDs--and play them in the iDP-100, but you won't be able to move any music files from these disks to your PC, either. It's one of the reasons that the recording industry is really pushing the DataPlay format, although time will tell how quickly the technology world embraces it.

The iDP-100 looks like a silver hockey puck wrapped in plastic, and includes basic buttons for playing, pausing, or jumping back and forth between tracks, as well as a handy jog dial for navigating the interface and selecting play modes, including various shuffle modes. Sound output proved excellent, with no skips or pauses during hours and hours of playback, although the basic earbud headphones included with the player were set aside, as we opted for a better pair.

The iDP-100 currently supports only USB 1.1 for connectivity, but even with the conversion and burning as part of the transfer process, we were able to move about 12 MB of files per minute--not a bad rate for any MP3 player. Thankfully, the manual includes a walkthrough detailing the transfer process since it's not intuitive within the software interface. Rather than a Transfer or Send button, you have to click on My Music, then Add Files, then Save in order to send files to the player.

As a data storage device, the iDP-100 allows you to load large amounts of files and then easily transport them to another PC, but the burn-once limitation of the disks means that you'll have to buy some extras if you plan to use the iDP-100 extensively for this purpose.

DataPlay disks can hold up to 12 hours of music, and its rechargeable lithium-ion battery promises up to 12 hours of play time on a charge, so you should be able to get through most of your tracks before having to come back for more juice. In practice, we were able to get between 8 and 10 hours of play time per charge.

The bright, backlit display renders lots of information about individual tracks, including title, artist, and bit rate. A basic equalizer with bass and treble boosts lets users augment the sound output. Other options include adjusting the volume of beeps, turning on a fade-in feature to avoid sudden loudness for the next track, and an adjustable power-off timer. The iDP-100's interface can also be flash-upgraded, allowing the company to add new features or fix any bugs.

While you can find many MP3 players for less, the expandable nature of the tiny, removable DataPlay format makes the iDP-100 a tantalizing choice for taking more of your music with you. --J. Curtis

Pros:

• Vast, removable storage
• Excellent sound
• Rechargeable battery

Cons:

• Write-once media
• Proprietary format

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What the heck were they thinking?!, October 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: iriver IDP-100 DataPlay Enabled Digital Audio Player (Electronics)

I just got this player, and I'm thinking I've bought an [spendy] hockey puck.

Problems:

- It is rather heavy and bulky. That's amazing considering the media is incredibly light and small.

- The hardware does NOT support WMA (or even a CKWMA). The jukebox PC software does (big deal!)

- You can't drag and drop music to the unit. You have to use the supplied jukebox software (FuturePlayer) that is unintuitive, is mostly for playing PC based files, and provides a few unobvious features for sending music to the player (you'd think it would be the raison d'etre no?). And it provides very little control over the layout of the files placed on the unit.

- The special Dataplay filesystem is buggy and causes XP to immediately reboot if you do the wrong thing. It gets out of sync with the unit, and things start getting strange. Like the same folder showing up twice.

- The music layout accessed in the player doesn't seem to correspond with the file layout shown when using Explorer.

- It is write once, but the filesystem allows you to "delete" files by maintaining 2MB for updated file lists. The space is gone of course. But, for the life of me I can't figure how to delete a music file. Those are "access denied".

- The unit frequently has a problem being recognized by XP (power cycling the player seems to clear that up).

- It insists on playing a song every time you insert media, or disconnect the USB. How about letting ME decide when and what I want to play?!

- It is difficult to insert and extremely frustrating to remove the media. There's a curved little rubber cover that is hinged on one end, and that gets in the way.

- The recording to the unit is painfully slow. Why didn't they put in USB 2.0?!

- And of course they are being careful to tone down the fact that this format is being pushed by the media giants. So, it is designed to minimize your flexibility.

The sound is great, and the media has some promise. But you have to get past a lot of problems. Dataplay and iRiver need to go back to the drawing board try again.

Considering how ultimately players become only slightly larger than the media, the possibility of a player unit that is 1.5 x 1.25 x 0.25 inches, and 500MB is a couple of bucks a unit, is quite appealing.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars DataPlay has gone out of business, don't buy this product, October 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: iriver IDP-100 DataPlay Enabled Digital Audio Player (Electronics)

Interesting product, but DataPlay went out of business on 10/15. There doens't seem any future for this product. I wouldn't buy it.
see story
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-962131.html?tag=fd_top_2

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars One of the worst choices, August 22, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: iriver IDP-100 DataPlay Enabled Digital Audio Player (Electronics)

To cut to the chase, I recommend you avoid this product. I thought it looked really neat and would be a great player... wrong. It is advertised as fitting in the palm of your hand but it feels clunky because of the superfluous plastic square casing over its hockey puck body. Ergonomics aside, the main problem is that it is so technologically backwards. With IEEE1394b and USB 2.0 available for some time now, IDP 100 is all but digging its own grave by using an antediluvian first generation USB. Especially since the 500 MB capacity of the disks is relatively large, it takes forever transferring information onto the player. The estimated throughput is 12mbps but it feels slower than that and in the realworld that translates to a lot of tapping your fingers (compared to my firewire devices). Secondly it's really not practical to use IDP as an external storage device because you can't transfer files from it to your computer, it's a one way street that is extremely frustrating since you can't transfer your music to a different computer using the IDP. That's great for music companies, but bad for honest consumers who buy music and are entitled to listen to it. For ($$$), the IDP is totally outclassed by several other players including the Apple ipod. Even the Archos jukebox would be a much better choice. Basically IDP is a cool looking device that has serious flaws when examined closely. I am not a sound expert, it sounds good but the lack of speed, flexibility and its expensive price make it a total dud.