Saturday, September 04, 2004

iRiver iHP-120 and Belkin TuneCast II

I got an iRiver iHP-120 from my local Best Buy, and I really love it. I picked it because it can play Ogg files (in addition to MP3). I was a little scared by an Amazon review that said it had no shuffle feature, but I found this not to be true within minutes of opening the manual.

The interface is not the best ever, but I really like the fact that it's really just a USB hard drive. I plug it in and manipulate its contents with standard tools.

I also got a Belkin FM transmitter so that I could listen to my gigabytes of music in my car. I like everything about this device except that it doesn't work. I tested it at home, inches from a receiver, and the sound quality still stunk. In the car, it's hard to find any channel in Chicago that's not taken by some other station, and when I tune to the weakest signals I can find, my car radio can still sometimes pick up static through the Belkin's weak signal.

Getting a greater variety of music in the car (for my ten hours of commuting per week) was the real purpose of these two purchases. If I can't get something to work acceptably, I'll be returning both.

No comments: