H120 questions

[belgarath_the_sorceror]

Hi, I am very close to buying the iriver H120, as from all the reviews I have seen, it kicks the ipods ass, but I have a few questions I need to ask. Please can you humour me by answering...much appreciated.
1. What is the clicking problem made by the remote?
2. what is the "hard disc spin" bug?
3. Are there any bugs not solved by firmware version 1.6?
4. Have iriver scheduled gapless playback in a future firmware?
5. How much does it kick the ipod by?

Thanks for your time

Future iriver user

[ManchesterUnited4Life]

Hi belgarath, and Welcome to MisticRiver !

In answer to your questions;

1. There has been a recently dispatched batch of faulty remotes which made a clicking noise. We previously thought that it was an old sound that was meant to be there to denote that an action had been performed by the remote ( i.e. a button press, or the sliding of a rocker). This sound (after numerous complaints) was removed by iRiver in the last Firmware (v 1.60), so when we recently heard that people were once again hearing this clicking noise, the advice was simply to upgrade to Firmware v. 1.60 - however, it now appears that it is a batch of faulty remotes to blame, since the noise persists, even after the Upgrade has been performed.

My advice would be, that if you purchase an iRiver with a faulty remote, to send the remote bcak to your supplier requesting a new remote, as most of the new remotes are trouble free ...

2. This is a well documented bug that has even raised enough profile for a petition to be made against it. Search the forums for it -and if you have any problems, I'll be more than glad to help.

3.The HDD Spin bug

4. It was meant to be in v 1.60, however, it did not appear (much to the anger of many H Series owners, who had waited months for it), and iRiver have since stated that they would not rule out implementing it in a future Firmware Upgrade ...

5. My arms aren't big enough

[big_mike_aka_mike]

cheers for that manu 4 life helped me out there too!

cheers
mike

[NPswimdude500]

but rockbox should fix the hd spin bug

[HotStuff2]

What exactly is the "HD spin bug"?

[Lewis]

When you turn the h100 on the HD doesn't stop spinning after it has booted up, wasting battery if you dont play anything straight away, but it does after a song has been loaded.

[belgarath_the_sorceror]

thanks for the advice guys, it is much appreciated, and I should be ordering my iriver soon!

[ManchesterUnited4Life]

Originally Posted by Lewis

When you turn the h100 on the HD doesn't stop spinning after it has booted up, wasting battery if you dont play anything straight away, but it does after a song has been loaded.

Hehe, that's partly true Lewis - more specifically though, the HDD spins up when you depress the Navi/Joystick, to enter Filetree Mode, and doesn't stop spinning 'til the Flash Memory fills up again (most often when you select another song ... )

And, yes, hopefully Rockbox will be kind enough to help us combat this menace to battery life

[Timmah]

Once you've turned the thing on though, surely you'll want to listen to music.

Doesn't sound like a major flaw. Come on iRiver, release some Firmware before I get my H-140!

[ManchesterUnited4Life]

It's not so much when you turn the player on that's the problem, Timmah, more like when you're 2 and a 1/2 minutes through a 7 minute track, when you remember a song that would complement the one playing, perfectly. It's then, when you enter Navi mode (to enqueue the song you were just thinking of), that the problem arises.

Even once the desired song has been enqueued, the HDD will continue to spin for the remainder of the current song (let's say 5 minutes in this case), until the beginning of the next track, when the player will buffer the next 16(32?)MB of data into the memory, after which the HDD will finally stop spinning.

If you multiply that scenario to various times throughout an average day, it becomes a serious detriment to battery life.

So, yeah, I think I'd call that a pretty major flaw

[Timmah]

Is it fixable?

[NPswimdude500]

yup a good bit of firmware will fix it