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Firmware Wednesday :)
Sep. 1st, 2004 10:41 pmToday, I decided to check for updated firmwares for my Kiss DP-1000 DivX DVD player as well as my iRiver iHP-140 MP3 player, which I do from time to time. To my suprise however, there were updates for both. This was a suprise because nothing appeared to be happening with Kiss regarding new upgrades and iRiver had promised a firmware update since May.
Unfortunately though, the Kiss firmware did not enable me to see the subtitles in the Kill Bill 2 DivX I have for unknown reasons. It may be because the subtitles are in a seperate .sub file perhaps and it expect them to be part of the .avi. I was expecting that this may have been fixed with the new firmware because there's loads of subtitle related stuff in the new firmware changes.
The iRiver firmware was also a disappointment because they promised "gapless" playback and "real shuffle" (rather than if you play a playlist, shuffle is just an alternative order which is the same every time you chose it) and failed to provide both. Instead of gapless playback, they gave us "Gap delete" which allegedly deletes silence from then end of a song. If you play a mix album and the tracks should blend in together, there's still a momentary gap where the player only buffers the new track once the previous one has finished playing. The "real shuffle" wasn't mentioned in the update they provided. Maybe we'll see both that as well as proper gapless playback in the next update, whenver that may be. What you did get in the new firmware was like what the Creative Jukebox can do which is to speed up whatever your're listening to but have it still listenable. Is hard to describe but it can have an interesting affect on some songs :). I believe the new iPods can do this too now which is why I guess they've implimented it. Shame they didnt bother putting their development skills into what the users wanted.
Unfortunately though, the Kiss firmware did not enable me to see the subtitles in the Kill Bill 2 DivX I have for unknown reasons. It may be because the subtitles are in a seperate .sub file perhaps and it expect them to be part of the .avi. I was expecting that this may have been fixed with the new firmware because there's loads of subtitle related stuff in the new firmware changes.
The iRiver firmware was also a disappointment because they promised "gapless" playback and "real shuffle" (rather than if you play a playlist, shuffle is just an alternative order which is the same every time you chose it) and failed to provide both. Instead of gapless playback, they gave us "Gap delete" which allegedly deletes silence from then end of a song. If you play a mix album and the tracks should blend in together, there's still a momentary gap where the player only buffers the new track once the previous one has finished playing. The "real shuffle" wasn't mentioned in the update they provided. Maybe we'll see both that as well as proper gapless playback in the next update, whenver that may be. What you did get in the new firmware was like what the Creative Jukebox can do which is to speed up whatever your're listening to but have it still listenable. Is hard to describe but it can have an interesting affect on some songs :). I believe the new iPods can do this too now which is why I guess they've implimented it. Shame they didnt bother putting their development skills into what the users wanted.
