WMA

[Bart Silverstrim]

andy baxter wrote:
> Bart Silverstrim wrote:
>> Caleb Marcus wrote:
>>
>>   
>>> Ugh, ONLY records to WMA? I'd look at another recorder... that's just
>>> annoying. Another thing is that you may lose quality by converting a
>>> lossy format, WMA, to another lossy format, mp3.
>>>     
>> But for the price, the reviews are actually very good for the unit.  AND 
>> it acts as a drive...apparently a lot of the DVR's use software for 
>> transfers, this one has a USB plug built right in so no cables are 
>> needed, and the Linux generic USB driver works with it!
>>
>>   
> Ah, but if you buy this then not only are you getting a piece of kit 
> that's going to be awkward to use with linux, you're also encouraging 
> Olympus to carry on making voice recorders that use proprietory formats.

If awkward is just a matter of using mplayer or VLC to convert from one 
format to another in a few minutes, that is really not anywhere near as 
much hassle as what other options offer for a low price.  It records in 
WMA format, but plays back mp3's and WMA's. Maybe it's a licensing 
issue. Maybe it's a partner issue.  If all it takes to get it to work is 
a few minutes of processing initially from a console then that's really 
not worth raising a ruckus over in my book, especially when they've made 
it mass-usb compatible (so it works like a flash drive) and it gets 
otherwise good reviews in sound quality and usability and the conversion 
process isn't something I'm forced to buy a third-party software package 
to fix.

If it were DRM'd or required special software then I'd not spend the money.