Tech & Science

PC and Mac Compatible Digital Audio Player Comes To Consumers This Fall

Digital Journal Staff

Published

July 29, 2002

It’s sleek, it’s powerful, it has the capacity to download 4,800 songs, or 400 CDs, at lightning-quick speed—and it’s PC and Mac compatible. e.Digital Corporation announced its new Odyssey 1000 digital jukebox and data storage device, its premier digital audio player.

The Odyssey 1000, which will be available to consumers this fall, boasts superb sound quality and outstanding battery life, with a minimum of 13 hours of playback time. The feature-rich Odyssey 1000 has a 20 Gigabyte hard drive for optimum MP3 and Windows Media™ WMA playback and doubles as a data storage unit for movies, spreadsheets, e-books, and more. Its stainless steel, sleek industrial design only enhances the aesthetic appeal of this digital audio powerhouse, which is small enough to fit in a pocket or purse.

The Odyssey 1000’s high-speed USB 2.0 connection and remarkable ease of use make downloading and transferring music a breeze. With the Odyssey 1000’s USB 2.0 connection, users can transfer an entire CD to their player in about 5 seconds. And e.Digital’s Drag ‘n Rip technology enables users to transfer music in one easy step simply by dragging tracks directly from a CD directory onto their player’s hard drive. Drag ‘n Rip optionally enables users to create a mirror library of music on their computer. The Odyssey 1000 also is compatible with Mac iTunes.

Jim Collier, President and COO of e.Digital said, “The Odyssey 1000 sets the standard by which all other portable entertainment products will now be judged. It is the result of our first joint project with our strategic development partner Digitalway. It combines an elegant, world class industrial design from Digitalway’s award-winning engineering team with e.Digital’s state-of-the-art, patented audio technology. There is nothing else available that matches its elegant looks, full range of features, and cutting-edge Drag ‘n Rip technology.”

Another outstanding feature is the Odyssey 1000’s voice navigation capabilities. The Odyssey 1000 uses e.Digital’s VoiceNav user interface based on Lucent’s speech recognition technology so users can navigate through their libraries of music simply by the power of their own voice. It also has an easy-to-use scroll wheel for effortless manual navigation. In addition, the Odyssey 1000 is a voice recorder that comes with a built-in microphone for hours of voice recording on its massive hard drive.

Collier added that, “This is a product that will have broad appeal to both Mac and PC users.” Furthermore, the Odyssey 1000 comes with music preloaded by e.Digital’s Broadband Entertainment Business Unit so users can immediately start enjoying music on their player. The Odyssey 1000 also has an FM tuner with 12 available station presets and 16 MB DRAM buffering for robust anti-skip protection and increased battery life.

The standard Odyssey 1000 package will include e.Digital Music Explorer 2.0 software for PC (featuring Drag ‘n Rip technology), carrying case with belt clip, an installation CD and manual, stereo earphones, USB 2.0 cable with standard and mini connectors, a universal DC adaptor/battery charger, and RCA audio cable for home stereo connection..

The Odyssey 1000’s Drag ‘n Rip technology, voice navigation capabilities, and preloaded content make it absolutely unparalleled among its peers. The much-anticipated Odyssey 1000 will be available to consumers this fall.

The versatile Odyssey 1000 includes the following features: