e.Digital Announces Apparant iPod Look-Alike MP3 Player For Windows & Mac

by , 3:30 PM EDT, July 22nd, 2002

e.Digital Corporation announced today the new Odyssey 1000 digital jukebox and data storage device. The new media player, compatible with both Mac & PC, features a 20GB hard drive, 13-hour battery life, and a USB 2.0 interface. From the press release:

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 RipTM technology."

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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 TM.

While similar in appearance to Apple's iPod, the Odyssey 1000 goes beyond the feature set of the iPod. You can navigate the device via voice commands, record voice and sounds via a built-in microphone, and listen to radio with a built-in FM tuner.

The Odyssey 1000 will be available this fall for both Mac & PC. It clocks in with dimensions of 2.87" x 4.3" x 0.9" (versus 2.4" x 4.0" x 0.78" for the iPod). At the moment, no price is quoted on the e.Digital web site. More information on the Odyssey 1000 can be found in the press release.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Support for WMA (and WMA Digital Rights Management), voice-navigation, voice-recording, and radio are all features unique to the Odyssey 1000, but it is hard to ignore the similarities to the iPod. Apple worked hard to suppress knockoffs of its original iMac models, and it will be interesting to see how the company reacts to the Odyssey 1000. Be that as it may, this unit will no doubt offer some competition to Apple's own Windows iPod offering. It's too bad that e.Digital went with USB 2.0, but there are probably a few lemmings who will be happy with that technology.

e.Digital Corporation