LGR Oddware - The 1997 Audible MobilePlayer System
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
Texadon
Have you ever heard of the Mattel Juice Box? It didn't even last an entire year in production before pulling out of the market in 2005 and leaving stores with unsaleably stocked shelves.
It was a media player for kids that utilized chips/cartridges to play popular cartoons, music videos, etc. They even got Cartoon Network, WWE and others to let them make cartridges with their content, only to realize how unnecessary the product was!
Apparently (and I didn't know this) the contemporary GameBoy Advance already sold video cartridges for their devices, in addition to them also being at the forefront of handheld video gaming.
I had one when I was growing up, and even I knew it was weird. Apparently they also sold for $70. 00 which astounds me. I think my parents might have bought it for me the next year as stores probably desperately tried to get rid of their stock, as I seem to recall a $20 price tag. Either way, it wasn't very monumental, it's just an odd and kind of cute nostalgic piece of obsolete tech that you might find interesting, if you hadn't already heard of it!
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Have you ever heard of the Mattel Juice Box? It didn't even last an entire year in production before pulling out of the market in 2005 and leaving stores with unsaleably stocked shelves.
It was a media player for kids that utilized chips/cartridges to play popular cartoons, music videos, etc. They even got Cartoon Network, WWE and others to let them make cartridges with their content, only to realize how unnecessary the product was!
Apparently (and I didn't know this) the contemporary GameBoy Advance already sold video cartridges for their devices, in addition to them also being at the forefront of handheld video gaming.
I had one when I was growing up, and even I knew it was weird. Apparently they also sold for $70. 00 which astounds me. I think my parents might have bought it for me the next year as stores probably desperately tried to get rid of their stock, as I seem to recall a $20 price tag. Either way, it wasn't very monumental, it's just an odd and kind of cute nostalgic piece of obsolete tech that you might find interesting, if you hadn't already heard of it!
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Matthew
I love modern Audilbe but I have to say I am shocked they lasted with this start. I had a $15 hand held cassette player at the time and it had better audio quality, battery life, and I could barrow hundreds of audio books from the library for free with it. That is how everyone I knew listened to audio books in the late 90s.
I love audible on my phone but I find it really surprising this is where they started and they lasted long enough to end up on iTunes and be bought out by Amazon because this is nowhere near as good as other audio book options in the 90s.
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I love modern Audilbe but I have to say I am shocked they lasted with this start. I had a $15 hand held cassette player at the time and it had better audio quality, battery life, and I could barrow hundreds of audio books from the library for free with it. That is how everyone I knew listened to audio books in the late 90s.
I love audible on my phone but I find it really surprising this is where they started and they lasted long enough to end up on iTunes and be bought out by Amazon because this is nowhere near as good as other audio book options in the 90s.
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Jon
I know alot of people panned the quality back in the day, but I love listening to audio that's been squashed to maximum compression and is still 100% understandable. That music comparison, while certainly not ideal, was still enjoyable. It didn't sound any worse than most AM band music stations.
My favorite low bit rate codec is Codec 2 (or just C2. 700b/s and still legible. I've used it to compress 1hour long podcasts to fit on a floppy disc. If you really push it you can fit 2h in a 1. 44MB floppy.
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I know alot of people panned the quality back in the day, but I love listening to audio that's been squashed to maximum compression and is still 100% understandable. That music comparison, while certainly not ideal, was still enjoyable. It didn't sound any worse than most AM band music stations.
My favorite low bit rate codec is Codec 2 (or just C2. 700b/s and still legible. I've used it to compress 1hour long podcasts to fit on a floppy disc. If you really push it you can fit 2h in a 1. 44MB floppy.
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jcardboard
I had no idea Audible was around as long as that. That's one of the most 90s devices I've ever seen. I do remember subscribing to audible briefly in the mid-late 2000s, at that point you could use a standard MP3 player but had to sync it in a weird way and it only supported certain players.
The cool thing though was that piracy was dead easy because of this, I shared my books with my mum and vice versa back then.
Of course I got an Audible ad for this video.
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I had no idea Audible was around as long as that. That's one of the most 90s devices I've ever seen. I do remember subscribing to audible briefly in the mid-late 2000s, at that point you could use a standard MP3 player but had to sync it in a weird way and it only supported certain players.
The cool thing though was that piracy was dead easy because of this, I shared my books with my mum and vice versa back then.
Of course I got an Audible ad for this video.
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Joseph
i didnt know audible has been around for this long thats so nutty. i also didnt know mp3 players were that old. i remebr being on the irc and someone describing to me what an mp3 was the technology was starting to go mainstream. the internet was a better place when it was just you and fellow tech nerds online no social media and influencers and everyone letting you know their political view. i miss 1995 - 1999 internet
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i didnt know audible has been around for this long thats so nutty. i also didnt know mp3 players were that old. i remebr being on the irc and someone describing to me what an mp3 was the technology was starting to go mainstream. the internet was a better place when it was just you and fellow tech nerds online no social media and influencers and everyone letting you know their political view. i miss 1995 - 1999 internet
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J-rg
if you had more than 4MB of compressed music on your computer in 1997, you had most likely lame'd it yourself from analogue media. the mp3 mime-type had just been issued two years earlier and frauenhofer society only invented 'lossy psychoacoustic audio compression' two years prior to that.
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if you had more than 4MB of compressed music on your computer in 1997, you had most likely lame'd it yourself from analogue media. the mp3 mime-type had just been issued two years earlier and frauenhofer society only invented 'lossy psychoacoustic audio compression' two years prior to that.
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Shinso
Anyone know the song at the end. That sounded like heaven. I want to smoke a blunt and listen to that. I went to that website he posted for the music link but nothing. Anyone know? Kenny g perhaps? I would have loved to get this product. I wasted my younth on AOL chat rooms and bolt.
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Anyone know the song at the end. That sounded like heaven. I want to smoke a blunt and listen to that. I went to that website he posted for the music link but nothing. Anyone know? Kenny g perhaps? I would have loved to get this product. I wasted my younth on AOL chat rooms and bolt.
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Joseph.
aw man. they killed off the legacy audible manager for a download manager. Still if you find the legacy manager, you can still install it, they didn't delete the files yet anyways.
I think they killed it sometime last year, very sad, but it still works if you have it.
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aw man. they killed off the legacy audible manager for a download manager. Still if you find the legacy manager, you can still install it, they didn't delete the files yet anyways.
I think they killed it sometime last year, very sad, but it still works if you have it.
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Michael
If you could find a modern LiOn battery then that would be awesome with the playtime. Another cool mod would be to add more memory so you could get more files onto the device. Yes it may sound compressed as ever but it-s still a very cool device!
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If you could find a modern LiOn battery then that would be awesome with the playtime. Another cool mod would be to add more memory so you could get more files onto the device. Yes it may sound compressed as ever but it-s still a very cool device!
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Shizon84
I'm thinking that it would be good if you made an oddware video about the Microsoft Zune. Seemed like they made them between 2006 to 2009, but at the time, I guess they didn't sell enough of them and most people favored the Apple iPod instead.
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I'm thinking that it would be good if you made an oddware video about the Microsoft Zune. Seemed like they made them between 2006 to 2009, but at the time, I guess they didn't sell enough of them and most people favored the Apple iPod instead.
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