Oi Oi Oi

Got myself a new media player, I did. I’ve been on the hunt for something new for a while now - casually surfing ebay looking for something suitable. I had a few criteria:

1. It should be bigger than my existing player - not hard considering my current player has only 64MB
2. It should have a screen
3. Most importantly, it should play Ogg Vorbis files.

For the unitiated, the Ogg Vorbis file format is much like mp3, although it is better quality sound in smaller file sizes. More importantly, it is an open standard, whereas when you buy an mp3 player, a little bit of cash goes to licensing that format. I like Oggs, and would much rather have everything in Ogg format. An ogg player would make this a lot simpler.

And so, I found one. For a reasonable price on eBay I picked up a 512MB Xcent XT-100, which fulfils all my criteria nicely. It has a built in battery, which will hopefully save me a bit of cash, a nice screen, although a little hard to read in direct sunlight, really good quality sound, a built-in FM radio, and a voice recorder. Oh, and the line-in jack for recording is a proper size jack (3.5mm) rather than the stupid one we have at church, which is 2.5mm….

It doesn’t have a built-in USB plug, which is probably the biggest annoyance. But the flap covering the usb socket is, at least, a decent, metal hinged flap, not a stupid flimsy rubber thing. Also, it doesn’t turn off randomly - it will stay on for a specified number of minutes, or not at all, even when paused. Which is much better than some I’ve seen, which turn off after 30 seconds of inactivity.

Overall, very happy But I’ll let you know how I get on after a couple of weeks of usage.

mrBen

It would be nice if the Creative series of MP3 players supported the ogg format.

But, AFAIK, they don’t yet.

Xcent XT100 mp3 player. Hi Mr Ben, I also just bought one of these cool looking players, also off Ebay. But the CD that comes with it has the user manual in Korean. Any idea how I can get it translated or lay my hands on an English version. Or any ideas on how the player works? Comments would be appreciated. Many thanks

Hi Derek. I actually have a PDF of the English manual, which should help Unfortunately the X-Cent website appears to be dead

For basic use - hold down play to start the player - only about 1/2 a second should be enough for it to kick in. The square fourway button is previous/next and vol up/down. Hold down the middle button for a couple of seconds to get a file browser, or tap it once for settings.

Ben, Thanks for the info and I got the file. A thousand thanks for solving my problem. If only all my problems were solved as easily as this! First time I used the site and what a great result.