A small review of the iRiver Story HD

[wilsonch]

Originally Posted by cme

Russian is among the supported languages. Do you have any eBook I could try it with?

How can I send a Russian epub to you? I would prefer not to upload here, because although I have downloaded only from what appear to be legitimate sites (in Russia and the Ukraine), I can't personally vouch for a book's copyright status, in Russia, or the USA, or in Austria.

[cme]

Send me an email: chalid[AT]cme.at

[wilsonch]

cme, I sent a small epub file. Dostoevsky.

From iriver tech support I received a very clear reply to my questions about the Google Books client:

My questions:
---
Pre-sales tech question re Story HD Google Books client features

Since the Google Books client on the Story HD is being written by iriver using the API and not by Google, I have questions about features related to the online free Google Books. Please note I am asking only about the free books, not about standard commercial books being sold online by Google.

1. Online and in the Android Google Reader app developed by Google, one selects a book and puts it into one's Google Books library. Does the Story HD Google Books client use and update the user's Google Books library?

2. Online and via clients Google Books usually has two versions of a free book available -- the scanned PDF (an image, not searchable, text does not flow) and an epub (OCR'd text, is searchable, text does flow). The Android Google Reader app developed by Google initially presents a free book as the scanned PDF but in a menu the user can switch to the epub and back to the PDF, with no extra download steps or other bother. The app keeps the reader's place when it switches between the two views. Does the Google Books client on the Story HD have this dual-mode feature?

---
Their answers:

Thank you for taking an interest in the iriver Story HD e-reader. The answers to your 2 questions are: 1. Yes, 2. No.

[cme]

got you mail. unfortunately the cyrillic letters aren't showing. when opening the book, only questionmarks appear ... which is odd, because the books title is correctly shown in the booklist and switching the system language to russian is working fine too.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by cme

got you mail. unfortunately the cyrillic letters aren't showing. when opening the book, only questionmarks appear ... which is odd, because the books title is correctly shown in the booklist and switching the system language to russian is working fine too.

Inside the book there is a different set of fonts in use. If it is ADE then only books with embedded fonts will work on the device, although there is a new version of ADE where a user can choose their own fonts. I don't know if the story as that version but Hanlin does.

Dale

[reve]

Hello, I have been looking at E-Ink readers for some time now. First I wanted Kindle 3, then I waited for the new Nook which kind of disappointed and in the end the new Google iRiver Story HD caught my eye (it has wifi compared to the regular Story HD).

Does anyone in the US have any information on other stores than Target selling this in near future? A store that would ideally send abroad...

I am quite sure I would like the Wi-Fi version (that's the Google one) so I guess I will wait around a week or so and if no information pops up I will pick it up on eBay. It's being sold for around $175+$40 and I will have to pay 20% VAT on all that but I don't think I can get this in a better way. They don't sell the nonWi-Fi version for much less in EU anyway.

[adbosch]

If this is the one: Google eReader, than it seems not to support epub?????

[wilsonch]

According to text embedded in an image here, the device supports epub, pdf, txt, fb2, and djvu, and has viewers for PowerPoint and Word documents. It says it also has a "Comic Viewer" for looking at images.

[wilsonch]

For good or ill I bought this yesterday.

[adbosch]

Originally Posted by wilsonch

For good or ill I bought this yesterday.

Your review will be appreciated

[sgiessl]

Hey, new firmware EB07 has been released today: http://www.iriver.com/company/notice...sno=44&irTop=0

According to them:
1.Stablization of system
2.Calibration of keypad function ( for Russia version)

I didn't have time to test it yet, I'm hoping e.g. for stabilization of the USB mass storage connection.

[sgiessl]

A new firmware has been released today (check the support site / unfortunately my posts containing URL's require moderator approval).
If anyone is quicker than me in testing it out I would be interested in first impressions.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by reve

Does anyone in the US have any information on other stores than Target selling this in near future?

Target has an exclusive. Most reports don't give a length, but the StarTribune says 6 months.

The WiFi version should be available relatively soon outside the US though.

[wilsonch]

Calibre recognized the iriver Story and I dumped a bunch of Russian epubs onto my Story HD. Most of them were fine, a couple apparently didn't have the necessary font info inside, so in those few books most of the text was squares with Xs. An odd but okay thing was that in the main list the author and title were transliterated (Latin characters spelling out pseudo-Russian) but as soon as I opened and closed the book the author and title in the list were in Cyrillic. Anyhow, for me this graceful handling of Cyrillic is a very pleasant difference from my other ereaders. (My experience may reflect the USA versions, though. It's possible that the European versions of my other ereaders handled Cyrillic okay.)

I put onto the Story HD a copy of the Gutenberg Project epub of the Nicene Creed, in Greek and Latin. The Greek text is all fine. The Latin text was fine, too. :-)

FWIW my firmware version is 1.17.

[wilsonch]

Originally Posted by wilsonch

Anyhow, for me this graceful handling of Cyrillic is a very pleasant difference from my other ereaders.

After I posted that I got an itch in my brain, which asked, "How well does the Kindle handle Cyrillic?" And I scratched my head and furrowed my brow and then it came to me -- I've never seen a Cyrillic Kindle-format file, and I never bothered to make one. So narrow the scope of my pleased surprise accordingly.