beginner to prs505 reader

[gamegirl]

I just got my 505 and love it. I too check out ebooks from the Fairfax county library.
Would love to know why most of the books that I would love to read are only offered
in audio wma format. Last night I searched for John Grisham and not one book is offered by the library in any format other than audio wma. What's up with that?

[dordale]

gamegirl--

It is a little frustrating isn't it? Some authors (I know John Grisham is one) will not allow their books to be published in any type of e-book format. My guess is that their worried about piracy.

Personally, I like to listen to audiobooks as well as read e-books, so if a book is available in audio format, but not in e-book format, I'll listen to it instead.

You might want to check out the New York Public Library's website. They have ALOT of adobe e-books available for checkout. As I live in California, I was able to apply for a library card by paying a non-resident fee of $100 for one year. Because of their huge selection of titles available for download, I consider it a bargain.

dordale

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by gamegirl

I just got my 505 and love it. I too check out ebooks from the Fairfax county library.
Would love to know why most of the books that I would love to read are only offered
in audio wma format. Last night I searched for John Grisham and not one book is offered by the library in any format other than audio wma. What's up with that?

Because low-bitrates wma gives superior sound quality over mp3.

Generally the by now almost 14 years old MP3 file format has been superseded by WMA and OGG.

Here are some details:
WMA uses an internal 'harmonics crystallizer',which basically recreates high frequencies lost in low bitrate encodings.
This is excellent for speech files, as well as recordings of old LP's, audio of video recordings and tapes.
Generally 32kbps to 48kbps WMA encodings are used for speech, preachings, lectures and readings.
48 to 64kbps are used for audiobooks with music in the background,and have comparable quality to 80-128kbps mp3 files.

OGG starts from 80kbps upto about 275kbps. Quality from OGG 80kbps is comparable to 128kbps MP3, and 112kbps ogg (Var Q2) is generally used for live music recordings,comparable to 160kbps MP3.

In other words with either codec you save upto 25% disk space, for the same quality.
Unfortunately indeed that wma is not supported by the reader.

You can listen to it on most mp3 players though...
And that would make more sence, since 500MB of MP3 can get full pretty quickly.

other formats like flac, and ape are more used for mac and Linux are less heard of.

*Edit: So that would be the explanation: 'why WMA?'.
The explanation why audiobooks would be that Sony is updating their library, and that pretty soon you'll see more books in their library available.

I guess the more people buy books, the more people can be hired to input books into the system, and the less the price of an ebook will be..*

[yekim54]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

Unfortunately indeed that wma is not supported by the reader.

You can listen to it on most mp3 players though...

Without doing some sort of conversion, I don't believe you can listen to WMA files on an Apple iPod mp3 player. And since the iPod has about a 70% market share of all mp3 players, I believe a more correct statement would be: "You can not listen to WMA on most mp3 players".

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by yekim54

Without doing some sort of conversion, I don't believe you can listen to WMA files on an Apple iPod mp3 player. And since the iPod has about a 70% market share of all mp3 players, I believe a more correct statement would be: "You can not listen to WMA on most mp3 players".

And even if it were the WMA files are DRM protected with a time limited license which is the real reason libraries use that format. Only a very few platform types can use these files, namely Windows and Microsoft players.

Dale

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by yekim54

Without doing some sort of conversion, I don't believe you can listen to WMA files on an Apple iPod mp3 player. And since the iPod has about a 70% market share of all mp3 players, I believe a more correct statement would be: "You can not listen to WMA on most mp3 players".

I'm sorry,but I have to disagree here.
Indeed, maybe the Ipod sells more than any other MP3 player on the market, but I believe the Ipod has less than 15% market share.

Do you have any idea how many millions, if not close to half a billion MP3 players have been created in the past 12 years?
And many of them DO support WMA.
In fact my first MP3/WMA discman dates from 2000 (8 years ago) from Panasonic.

There are countless MP3 players on the market that have WMA playback capability!

One brand for instance is Cowon, second is Creative. Even their cheapest MP3 player plays back WMA!

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

Indeed, maybe the Ipod sells more than any other MP3 player on the market, but I believe the Ipod has less than 15% market share.

Perhaps you are thinking of Macs. iPod market share in 2007 was 70% based on unit sales and 84% base on $s.

http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com...g-ipod-market/

BOb

[ProDigit]

That may be true, but there are many more people who have not bought an ipod, because they already owned an MP3 player, than those who did.
Maybe in 2007, 70% of the sold MP3 players are IPods.
But all the years before the number was lower; and I know many people who still own an MP3 player they gotten for free or for their birthday 4 years ago.

The number you gave just means that in 2007 20% didn't buy an Ipod.
In 2006 that may be more (say 33%)
2005 maybe 66%
and before 2005, Ipods weren't really known amongst the crowds. Maybe one or two fans had them....

The percentage of Ipod owners compared to MP3 player owners is still pretty small.

Seeing the MP3 codec dates from 1995 I can only assume that, hundreds of MP3-player brands where produced between around 1997 and 2005, which each produced tens of models.
From 2005 onwards, only the better ones remained in business.

[yekim54]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

and before 2005, Ipods weren't really known amongst the crowds. Maybe one or two fans had them....

I don't know where you are getting your information, but you might want to consider this: In 2004 the Apple iPod had 56% of total market share of all mp3 units sold. Over 4.4 million iPods were sold in 2004 and that is definitely more than "one or two fans". Here is the market share of the iPod in terms of units sold since 2004, which is the first year they exceeded 50% of market share:

2004 - 56% market share (4.4 million units sold)
2005 - 72% market share (22.5 million units sold)
2006 - 72% market share (39.4 million units sold)
2007 - 70% market share (51.6 million units sold)
2008* - 68% market share (53.8 million units sold)
* projected

[ProDigit]

That would be really hard to believe... Statements above might be regional.
The Ipod hasn't really been heard of in Europe untill people started buying the first Ipod with a harddrive, which was in 2005-2006?

Sure it exsisted before,but like a reader,you seldomly saw anyone with one walking around...

I mean,Apple can post whatever it wants,
But if you look arround you you'll understand that those numbers might be regional, and certainly not international.
In fact, Many many and many people I know didn't buy an Ipod until the release of the Iphone,which was a terrific success in France;partly out of fear because IPod had this thing that you needed to buy your music via a ITunes,which people feared was only working on an Apple.
Nomatter what apple thinks, but the majority of people still go with a PC (IBMClone) above an apple computer,and preferred to have an MP3 player that they could play their self gotten MP3 files on.

Now I know Itunes isn't limited to Apple computers, and IPods do play back normal MP3 files, but that was not the thought of many people at it's release.

From the Iphone, the Ipods streamed in Europe.
(The Iphone was released early 2007, if I'm right...)
Maybe Europe was a late bloomer,but I can't imagine poorer countries like Asian, Middle eastern and African nations people having an IPod as their first MP3 player!
In fact the asian market was primarily dominated by their own products; I'm not sure, but I think Apple is an American,not Asian company.
Either way, the numbers you provide do not measure up to international or even National sales of the Ipod,unless almost 'every' mp3 player is named an 'IPod'.

Most 'free MP3 players' you got with a magazine subscription, or because you bought a good television of a certain brand, where definitely not Ipods.

All I can say is what I've seen in Europe, that Ipod has a significant growth the last 2 to 3 years, but before 2005, they sold just as many mp3 players as any other brand out there. It had to hit against Panasonic,which offers waay more options for the price, Sandisk,Cowon, I-river (which basically threw their MP3 players in your face at 25$ per piece compared to Apple's 250$ Ipod), Sony, Samsung, and about any other brand out there (including Microsoft which also offered an MP3 player).

[yekim54]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

That would be really hard to believe... Statements above might be regional.
The Ipod hasn't really been heard of in Europe untill people started buying the first Ipod with a harddrive, which was in 2005-2006?

[..snip..]

All I can say is what I've seen in Europe, that Ipod has a significant growth the last 2 to 3 years, but before 2005, they sold just as many mp3 players as any other brand out there.

The iPod sales numbers I posted were not regional, they are Apple's worldwide sales. However, it appears that the opinion's you are posting are purely based on observations in your immediate regional vicinity. Here are Apple's iPod sales numbers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IPodsales_2008Q3.svg

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

That would be really hard to believe... Statements above might be regional.
The Ipod hasn't really been heard of in Europe untill people started buying the first Ipod with a harddrive, which was in 2005-2006?

The iPod sales numbers pilotbob and yekim54 posted are actually the right numbers, worldwide. Not just wikipedia, but a wide variety of analysts and print-news articles agree.

And the "first iPod with a hard drive"? That would be the very first iPod, back at the beginning of 2002. If you meant "first without a hard drive" that would be the iPod Shuffle from 2005.

Xenophon

[gwynevans]

The iPod sales numbers might be correct, but I don't recall there being much agreement about the total market size of MP3 players. I'd be amazed if players such as these (1GB 'shuffle' clones, for less than £10) were counted as part of the market that Apple's supposed to have by unit...

[BlackVoid]

Originally Posted by dordale

Some authors (I know John Grisham is one) will not allow their books to be published in any type of e-book format. My guess is that their worried about piracy.

All of his books are available on the Darknet.
This is self-defeating really. People turn to pirated stuff because, the book they are looking for:
1. Not available as an ebook
2. Costs too much in ebook format

If anyone is worried about piracy the logical step is to serve the customer by making the book available as an ebook at a good price. The publishing industry is a FAILURE.

[dordale]

Originally Posted by BlackVoid

All of his books are available on the Darknet.
This is self-defeating really. People turn to pirated stuff because, the book they are looking for:
1. Not available as an ebook
2. Costs too much in ebook format

If anyone is worried about piracy the logical step is to serve the customer by making the book available as an ebook at a good price. The publishing industry is a FAILURE.

I'm in 100% agreement with that statement. Ebooks will always be available whether the author wants them out there or not. By not allowing for any legal means of obtaining an ebook, it doesn't mean it won't be available, just that the author/publisher will not get any revenue from its distribution.

dordale