Hello, I'm looking for a Mp3 or Digital Media Player with a memory of at least 80 GB and capable of playing .ogg and .flac, or even .ogg at least. I've been looking in the market and doing research on my own, but so far I've turned with iPod, Archos and Zune. iPods, I am pretty good with em, but I've heard of pretty nasty stories about iPods setting themselves on fire and sparks flying, so I am a bit hesitant about iPods for now. Archos are just to damn expensive...You can barely see difference in price between a 160 GB player and a 80 GB player and I haven't heard much about Zune except that it is mediocre. I'm all ears guys.

iPod and Zune don't play FLAC or OGG, question solved. I not sure any of the Archos models do either.

Apple has cornered the market on 1.8” 80 and 160GB drives. Does anybody else use them outside Microsoft and the Zune?
The Archos and Wolverine players of 80GB and up use 2.5” HDDs.


A tiny number of stories out of the millions sold does not a problem make. Lithium batteries are inherently a bit on the dangerous side - I have not seen enough iPod "fire" stories to warrant suspicion anything outside the bell curve is going on.


The Archos PMPs are in a whole other ballgame. When you venture so far from what the majority of the market is catering to, you are in the "specialty" field - and you should not be surprised at the cost being higher than that of the mainstream player (iPod) or its well-funded competition (Zune).

You can get a refurbished 5.5g ipod and install rockbox for flac and ogg. If all your music is in flac, just convert to mp3 and save yourself the trouble of looking for a pmp supporting flac and ogg.

That's what I thought, but can I install Rockbox on a 80 Gig iPod and play .ogg?

An 80GB 5.5th gen? Yes.
An 80GB 6th gen (Classic)? No.

Or you could buy another HDD player Rockbox supports (used) and put a 80GB drive in it.
Might be cheaper.

"A tiny number of stories out of the millions sold does not a problem make. Lithium batteries are inherently a bit on the dangerous side - I have not seen enough iPod "fire" stories to warrant suspicion anything outside the bell curve is going on."

yup, 3rd rate knockoff batteries or doing stupid things like leaving it in hot cars is the problem. no ones not using these batteries if they want decent run time, so just know the limitations. and don't deep discharge them like crazy, they wear down faster if you do that. batteryuniversity http://batteryuniversity.com/ is a good place to visit if you want to know a bit more about batteries instead of the internet rumors and such which tend to be wrong.

Thanks, I was at an Apple store today and the sales associate recommended me the same thing. I think I'll go ahead with an 5.5 Gen iPod, it looks far better than Archos and Zune.