Venturer 40GB HDD MP3 Player £49.99

was looking for an external hard drive but think i'll get one of these instead now could also connect it up to my car stereo, its a very good price thanks

Ive been looking at this for a few months now. I thought there must have been some sort of catch as people are paying hundreds for players with half the space. Although after reading the reviews it does seem to be based on looks. I have seen one in the display case in my local argos and must say it is big compared to an i-pod but at that price its a steal. Its still smaller than my cd based MP3 player I use just now (it cost me £14.99 3 years ago) I have already reserved one for pickup later today.

Does anyone actually have one of these? I'd like to know what sound quality is like. Can't really argue with that price for 40gb.

Going to buy mine tomorrow.

DOES ANYONE KNOW IF IT SUPPORTS USB2? Hope its not crappy usb1, or I'll be waiting for 4 days to copy all my music on to it

An intesting review from :http://www.comparestoreprices.co.uk/portable-audio/venturer-40gb-hdd-mp3-player.asp

I been after a MP3 player for quite a long time but held back in buying
them as I new that most of the newer MP3 players use their own software to
enable to transfer music like Apple IPOD - ITunes and they may be fussy
with the music due to the copyrights. I was more after a `plug and play`
one like my little Mastic 512mb mp3 player that is not restricted and
music can easily be transferred via the PC. With a large collection, I
also wanted to find a MP3 player that’s can store a large capacity of
music (i.e. 10-20GB).

I saw the Ventura 40GB HDD MP3 player Argos for £79.99. For the price it
was going for, I decided to buy it. This product is known as an electronic
consumable so therefore is excluded from the 16 day money back guarantee.
But that didn`t actually bother me.

On my first glance, I do it admit it is chunky and big indeed. It reminds
me of one of those old Sony Walkmans that I still have! But in a way it
doesn’t bother I and I prefer it knowing I can feel that it is in my bag,
rather than having something small, thing and flimsy. It took 12 hours on
the first charge and from there it takes around 2 hours to become fully
charged. On continuous play, battery so far lasts around 9/10 hours which
is pretty good as it the manual states between 10-12 hours. Bout I have
only discharged the battery (by playing music till it states that the
battery is low) and charged the battery a few times so far.

You have two ways of transferring music, using `USB Music` mode, it
becomes plug and play and you can easily drag and drop music into the HDD
or the `DRM Music` mode you can use Window Media V10 to synchronize the
player with Window Media and `rip` you music directly to the HDD.

Depending how you ID Tag your music, it is very easy to find what you what
(Artists, Titles, Albums, Genres, Folders/files) through the Music mode.

The menu are easy to navigate through the menu and have a different range
of modes like selecting music play (i.e. shuffle, repeat mode act), EQ
(Bass, pop etc), backlight time, sleep timer. Another good feature it has
also a voice recorder which can be useful. You can also view the HDD
storage capacity through the information to see how much memory you have
left and format the internal HDD.

If you like me and only have a large collection of music (around 14GB) and
can`t fill your MP3 with music, then you can use it a storage backup for
your PC and transfer other files to make use of the space!

So far there seem to gone nothing wrong with the player. But I have
noticed a few things. Some of music tracks seem to get skipped for some
reason. Not sure why but with the amount of music I got and set in shuffle
mode, I hardly notice it. It can be annoying though if this happens when
listening to one album and it plays one song and then skips the rest
before setting on a track from another album. The other thing I notice is
when using the DMR Music mode, even it appears the `portable player` in
the explorer and while transferring music using the DMR Music mode, after
a while the WM seems to freeze during synch mode and I can`t seem to stop
it not eject the MP3 player from Win O/S as it has disappeared. Also when
the player gets switched off, all the settings you have setup as your
preference, gets lost so you have to re-do them, or can you use the player
while it is plugged in the main and in charging mode, so have to wait 2
hours till its charge before you can use it.

I got a copy of firmware version 3.0.2 if anyone wants a copy PM me your email address.

Sorts out some bugs and power management issues to increase play time.