JuiceBox

05.20.2005 // Uncategorized //

JuiceBox
Mattel made these and hyped them up last christmas (~$50)… nice little MP3 (w/$30 upgrade kit!), Photo (great image quality for JPGs) and (proprietary, uh-oh) video player. Target finally has them on liquidation, $11 for the player and $11 for the MP3 kit. Something to think about… the MP3 kit comes with a MMC/SD reader (A-Tech, SD CR-V7-UD) and a 32MB SD from Lexar. The reader usually runs ~$15 and the 32MB SD runs ~$25 . So, essentially (NOW…) it’s a great deal. Get them before they start showing up overpriced on eBay.

I’ve hunted around for some hacks and there have been some interesting projects showing up on google – it’s died down quite a bit since the new Nintendo and PS portables have been introduced but the digital photoframe mod looks promising. An interesting note for a cheap in-dash MP3 player… it supports up to 128k encoded MP3s, although some folks have reported being able to get higher encoded audio files to be played (some green and blue JuiceBox players w/no power LED and containing and older firmware). In addition, you can use 512MB SDs. So, this works out to be a thrifty way to put an reasonable MP3 player in the car – and the cartoon videos are pretty fun too. Unfortunately with the lack of video conversion software there’s no way of adding any more videos to play on the go – guess I’ll have to stick with the PocketPC.