Replies to post #58977 on e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

[friendlyfred]

I doubt that it was cost or time related. It didnt take edig long to come up with a firmware upgrade (according to Putnam, the upgrade was sent to gateway soon after the player was released) and how would that feature effect cost?
My point is that when I invested in edig, mos and the companys platforms were supposedly cutting edge and ahead of everyone else. Now that they are actually being produced and retailed we are finding bugs that are, In some peoples eyes, relegating our products to also ran status. The 0-1000 has been around long enough to have been honed to perfection. I believe that edig can provide a front running juke box to a prospective oem but the little things need to be addressed. Forget about v-nav and make the player flawless. Having said all this, another reviewer might like the moo pod just the way it is and give it higher marks.
Honestly if I were shopping for a player right now I would select the gateway unit over all others because it feels good to me and everyone has an i-pod. lol

[owd3]

Every excuse you use to try and justify a poor decision just further points out that EDIG adds very little to the process.

"To think that this playlist issue was a surprise to anyone is foolish."

Especially in light of the fact that EDIG had the exact same issue with previous players. Yesterday someone claimed they had the same issue with the MXP and it had to be corrected by an upgrade. So how can EDIG be putting out players years later with the same issues? Don't they learn from prior mistakes?

"I'm sure it was a calculated business decision on the part of Gateway. Whether that decision was driven by cost or time is debatable."

Cost or time?? A calculated business decision? The only way that could possibly be true is if EDIG was not prepared with the feature. EDIG knew this was a problem based on previous experience and they couldn't bring a cost effective or timely solution to GW?? They had years to work on it!!!

Or do you think EDIG had it but GW told them to take it out? I can see that meeting; "take that out, we don't want the songs to play in order"!!!!!

".....it uses the Windows Media Player as the interface program. Perhaps the use of this program without any software modifications forced the playlist issue."

WMP has nothing to do with it. If the songs are tagged properly, the player should handle them. But even if your excuse was true, how could EDIG design a player that wasn't 100% compatible with the Microsoft product it was going to ship with?? Seems like a very big oversight for a company that was supposed to bring expertise to the table.

"At any rate I think it is well within the realm of feasibility that this issue was known and accepted prior the release of the player."

But wasn't EDIG supposed to bring some type of expertise to the table here? Weren't they supposed to have a fully functional reference design that made it easy for OEMs to bring first-class players to market? Instead what you are suggesting is that EDIG has a third rate design that requires OEMs to compromise features to bring a product to market in a timely and affordable manner. That does not bode well for the EDIG design if the OEM is forced to make the trade-offs you are suggesting.

But who knows, if you wait another 12-15 years, EDIG prints another couple a hundred millions shares and burns through the next $65M with out turning a profit, maybe they can finally offer the OEMs a reference design that doesn't require those type of trade offs.


If it happened like you suggest, is it any wonder the EDIG design finished DEAD LAST in the CNET rankings?