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The iriver PMP-100 series: A product with the typical strengths and weaknesses of Korean technology Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

So, if you picked up a copy of, say, "Oceans 12" and converted it to play on your iriver device, you might see Brad Pitt's mouth moving and then, four or five seconds later, you'll hear his voice. The iriver PMP series also boasts that it is firmware upgradeable. This is loudly proclaimed in the manual and in various marketing materials. However, nearly two years after its original release in the United States, guess what? There is absolutely no firmware available for the PMP series. The company has done nothing to improve the product in 24 months.

This review is about the iriver PMP-100 series, which includes the PMP-100, PMP-120 and the PMP-140. Like a lot of hardware from Korean companies, this product has great hardware but terrible user navigation, atrocious support and extremely poor software. The PMP-120, which is the unit I reviewed, definitely earns two big thumbs down for a number of reasons. First off, the unit exhibits many limitations that simply shouldn't be present in a portable video player.

The software that comes with the PMP-100 series from iriver is about the worst video conversion software I've ever seen. It's extremely slow and renames all your files with a pre-pended word "converted" so that your original file names aren't conserved. Also, the video conversion software has a unique feature I haven't seen anywhere else: The longer the video plays, the more the audio and video get out of sync.

Is there anything good about the iriver PM-100 series? Yes, the battery life is much longer than that of the current iPods that play video, for example. You can get several hours of video out of these units, which gives you more opportunities to watch Brad Pitt's mouth move. The screen has excellent display qualities, but as I've said before, Korean companies are very good at hardware while falling flat when it comes to software navigation drivers. The PMP-120 or 100 series also has a blazing fast USB 2.0 interface, so the videos are copied to the unit's internal hard drive very quickly.

For the time being, I recommend that everyone avoid any products made by iriver, other than their IFP 700, 800, and 900 series MP3 players and recorders, which are, as I've said many times before, outstanding MP3 devices.

Media giants want to criminalize personal copying of movie DVDs to portable electronic devices Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

That way I can buy movies like "Oceans Eleven," which I think is a great film, and I can watch "Oceans Eleven" on my home DVD player or take it with me on a PSP or an iriver, PMP, or other portable media device. If I ever sell that movie on DVD, I will delete those files. That's the honest way to handle it as a consumer. I'm supporting the movie studios by buying the DVDs, but I'm also allowing myself to be able to watch that DVD on a number of different devices that I own.

DVD copy warnings, movie studio paranoia, and the effort to turn customers into criminals Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

I want books in mp3 format so I can listen to them on my iriver device or my iPod. I don't want to have to use special syncing software or the special audible.com proprietary audio format, and I don't want to be treated like a criminal if I rip that audio to a format that I can actually carry with me when I'm traveling. Audible.com just doesn't get it. The movie studios don't get it either, and companies like Sony BMG definitely do not get it. This is the digital age, and content owners would be well advised to stop investing so much effort in treating their paying customers like criminals.

I've ripped music CDs to my computer so that I could listen to them on my iriver device. If that makes me a felon, then it's a bad law. I've ripped DVD movies into "avi" files and the converted them to "mpeg4s" so I could watch them on my Playstation portable. If that makes me a criminal, then there's something wrong with our criminal justice system. I've paid for all this content; I bought the DVD. I paid for the music album; I just want to enjoy them on my own terms.

A call to action: how we can beat the European Food Supplements Directive Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

You can also buy an iriver MP3 device with a built-in recorder. Put it on record, slip it into a pocket, and you've got ten hours of stealth audio recording. Or get yourself arrested, on video, for politely selling a bottle of vitamin C to a friend. Hold a press conference and announce that you're going to get yourself arrested for daring to sell vitamin C. And then visibly squeeze a lemon into the bottle right before selling it. See if you get arrested. If so, you'll be famous, and you'll make a very important point. (If this ban were in the U.S.

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ABOUT THE CREATOR OF NATURALPEDIA: Mike Adams, the creator of this NaturalNews Naturalpedia, is the editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's top natural health news site, creator of the Honest Food Guide (www.HonestFoodGuide.org), a free downloadable consumer food guide based on natural health principles, author of Grocery Warning, The 7 Laws of Nutrition, Natural Health Solutions, and many other books available at www.TruthPublishing.com, creator of the earth-friendly EcoLEDs company (www.EcoLEDs.com) that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting products, founder of Arial Software (www.ArialSoftware.com), a permission e-mail technology company, creator of the CounterThink Cartoon series (www.NaturalNews.com/index-cartoons.html) and author of over 1,500 articles, interviews, special reports and reference guides available at www.NaturalNews.com. Adams' personal philosophy and health statistics are available at www.HealthRanger.org.