Do you guys know of any portable mp3 players that will play the AAC format? For whatever reason Archos and Sandisc players don't include it on their spec. sheet.

I think the Creative Zen and Nomad, Sony players like the E and S series and... I hope I'm not wrong on this... Apple iPods (whether they have to be encoded in iTunes or not is another matter!)

Brilliant, thanks saspro.

Which players were you looking at ?

I was pretty sure that both those companies played AAC... although maybe not some of the protected stuff you got from iTunes (but then, only iPod's play those?).

One of my forumees posted a question on the forum I admin for. I had a look on Amazon etc at the best selling players but none had AAC listed in the specs.

You are right that iPods alone will play the DRM stuff, but as DRM no longer exists (I think) on iTunes this is not really an issue. Most AAC stuff is music ripped from CD anyway as it is the default format in iTunes. Also the default for Playstation if I am not mistaken.

I searched around, only the Archos 5 and above seem to have AAC support and even then it's only after you buy the plugin to watch h264 videos.

As for Sandisk, i was surprised that they don't officially support AAC. The most i've gotten is that they generally play AAC files (due to being able to play h264 videos) but it's not properly/officially supported and reading the tags can be so-so.

Rather disappointed with that seeing as both companies are rather... "popular" manufacturers and Archos' support used to be free.



Yeah, they changed it when they raised the bitrate to 256kbps IIRC?

+ Are the videos/movies still DRM'd though ?

Oh very much so.

I think the official position is that Apple does not want anyone to put DRM on anything but they provide it if the media supplier insists. And boy do the TV and movie industries insist. The same situation for books the EPub format can be either DRM free or shackled dependant on the publisher's demands.