LGR Oddware - Audible MobilePlayer from 1997

Im so glad you made this. Ive had one of these for ages with no battery no cradle or anything. I was soooo curious about it but always have a million other projects going. I should send you some of the cooler stuff

Raab Eskew

Indeed, they're certainly worth a closer look sometime! How quickly they've been forgotten.

LGR

RealPlayer! I was really surprised to find out recently that Real still exists. You should do a video on Real Networks at some point. I'm sure they have an interesting history.

pcwzrd13

Huh. Never would have thought they'd have been in the hardware business. Always thought they'd just been involved with the content side of things. But there you go. And I can see why they'd pivot to just supplying content for other providers, as the hardware isn't the most exciting for sure. Even if the quality is okay enough for spoken word material.

Rob Caporetto

Dude! I love Car Talk! It’s so cool to see you showcase a bit of one of their shows. Oh yeah, and the rest of the video was great too. :-)

That audio quality is perfectly acceptable. For an elevator. From the 90s

Garoninja

Thanks a lot!

LGR

This type of content is why I'm here. Well done!

Robert Sanges

Definitely, cassettes just make way more sense in 1997. I gotta try out the Diamond Rio integration from a couple years later though, hopefully the quality is increased!

LGR

YUCK. That audio quality is awful. Yeah, I can see why cassettes were preferred.

Headset Guy

Me too! Had no clue they were that early to the internet media thing, it's pretty impressive they're still around.

LGR

I thought Audible was a much newer company than that : /

Riley W. Andersen

THE SAME.

LGR

Ahh I meant to mention IDEO in the video actually, they designed a ton of interesting 80s and 90s tech stuff. Lots to dig into indeed!

LGR

13:02 in the video has to be one of the weirdest service calls I've ever heard. WHAT ON EARTH WAS THE CONTEXT FOR THIS IN 1997?!

naota3k

Holy shit, it's the SAME AUDIBLE?!

naota3k

Watching this, I couldn't help but think that the charging base had a peculiar similarity to a Palm OS tablets we used to display and sell at RadioShack in the early 2000's. Sure enough, the design company behind this product, IDEO, is the same company that came up with the Palm V design. Man, I love doing research on these things! Also, let's talk about that stereo setup... In a word, "sexy."

It's worth noting that by that point they were selling audiobooks directly on the website for desktop playback, as well as integration with devices like the Diamond Rio MP3 player. "Customers" likely doesn't mean "units sold" in this case. But yeah, they quickly had better luck as a content provider than a hardware manufacturer, and had tens of thousands of users by the year 2000 :)

LGR

If they sold a thousand players, and had, as the “Audible at a glance” page makes it out, 18,500 customers a couple of years later, then it’s a pretty decent penetration rate.

Bastien Nocera

Happy to hear it! And likewise, I was grinning like a maniac hearing Car Talk playing on this thing. Especially an episode specifically from 1997!

LGR

Glad it wasn't just me that got unreasonably distracted by RealPlayer! I spent like an hour going through old *.rm and *.ra files after that segment was filmed.

LGR

Man, getting flashbacks to listening to Car Talk on our kitchen radio in the 90s is not the kind of nostalgia I expected going into this video. Great work as always.

Tim J

I've never heard of it, that's why I love your Oddware section. That poor device had to wait over twenty years to have its first "TV" commercial. However, I had to rewatch the last six minutes of your video again because, at some time, I burst into a strange RealPlayer daydream. Can't tell how long I was lost.

Laurent

Haha, wow it actually does look like that. Feels like it in the hands too, I bet. The plasticky build quality makes it feel like a toy!

LGR

Hehe, excellent! I'm curious, were you aware of Audible doing this kinda thing back in the day? Seems that it flew under the radar in a big way, even among the hardcore audiobook enthusiast crowd.

LGR

It really is a hard one to find boxed, took me a good while looking to come across that one! Didn't know about the modding, will try to remember and look into that when I get around to covering the game.

LGR

It looks like my Yak Bak haha

I see a big box copy of LEGO Rock Raider in the back ground of the intro. I god damn love that game! I’ve been looking for a CIB one for a long time, not really a common thing. I play through it at least twice a year. In recent years a small modding community has popped up. I don’t remember the name of the mod they came up with but it adds a much need difficulty bump in the gameplay. Anyways, cool audio player haha

Myles MAN

So, I'm a multimedia producer with background in sound production, who is obsessed with audiobooks AND who has worked on quite a few... yeah, this shoe really does fit. Awesome.

Mostly a combination of going down internet research rabbit holes and late-night eBay searching.

LGR

Man, where do you find all these strange devices I never heard of? What I did hear was that RealAudio clip. Now THAT takes me back.

Pablo Rodriguez

Hope you enjoy this look into their history, it certainly surprised me to learn about it!

LGR

Me neither, it was in the mid-2000s that I started hearing about them as well. For me it was the HP iPaq that got me into them!

LGR

Ha! Yeah a portable text-to-speech device would have been quite the thing.

LGR

It definitely brings back memories of working at a call center and switching on the hold music, haha.

LGR

Ah they've offered before but it never went anywhere. It's gotta be a pretty stellar offer for me to go to the trouble of bothering the audience with a sponsorship bit :)

LGR

Not sure about soon, but eventually, probably :)

LGR

After looking at some of their financials, I'd say you're probably right! They were in dire straights before the iTunes deal.

LGR

I can only imagine the instant cool factor this would bestow upon you in '97.

LGR

Despite the specs, this is impressive for the time. I am sure folks looked pretty neat with that that leathery case full of earcandy clipped on their belt next to their cell phone. 😋

AlexPeaks

I assume audible would probably not be around today had Steve Jobs not seen potential in the product

Zachary Outen

I can't help but notice Dino Crisis in the background, I would love to see you review that soon :P

Terry Lee

An Oddware episode featuring a cameo by Click and Clack? Yes!! Sure, Audible didn't sponsor the video, but maybe you can get some of that sweet, sweet Bezos money out of this! 😄

Adam Christensen

This is all kinds of amazing. I love that Dave Barry was included in the demo files, and also the lovely hold-music quality that your music got in the lo-fi format (the cymbals just cease to exist!)

Peter Metzger

Wow, I used Audible in the mid 2000s (before it got bought by Amazon) and never heard of this. Looking forward to watching this!

Awesome, I knew nothing about Audible's early history. Had no idea it was a publicly-traded dot-com startup back in the day. I do remember the reason I finally bought an Apple iPod ~2007 was because Audible only worked on certain MP3 players and not on others and I finally decided the iPod was the only one I could trust to get that right.

Kevin Furr

Nice video as usual Clint! I was expecting the voice coming out of the device to sound like Dr Sbaitso

Frederic St-Georges