I don’t know what it is with me and MP3 players. I won a Yepp 256MB 4 years ago and it still works. I loved that thing.

I bought I new one last August - a Creative Zen V plus- also LOVED it and had it 6 weeks. I dropped it and ran the car over it. I then got an ipod nano- I wanted one for a while a got it as a gift. Aw week later I realized I hated it and returned it for the Creative Zen 4gig player. Last week the screen was cracked. REALLY cracked. Huge black blob of an ink stain. I can barely see screen but it does still work. I am in customer service hell with Creative Labs trying to get an RMA. I just want a price on how much it will cost to fix before I run out and buy another, but I have been jumping through hoops for days. I will keep posted. I saw that Best Buy had 8 gig in sale for 139.00 so may pick up.

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Posted by Linda- Home and Garden Ideas as Electronics at 10:25 PM EDT

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What do you do when you forget password for protected content on your Creative Zen MP# Player?

How to access you protected content when you forget your password for Creative Zen mp3 player.

This happened to me today- Late last night I was fooling around with system setting and added a password for protected content… Today I totally forgot the password for protected content, and it asks you to enter you new password to disable or access. ARGH.

No help anywhere on Creative forums.

The only way around this is to use Clean-up functions depending on whet player you have there are different ways to access ( with Creative AEN M and Creative Zen V + you just use reset button) The reset button is the TINY whole on sire- you stick in a pin or similar to depress. I use an earring stud.

You will not lose any of your music- but you will lose your settings. i.e Theme, Bookmarks and custimized settings.

Here is How to remove password from Creative ZEN Mp3 player if you forget your password from protected content

1.Turn off your player.

2.Press and hold play/pause buttin. Continue to hold until you perform Steps 3 and 4. If you accidentally release the button, start the procedure again.

3.Gently push the end of a thin object (like a pin or straightened paperclip) into the Reset hole.

4.Slide the On/Off/Lock switch towards and hold until the display lights up. The Recovery Mode screen appears, and four menu items are shown: Clean Up, Format All, Reload Firmware and Reboot.

To clean up your player’s memory, select Clean Up.

When the cleanup is complete, select Reboot. Your player restarts and starts rebuilding its music library.You will lose you bookmarks and other settings .

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Posted by Linda- Home and Garden Ideas as Electronics at 10:04 AM EST

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My husband is an audiophile- as in collects vinyl LP’s and constantly building tube amps, pre-amps and buying/trading phonostages. Whole lot of tweaking and not a lot of listening IMHO. We have a really nice TV- one of the first 1080p capable televisions on the market- an HP 5880. He wont; hook up home theater sound and receiver CHEAPLY because it will sound awful. I just can;t see spending 5,000 on a system- then I am a girl

This week he gave in and is putting it together. We all ready have decent speaker and sub-woofer for it. I spent hours finding deal on receivers. I have ordered two different ones to try- a Yamaha 6025 5.1 and a Sony STRG510. Both were under 200.00.
This one I chose:

and this one he chose:

So we will check out both. The Yamaha he is convinced will have better sound- but it does not have HDMI(!) He bought a used center channel speaker- which he says is the most important speaker. I will get name of the make later. For rear channel speakers, I saw a pair of Braxton Bookshelf speakers for 30.00 at XS-Cargo.. How bad could they be? I picked them up yesterday and husband was okay with them- he was actually surprised at the quality. Our TV has a Faroudja processor in it- and I have been doing some reading that an up- converting DVD is not necessary with an HDTV UNLESS the dvd player has a better one than the one in TV. At any rate- I also got aPHILIPS upconverting dvd playeryesterday. It was floor model, didn;t have remote and they made mistake on pricing and cost me 30.00, they are usually about 70.00-80.00. Costco has them for 68.00 CAD and they go on sale ocassionally at other box stores. I wanted it more for the USB port. I was able to play divx/avi files on a flash thumb drive from it no- problem. This will be great! Oddly the player does not have DTS or optical audio. I am going to test it later and see if I can play off flash Zune player husband has and I have a Creative ZEN and will check out. Futureshop had 4 gig thumb drives for 14.99 this week and I am KILLING myself that I didn’t grab one the other day. I was a nut and tried to surprise husband boxing day and went down at 4 am to pick up Toshiba HD DVD (A3 model) player for 99.00 No dice :(.

The yards of speaker cable came from Home Depot. You can get for cents a foot and not dollars a foot at Radio Shack, etc. He got about 30 feet for 10.00. Cheap HDMI cable? Some nice ones at Monoprices.com for 5.24, HDMI 1.3a Category 2 Certified Cable 28AWG - 6ft w/Ferrite Cores (Gold Plated) - BLACK is in stock and shipped for under 10,00 total. So hooked that up- and I can see a difference- maybe about a 10% difference- especially when playing divx/xvid files. The receivers aren’t coming until this week so no chance to try the system out yet. Will update. Not sure what would be good movies to try and new 5.1 sound? Was thinking of Master and Commander or Jurassic Park? Any thoughts welcome!

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Posted by Linda- Home and Garden Ideas as Electronics, Home Theater at 10:25 AM EST

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Posted by Linda- Home and Garden Ideas as Deals-Coupons-Freebies, Electronics, General Home and Garden at 12:49 PM EST

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I have been wanting an Ipod for as long as i can remember. Up until the Fall I had been using a 256 MB Samsung Yepp that I won 3 (4?) years ago. It suited me fine- I use it mostly to listen audio books.

Disaster struck when we were packing for a LONG drive and I couldn’t find my MP3 player anywhere… To make a long story short, I had to be a new one and spent many days- and hours- while on vacation looking a new new one. I ended up with Creative Zen V Plus 2 GB (White/Green). I was pretty happy with it- although it had more features than I wanted or really needed. I did find myself using if for music- it was great to plugin in outside by the pool, and I liked the size of it. It also played video but I almost never use that feature. 4 weeks later it fell out of the card and was run over the next morning when my husband went off to work. ARGH. I had grown to love that little things.. and also had bought lots of accessories for it Too make this long story short- I ended up getting an Ipod non ( 3rd generation) last week. I was so excited. Then I started to use it. I hated it. I hated itunes. I hated the little dial. I could never find anything. It was TOO small. I worried about the screen all the time. I hated itunes. Did I mention I HATE itunes?
I am returning it today. I am looking the NEW Creative ZEN 4 gig (Black) with SD slot and also a Zune.. which I found online for 100.00 (30 gigs) but I think it might be a bit large. I am also just thinking about replacing the one that got crushed. There are just WAY too many choices.

One I Liked and Got Run Over:

the Mp3 Player I MIGHT get:

reviews for the Creative Zen here: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2007/09/creative-zen-review.php

One I found for 100.00:

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Posted by Linda- Home and Garden Ideas as Audio and Video, Electronics, General Home and Garden at 6:13 PM EDT

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