Playaway - The one-book audiobook players smartphones couldn't kill

Fun look at this format. It used to be offered at my local library here in NY and I remember taking one out just to play around with it. I always wondered about the pricing for producing something like this.

Someone locally has a bunch of these cheap and I found the AMRWB coding stuff I did in 2005 so I bought a few just now. I likely still have the originals packed-up in NZ. Thanks for reminding me these existed (exist) a rainy-day rip and reload to come.

Quick compliment - I saw your video thumbnail on my subs today, and I really love the cheerful background color gradient; it really pops.

Had a friend round for the weekend just as the first version went live, so only got round to watching this now! York library still has dozens of these. And that's where the big outer case comes in, of course. I've only ever borrowed one, mainly just to see what the fuss was about. It was June Whitfield's autobiography if I recall. From my experience, the buttons were very temperamental, but I have a feeling I was able to rip the content to the laptop. Though don't quote me on that, it was a while ago! I've never listened to an audiobook on a smartphone, personally. I'll literally borrow the CDs and rip them to the Sony MP3 Walkman.

I love that I got a YouTube ad for Audible immediately after this video

My local library has a ton of these. I can't remember if I ever checked any of them out (not a big audiobook listener myself) but I do remember from when I worked at the library that they were very frequently stolen. Much easier to just stick in a pocket than a CD. Still, always thought it was a cool idea since they're more convenient and harder to damage than a CD or cassette, though as you mention the environmental concern seems much greater here since they're effectively throwaway products.

I recently extended my Cheapskate Media Acquisition Protocol (*) to include books. It's reminded me how much I enjoy the existence of movies/records/books as physical objects. A hardcover book doesn't disappear into my Kindle library. The Agatha Christie mystery I picked up for like $4 is there on the table as I write this, reminding me that I enjoyed the first few chapters and a good afternoon of pleasant reading awaits me whenever I choose to pick it up again. And my "greatest hits" books live on shelves here and there throughout my house, quietly standing ready within my field of view, whereas the Kindle books I've enjoyed are invisible in the cloud until I complete like three iterations of exploration. So yeah, it pleased me to learn about this audiobook format. I can imagine myself packing for another business trip and discovering one of these tucked in a side pocket of my overhead rollaway bag, just as I used to find books and magazines that I'd totally forgotten about since the last time I used that bag. Side-benefit: the times I finished a book during the six hour flight to San Francisco, and gifted the book (plus a recommendation) to a friend I visited there. (*) "Before renting or buying a movie/album/book digitally, check eBay to see if I can get it cheaper, on physical media, secondhand." Plenty of books that are an "um...I dunno" as an $18 Kindle are a "hell, yeah" as a used $4 paperback.

I Found a video version of the playaway

Neat, I would never have thought that such a simple device would be so useful. Ideal for libraries, though. Not everyone knows how to rip a cd, convert it to ogg, write a bash script to play it then install the crontab entry. Yeah, let me just push this button instead. Could have used a cardboard package instead of plastic.

Very nice walkthrough, I didn't know these devices even existed. I thought I recognized the voice from the second book, and it turns out I did. Ray Porter also narrated one of the Bobiverse books - an excellent listen for anyone interested in science fiction. I have added Ghost in the Wires to my wishlist. 😀 Thanks!

In my mind, I am thinking there would be a marketplace for a kind of audio book device that perhaps use SD Cards for swapping out content easily. Seems like it would be reasonable. Tho, it is super easy to lose SD Cards...

I'd be interest in a teardown of one of these devices, if its possible.

God that GhostWires book sounds dull.

I like the added waffling. Please do not stop!

Wow, never seen or heard of these before. I suppose they could have been good for National Trust places and such, replacing that weird Sony Walkman you featured.

What are those spiffy-looking headphones?

It’s a shame they couldn’t have come up with some nicer and eco-friendly packaging for a disposable product. Those nasty plastic boxes are just horrible.

We. Like. Your. Verbose. Story-telling. But I appreciate that you offer people a choice.

well, after being slightly dissapointed that you didn't open one up, I went searching and found this https://www.mitsake.net/2019/06/playaway-audiobook-teardown/ as you might expect its a single chip plus a flash memory. interestingly there is some usb points on the board that allowed the memory to be accessed. also some notes on the file format.

I see the new ones are a totally different device. I wonder if they are made to be more robust for the loan market.

the re-edit has been removed?

I'm in my mid 40's and I fully switched to audiobooks years ago. My eyes get pretty tired and get headaches. Anyway,I recognized the narrator on book #2, Ray Porter. He narrates a great series of Scifi books. Don't know if you've heard of them or read much Scifi but here's the info for book 1 from audible. We Are Legion (We Are Bob) Bobiverse, Book 1 By: Dennis E. Taylor Narrated by: Ray Porter Bob Johansson has just sold his software company for a small fortune and is looking forward to a life of leisure. The first item on his to-do list: Spending his newfound windfall. On an urge to splurge, he signs up to have his head cryogenically preserved in case of death. Then he gets himself killed crossing the street. Waking up 117 years later, Bob discovers his mind has been uploaded into a sentient space probe with the ability to replicate itself. Bob and his clones are on a mission to find new homes for humanity and boldly go where no Bob has gone before. Dennis E. Taylor’s hilarious novel sets the stage for the magnificent performance of Ray Porter, who revels in the brave new world of corpsicles, artificial intelligence, interstellar space probes, and space colonization in tantalizing detail.

I have listened to audio books on the radio, reel to reel, cassette (mainly!). Also CD and early downloads. I used to frequent my library and hire my 10 or so tapes or CD's and happily play them in my home or car. I belonged to various tape libraries. One run by an old man who would only accept cheques. Then Audible hit. I had piles of tapes and cd's from charity shops. But no need any more. I now have over 600 Audible titles. Well no not really, I have access to them. I am trying to download them all to a hard drive so they are mine! As an aside. You seemed fogged why the size and shape of the packaging on the first one. Had you back in the day hired CD's this is what you got. It was obviously aimed at library’s. Really enjoy all your videos, Stay safe.

Regarding environmental impact, Techmoan must have saved a fair number of polar bears by now. He buys so much crap as a service to us - so we don't have to.

I find it fascinating that they aren’t marked up with braille on the cover and the buttons, would be a great thing for the visually impaired at a local library.

Well done. I see you have upgraded the sea urchin.

Reminds me of the Mi-Vox system

Reminds me of another disposable media format primarily meant to be sold to air travelers as seen on Technology Connections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccneE_gkSAs&t=6s So the question is which one is worse for the environment: Playaway or Flexplay?

Electronic devices need a lot of extremely clean water and very nasty chemicals to make. Producing microchips is not environmentally friendly, and they are essentially not recyclable

It would be interesting to find out what capcity flash memory chips are in these, 64kbps sounds about right for the first device as 11 hours would approximately 316MB. I'd guess a 512MB chip is inside, costing something like £10 to Playaway. These are probably a bit better than disposable cameras when it comes to being bad for the environment, those had glass and capacitors in them just to produce a single roll of film's worth of (relatively) crappy photos. Edit: Someone did a teardown of the same device you had with The Pelican Brief on it, 256MB. So they squeezed it down quite a lot. https://www.mitsake.net/2019/06/playaway-audiobook-teardown/

I've never seen one of these before, not a common item in the northeast US to my knowledge. Your analysis of how they moved to a 'niche' market was well done. Another Excellent Video. I wonder if these might have been sold at truckstops, for example.

I've used these devices exclusively back when I was in middle school, around 2012. These were included with the corresponding book, you can adjust playback speed, and skip to specific chapters. The main reason for using the device was to not read to ourselves outloud and disturb others. Often times, some of us couldn't follow along without a teacher or narrator reading to us while we read the book.

Ugh, I was only up to chapter 2 in "The Pelican Brief". Now you've gone and ruined it with no "spoiler alert" message! Then to cap it all, you spoil "Ghost Wires" that I about to read! I'll be writing a strongly worded e-mail to the head of those you tubes... 😉 Seriously, it would be interesting to see what's inside them, and if you could put new media on it in some way.

Interesting takeapart (and discussion of the file format used) here: https://www.mitsake.net/2019/06/playaway-audiobook-teardown/

I expected you to disassemble it to see what's inside. According to this webpage, the HD version is common audio player on a chip, 256M of memory with AMR-WB+ files and that's it. https://www.mitsake.net/2019/06/playaway-audiobook-teardown/

I use these regularly. Genuinely. I drive quite a lot for work and I have long stretches with no cell signal and there's essentially no radio as well. Middle of nowhere Colorado. I can only listen to the same CDs so many times. So, I started getting these from the local library and I love them. My biggest issue is the playback speed which goes from slowish to normalish to fastish. I'll edit this as it goes on, looking forward to it. The units you have are pretty old. The newer ones have a different layout with easier controls and a larger screen, as seen in the website. My second biggest issue with the product is that if it shakes up a little bit the battery connection sometimes goes loose and it stops and doesn't save your location. You have to turn it off to save your position. I have been curious if it would be easy to put custom stuff on these things if I opened one up, but I've been too afraid since it's owned by the library.

I have noticed some older audiobooks are sourced from Tape audiobooks and always sound a bit thin, so that could be the case with the first one not sounding as good as the newer one. Great video thank you.

I had a nose at their website and wow the prices!! $89 for a Harry Potter PlayAway thingie 😳

For prices ranging from $50-$90 I think I'll stick to a regular book! That's a high price to pay for a single use device.

No one thought about environmental issues and plastic when those were made. What I would like is some H G Wells and Jules Verne novels. And Laurie Lee if I wanted a classic. The BBC probably would have made those titles available. You cold always hack them and load your own books on them. Good fun for retro technology.

You work very hard to please us; we appreciate you very much. Take care, I look forward to watching it on TV six hours from now.

Used these they are very good, our local library use to hire them for £1.60, you would pay extra for headphones and battery that you kept (looking at local library they still hire them). Now our library has an app and you can borrow audiobooks for free just download how times have changed. Anyone remember borrowing audiobook on tape from library only to find the last tape was faulty. Thanks for a great video