IMPORTANT:  ADVERTISING OF MP4 DEVICES THAT ACCOMPANY THIS PAGE ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT ENDORSED BY ME!  THEY ARE AUTOMATICALLY SUPPLIED BY EBAY, AND THEY ARE AS LIKELY TO BE FRAUDULENT MERCHANDISE AS THAT WHICH I DESCRIBE BELOW!

Beware of buying MP3/MP4 players right now (late 2006/early 2007).  There are a lot of players being sold as 4GB (gigabyte) MP3/MP4 devices.  They turn out to actually have a capacity of 1GB. And they don't actually play MP4 media. (The same goes for players supposedly providing 2GB or 1GB -- they almost always contain half or a quarter of the specified storage.) 

The listings for these devices may look like:

• 4GB FREE SHIPPING MP4 MP3 AMV WMA PMP player + Case I54
• FREE SHIPPING 4GB MP4 MP3 REC USB 4G player Case I814
• FREE SHIPPING 4GB MP4 MP3 REC Radio USB player Case Z74
• 4GB FREE SHIPPING MP4 MP3 REC TFT Media player 4Go R14
• ...etc...

When you plug in your device (which is typically shipped from Shenzhen, China by way of Hong Kong) via USB, your computer will report that it has 4GB capacity.  That's because the device has been formatted with a Master Boot Record that's lying.  It's a trivial fraud to accomplish. 

And don't feel too comfortable with a feedback level of 98% or better.  In this case, it's not very meaningful.  Because most buyers provide positive feedback as soon as their PC says it's a 4 GB device, the vendors have a wonderful rating. You have to actually store more than 1 GB of data on the device, and then try playing back files that you copied to it at the beginning, middle, and end of the process.  Only then will you find that you've been swindled.

Also, there's the fact that these guys have been automatically responding with negative feedback to eBay customers who are justifiably unhappy with having been swindled, and give feedback accordingly.

Buy from reputable dealers.  Also, don't be too sure that the Paypal Buyer Protection plan will actually protect you.  So far, I've been meeting a lot of resistance from Paypal.  They want me to bring the device to a qualified, independent evaluator who can corroborate my claim.  That would end up costing more than what I threw away on this worthless device.

Also, contact your seller before you buy.  Make certain they will guarantee that your MP4 player actually has the stated capacity in gigabytes.  Tell them that it's not enough to say that the player reports the stated capacity when plugged into a computer.  Point them at one of the websites below -- and/or this guide -- as an explanation.  You don't want them to have any excuse to be able to claim that they didn't know their merchandise is fraudulent. 

For more information, visit:

http://www.schnapp.org/colordrives/ to see my tale of woe
...or http://www.xbox0.co.uk/
...or http://mympxplayer.org/the-blacklist-vp15254.html

It makes one wonder why eBay hasn't shut these guys down...

By the way, I did finally manage to actually get my hands on a working, totally legitimate player (I got it from user digital-e.com.hk -- but you should follow all the above advice if you choose to buy from him).

I'd like to add a thumbnail review of this product:

Other than the size of the screen and the flash memory, all these unbranded Chinese-manufactured "MP4" players seem to be running the same firmware, and have the same user interface.

• the devices pack a lot of functionality into a small, inexpensive device;
• although they are ubiquitously known as "MP4 players", the irony is that they cannot play MP4 media!  They only play a proprietary video format called "AMV", and you have to convert your file's video format to theirs before you can play it on your device.  And so far as I know, there is no converter from MPEG4 to AMV format!
• the video playback is not very good -- it's jumpy and annoying;
• the user interface for music playback is awful.  You cannot create or use playlists.  You have to navigate around through the file system to select a track to play, and it's a slow, painful process.  This isn't too important on a device without much capacity, but at 1 gigabyte and above, it becomes a huge pain!
• There don't seem to be any provisions for bookmarking your position in a track.  If you listen to audio books or podcasts, and you need to jump to a different file temporarily, you'll have to manually find your position again when you get back;
• Skipping forward and backward within a track is a very slow process.  A good digital audio player will "accelerate" as you skip, so that, e.g., the first 5 seconds of skipping takes you 10 seconds forward, the next 5 seconds takes you 20 more seconds forward; the next 5 seconds takes you 30 seconds forward; etc; until you reach some maximum speed.  This player has a fixed skip speed.
• The device doesn't seem to incorporate a compressing audio encoder.  In other words, if you use this device as a voice recorder, it creates a .wav file, which is not compressed.  This limits the usefulness of the device.
• The user interface is NOT intuitive.  This is particularly problematic considering the quality of the manual, which is a bad translation of what is undoubtedly a manual that was badly written even in its original language (probably Chinese).  And consider yourself lucky if you receive a manual in your native language.  The one I got with my working player is in Italian!

Bottom line: These are not great products. You might want to consider saving your money and buying a real Apple Nano.  You'll have real support and a well-designed, usable user interface.