Quote:
As long as it plays music, that's fine.

Thats the problem. One of the crappy SigmaTel based ones I've got lying around doesn't play some MP3 properly. The files are fine and can be played back fine with everything else but if I try it on that particular MP3 player then it sounds like I'm underwater. I had it changed and it still did it so it's the actual firmware itself. Some people have managed to hack together their own firmware from bits of the firmware updates for other similar players but usually there is some flaw left over.

Quote:
Why is it that every tiny MP3 player now comes with built-in radio tuners and recording capability? If these functions add a significant enough cost to the device, I wonder why there aren't more options without them.

The radio tuners in these things are incredibly cheap. You can basically get nearly all of it inside a single chip now. They use the headphone lead as the antenna so reception is spotty to say the least. The recording capability is just part of the chipset they use so I guess they see it as a "free" feature for the cost of a socket.