Portable Media Players

R4z0r

R4z0r

R4z0r

Soldato
Joined
26 Oct 2002
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Surrey
Hi All,

I'm after a portable media player of some sort. I'm after something that will play video and audio and is fairly slim and compact.

I've looked at the Zune, iPod and Creative ZEN Vision W. So far, the Creative is firmly at the top of my list as it has a large, 16:9, screen and plays Xvid natively. Has anyone had any experience of this device?

Are there any others I should be looking at?

Cheers, Nick
 
Possibly in the wrong section since thers an mp3 one :p (wow, enver had a cahcne to correct someone about that before! im giong to turn out to be wrong about it arent i?)

hehe, anyway, take al ook at iaudio by cowon. Excellent products. I have the iaudio u2, which is just a flash mp3 player, but they do the audio video HD players as well and the company as a whole has excellent reviews :) I quite love mine.
 
"The word on the virtual street is that Apple is hoping to surprise most pundits by launching new iPods on September 5th, weeks before originally thought. Rumour has it that four new iPods in the Video and nano lines will be unveiled, including a video iPod with the iPhone’s big touch-screen and video-capable nanos. They may also use a new operating system based on Apple’s OS X." - Gizmodo.com

So yeah, I'd at least wait until then before splashing out and buying one.
 
I bought an Archos 604 last year, and I certainly wouldn't be without it now, it's superb.
It doesn't support AC3 audio as standard (which I think the creative does), but you can buy an addon from Archos for about 15 euro's.

The archos is much more compact than the Vision: W. The new version (the 605) comes with a touchscreen and WiFi as standard I believe.

I'd strongly recommend the Archos.
 
You could try a pda. They support every music and video format, and tend to have have much better battery life than portable media players. They are also much smaller in every dimension since there is no hdd or need for controls when you have a touchscreen. The fact that they are pocket sized is a big bonus for me.
 
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Archos 504, it rules, it may be bulky but the sreen quality is class, you get pretty decent battery life and its got a massive amount of storage 80gb..

pity i cant watch mine at work anymore =(
 
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Thanks for all the advice, really, really useful as always! :)

What's the deal with getting video onto these devices? I have lots of xvid encoded video, even if I go for a PMP that can decode xvid, will I need to re-encode at lower bitrates before the device will play it?
 
R4z0r said:
Thanks for all the advice, really, really useful as always! :)

What's the deal with getting video onto these devices? I have lots of xvid encoded video, even if I go for a PMP that can decode xvid, will I need to re-encode at lower bitrates before the device will play it?
Click to expand...

Possibly. A lot of devices only accept certain resolutions, framerates and bitrates. And pretty much all portable devices won't accept things like global motion compensation.
 
I have a PMA430, which plays xvid. It doesn't get on very well with V0 MP3, but CBR and V2 work great.

624 x 352 xvid play perfectly. Don't think I have played anything above that. Might have done 640x480.

Downsides are, V0 playback, size, and it sometime crashes.
On the plus, 99.9% of the population don't know what it is because it flopped hard on launch (was £800 IIRC) now it is a bargain on ebay. Touch screen, web browser, 3rd party applications.
 
Right, after a days research, I've decided to go for the Archos 605 and a DVR stand. Seems to have the best screen available and is pretty compact. Shame about needing plugins to play certain formats but I think I can forgive them as it seems a bit of a steal at £200!

Just can't wait till it gets here now! :)
 
I used to have a Vision W, but ended up selling it and getting a 60g Vision M, because of it's sheer size and weight, not ideal for putting in your pocket for the daily commute.

If the size of the thing doesn't bother you, then you'll love it. The screen is of the same very high quality of the VM, just larger.
 
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