Microsoft's Portable Media Center Devices: Exposed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 27, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
More on Video and Battery Life
The PMC is a good way of catching up on recorded TV shows, since they are usually only 30 minutes in length, and once you skip through the commercials, you're down to around 20 minutes of content. The reason why we stress length here is because staring at the tiny screen of the PMC can get very tiring on your eyes. For watching full length movies, you need to either use the TV out on the device or take periodic breaks; otherwise, you'll find that both your eyes and your hands get fairly tired.While a device like a PMC is useful for a long commute to work (where you're not the one driving) or working out, what we found to be equally useful is the ability to watch 5- to 10-minute segments of shows during random short breaks that you may have during the day. It's great for watching news shows (including things like the Daily Show) where there isn't so much of a plot that it's necessary for you to follow during the entire length of the show, as well as other things like music countdowns, etc.
For just watching movies, you may be better off with a portable DVD player as you'll have a much bigger screen and won't have to deal with any of the quality issues that we talked about before.
Battery life while watching TV shows is pretty decent. The range depends on the brightness levels and whether you are constantly browsing for content or just letting one file play the entire time. Creative states a 7-hour battery life with constant video playback, which is a fairly realistic specification. At higher brightness levels and with more searching around for the right file to play, you'll cut down the battery life a bit more (down to around 6 hours), but with varied music and video playback, you're looking at closer to 10 - 15 hours of overall battery life. Since the unit can charge via USB (as well as via the included AC adapter), it's relatively easy to keep it well charged. Although for a device this large, we would like to see a bit better battery life for video playback alone. While 7 hours is enough for most cross-country flights, any international travel will leave you still looking for other methods of entertainment.
As a portable media player, the PMC works reasonably well when it comes to playing video - it does do a good job at what it is supposed to do. The shortcomings here are mostly in hardware design, as the screen size, reflectivity, and weight of the PMC device itself are all annoyances and take away from the overall experience.
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val - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Pjotr: no you cannot use it as VCR, because you must anyway have it on computer available (TV, video out, not counting the quality,...)val - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
this is again some discovering of the wheel. Can anybody explain me what this single purpose device can offer me when i have e800 PDA (USB + VGA output)? Wouldnt be better to work on making PDAs yet more cheaper? I can play DivX, WMA, WMV, MP3, XviD and i have usefull computer and gaming console with screen ten times better than this one. HDD i have 1 GB (more than 5 movies in XVID) and i can connect USB HDD to it too. Maybe if price will compete with MD player or MP3 player and not be compareable to notebooks or top line PDAsPjotr - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Well, you can basically replace your VCR with one of these. It has scheduled recordings and you can view them on your TV instantly. Also, you don't need to manage cassettes, DVDs etc, only files on a HD. It is also a lot smaller than your typical VCR/DVD-recorder.icarus4586 - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Portable video players seem to me to be of limited usefulness. Definitely would be handy for long trips, but otherwise it seems like the only function you'd use would be the audio player. And there are smaller, less expensive, more battery efficient music players.Pjotr - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Oh, forgot, the AV400 also acts like a regular USB 2.0 hard disk, no special software needed to transfer files.Pjotr - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Sorry, Anand, but you make it sound like Microsoft invented a new type of product. There is no mention at all of non-Windows portable media centers. Archos ( http://www.archos.com/ ) have had this kind of device available for almost a year now. Their second generation model (AV400) seems a lot more attractive than the Creative device: Video input for recording, longer battery life, remote control, docking cradle for easy hookup to your TV, online scheduling of recordings via Yahoo, support for various codecs including DivX. (BTW, why wouldn't you want support for varying codecs on a portable device?)Reflex - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Windows Media Player 10 was not a 'choice' Microsoft made to get data to the devices. These devices, and virtually all future MP3 players, digital cameras, and other 'media' peripherals are now using a protocol known as 'MTP' which stands for Media Transport Protocol. It is an attempt to standardize the method of transmitting and recieving data to media devices of all types, so that you do not need to have a custom driver for every little doodad you plug into your PC.Furthermore, down the line it could allow devices to communicate with each other, and it makes it so that any MTP aware application should be able to sync and send/recieve data from any MTP compatible device, ending the days when you are stuck with a custom app that a company wrote for their particiliar device.
Right now the only application that is MTP aware is WMP10, however that is to be expected since the protocol is brand new and was developed by Microsoft. However there is an API and any other application can become MTP aware and sync with such devices, and I am certain that Real, MusicMatch, and virtually everyone else is working on it right now.
So my point is that while currently WMP10 is the only way to sync with such devices, this is not by design, its merely a byproduct of the introduction of MTP as the new standardized interface for portable devices. It won't be the case for long and is not a true drawback. Its also not exclusive to PMC's, as MP3 players and other devices are all going to soon be using this standard.
Novaoblivion - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Very interesting read as I was looking at this earlier. I might get one since I do have plenty of video content to take with me on vacation. However does anyone know if it has problems displaying languages other then english? A lot of things seem to display other languages as squares which I find really annoyying. Thanks!