Microsoft's Portable Media Center Devices: Exposed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 27, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Watching TV and Movies
Microsoft intended Portable Media Center devices to be truly used as multi-purpose devices, so they expected their users to not only want to listen to music, but also to want to take other types of their content with them on the go - in particular, their favorite TV shows and movies.We've already discussed the issues with getting video content onto the PMC, but what about when you're actually viewing it on the PMC?
As you'll soon see, the quality of your video matters quite a bit in order to be able to get the most viewing pleasure out of the device. With such a small screen, low resolution and relatively high data compression, it is very easy to get a blocky, blurry mess when viewing content on the PMC.
Navigating through video content is fairly simple, but without any "album art", you are left with scrolling through text in order to find what you want. Granted, if you keep the PMC clean of anything that you've already watched and don't have a desire to watch again, then this isn't a big deal; but let your collection get too big, and navigation will suffer.
We put everything from TV shows to movies that we downloaded from links in the AnandTech Off Topic Forum on our PMC only to be met with mixed results. Even at the highest quality settings, if the original content was of questionable quality, then you're going to have a hard time discerning one thing from another.
The Zen PMC came with clips from old TV shows. We swear that we didn't actually PVR The Incredible Hulk - honestly.
For the most part, shows recorded from cable TV using Windows XP MCE at its Best quality setting made it over well to the PMC. Unfortunately, that means that you're looking at over 300MB for every 30 minutes of content that you store on the PMC.
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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!