[gundam91]

OK, my resistance towards buying a portable player has finally worn down.

I managed to travel about 50% of the time last year for work. (That's 6 months away from home of the entire year. Trust me, it's a lot of time on the road.) I was living off my Sony Clie "palm pilot" which has the ability to play 128 bit rate MP3s, but I think it's time to buy a real player.

Based on SQ along, my choice wold be the Cowon iAudio X5. But I'm curious if people are watching movies on their portable players as well? If so, should I look at another player instead? And how would you transfer movies from DVDs to your player of choice? Can this be done? Or do people just go somewhere online to download videos? (Sorry, I'm a little behind the times when it comes to the latest trends/technologies)

My second big question is what size hard-drive are people buying? Do I really need a 60gb player? I did a quick calculation, and 30gb would allow me to hold like 500 CDs in lossless format (which I intend to use, I am assuming avg of 5mb per song, and 12 songs per CD). I'm not planning to "live off" the player, but just using it to kill time when traveling, like when sitting at an airport waiting. I guess if I can download DVDs, 60gb would allow me to have all the music, video, and photos I want on the player. But for music along, would a 20gb or 30gb be sufficient?

 

[terrymx]

i travel from home 2-3times a year, each time two weeks to a month. so i'm a big fan of portable media player (pmp), because i can bring movie around. beleive me you want more than 30gb if you are going to have videos, you find out very quickly the thing fill up pretty fast. a good quality video is 500-700mb each. but i think the ones you buy from itunes are a bit smaller.

there are ofcourse software that you can convert dvd to the apple's mp4 and h.264 (a popular high quality compression video format), but i cant help you on this one, go to videohelp.com it has alot of information. or ask the headfiers i'm sure they know of a good free software. myself i mostly encode in divx h.263 avi.

i reccommend reading my impression on my archos 604 wifi. the only thing i dislike about this device right now is the fact it only has 30gb harddrive which isnt enough for video. there are other models like the 504 80/160gb with more battery life that you can look at. archos arent great with software, but i can tell you they make excellent hardwares.

the cowon x5 has very limited video ability and only play up to 15frame per second i think. they have the pmp's cowon a2, but i dont know much about it.

ipod video 80gb - this is a bad choice for video because of the low battery life for it. you can buy video online via itunes. although i am a fan of ipod term of sound quality and the vast availabilities of docks.

creative zen mvision 60gb - you can read the review at dapreviews. it can play divx and mpg video up to 640x480 30fps. i'm not sure about h264, probably not. although dvd format are larger than 640x480, so when you convert them you have to remember to resize.

microsoft zune - well i mean its cheap and has widescreen, play h264 and wmv. i am really not a fan of wmv.

i think you will have to make some compromise, i dont know too much about a very good video player that at the same time has excellent sound quality.

 

[3X0]

Terry, the Zen Vision:M does have a line-out. It just needs to use the sync adapter or dedicated line-out cable to use it.

The Cowon iAudio X5 should eventually be able to play video at ~25 fps thanks to the advancements of Rockbox, and it looks quite considerably better than the standard firmware video features IMO. Of course, I still wouldn't recommend it for movies as the screen size is not substantial enough to watch for extended periods of time.

Considering your extended period away from home, I would suggest waiting for the upcoming Cowon Q5 or A3.

 

[gonglee]

I haven't heard one yet, but according to my friend, Cowon is supposed to be the best sounding one, besides from the $450 Bang & Olufson one - and you gotta buy 1 gb memory seperately for $100 more !

Althgouh Creative Zen is supposed to have the best spec on noise/sound ratio, the amp section on iRiver and Cowon probably will please you more - unless you intend to buy a seperate protable amp - which will reward you with a better sound - especially if you go with a Zen.

With the clean sound of a Zen Mp3, and a warm sound of a portable amp added to it, this will beat a Cowon Mp3.

Another nice thing about the Zen is the software - it comes with a up converter that converts wav files to higher spec to make it sound smoother like an upscale piece. Although that takes up more memory space, you being an audiophile probably would appreciate that.

 

[LFC_SL]

Similar to your other thread, PCM is a 100% 1:1 copy of the audio (retail) CD. You cannot add what isn't there!!! I suspect Creative merely use some sort of equaliser effects that their own research tells them enough people like/believe to justify doing it

And Cowon are rumoured to be unveiling their X5 successor at Cebit in March

 

[jbloudg20]

The Zen Vision: M DOES have a lineout... it is included with the player on the charging/sync dock.

 

[NightWoundsTime]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gundam91 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I am assuming avg of 5mb per song, and 12 songs per CD.

If you're talking lossless this is pretty low. I have a lot of FLAC on my computer so I'll give you some numbers.

Beck's Odelay is 374 MB's total. The shortest song (Minus) is 2:32 and 17,026 KB's. Where It's At is 5:31 and 34,536 KB's.

I believe FLAC is a "variable" bitrate compression so less busy music might come out a bit smaller.

Figuring roughly 3 albums per gig you'll be looking at 90 for a 30 gigabyte player or 180 for 60 GB's. I'm a big fan of putting everything you can fit on a DAP and leaving it alone. Not that I own one, but when I owned a mini I got sick of trading out music constantly.

Even 356KB/S MP3'S come out to 8-10MB's for an average song.

 

[Dedpoet]

Quote:

My second big question is what size hard-drive are people buying? Do I really need a 60gb player? I did a quick calculation, and 30gb would allow me to hold like 500 CDs in lossless format (which I intend to use, I am assuming avg of 5mb per song, and 12 songs per CD). I'm not planning to "live off" the player, but just using it to kill time when traveling, like when sitting at an airport waiting. I guess if I can download DVDs, 60gb would allow me to have all the music, video, and photos I want on the player. But for music along, would a 20gb or 30gb be sufficient?

Edit: NightWoundsTime beat me to some of my points, but I'll leave them in anyway. Also note that the ZVM cannot play FLAC.

I'll start by saying that I have a ZVM 30GB. Note that your calculation is off on lossless files. I keep all of my music in FLAC format and most songs are 25-ish meg. A long song I just checked, like Pink Floyd - Echoes, is 118 meg. What I do is rip everything to FLAC and also convert it to ~192kbps VBR using LAME --preset fast standard for use on the player.

For movies, there is an excellent piece of free software called iRiverter which will rip and convert DVDs to a format you can put in your player in just a few clicks. If your movies are copy protected (most are), you will need something to deal with that. Slysoft's AnyDVD does this completely transparently. It isn't free, but you can try it for free. The same company also makes a product called CloneDVD Mobile. It is also excellent, but I found that iRiverter met my needs so I did not buy it.

As for video size, the Zen can store movies in 640x480 or 320x240 resolution. Its screen is only 320x240, but if you store the movies in 640x480 you can output them to standard def TV through a video output cable and they look nice. It sounds like you spend a lot of time in hotels so that could be an option for you. It takes twice the space to do that, but iRiverter/CloneDVD will knock the size down quite a bit. Right now the only movie on my Zen is Spaceballs. It's 1:36 in length and the file size is 611MB in 320x240.

I hope that helps you out. I travel frequently for work as well. Though I don't find myself using video very often, I do keep a few movies on my player in case I get the urge. Music usually does the trick for me. I find that the frequent stopping and starting of movies you have to do while traveling is usually fairly annoying.

 

[gundam91]

Hi all,

Thanks for all the suggestions. I was looking at the wrong files. The compressed MP3s are at around 5mb per song. I use EAC the shareware to upload my CDs to my computer in .WAV format. So that's at least 40mb to 50mb per song.

I was thinking about video mostly as another option to kill time at airport waiting for my flights. Just an alternative to reading books. I currently have some ebooks on my Sony Clie that I read. (I try not to do work at the airports or on flights)

I currently have a HeadRoom Airhead amp and a pair of Ety 4S. I had thought about maybe upgrading the amp, but most likely I will just stick with it for now. And most likely I will just be using a player and the Ety without an external amp. Convenience will probably be a big factor.

Someone had mentioned that Cowon was unveiling the X5 replacement at CES, but I guess what they had revealed was very sketchy.

OK, maybe I will wait until March to see if we hear anything.

 

[bungle]

The A3 doesn't have much more than the A2 (http://www.iaudiophile.net/forums/sh...d.php?t=12604). Also, if you really think you'll want video, you might want to consider the Vision W instead of M (bigger screen). Currently you can get a 60G Zen, but not A2. I think the Q5 will have a 60G option. You can get a 160G Archos player but there's no FLAC support, which I don't understand.

Assuming 3 albums per gig with FLAC, you can get about 50-60 albums on 20g and have another 10 gig for movies. Usually 700meg per XVID movie, so that's 12 or so. That's pretty good for a fairly long trip, especially if you pack a book or two to unplug with.

 

[gundam91]

OK, the more I look at all the recommendations, the more I am not certain what I should get. I guess if I were looking purely for playing music, the X5 is the way to go. But the Creative ZVW & Cowon A2 seem like a good thing to own as I can download pictures from my digital camera and use them to view when traveling, on top of watching some movies on flights, etc.

I think I'll let me head cool down and rethink this through. Probably by the time I figure it out, the new models will be out. Maybe I should just stick with music only player.

Thanks all for all the great information and recommendations!

 

[Jigen]

Frys.com has the Zen Vision M for $170 shipped. $50 rebate. Just so you know.

 

[bungle]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gundam91 /img/forum/go_quote.gif But the Creative ZVW & Cowon A2 seem like a good thing to own as I can download pictures from my digital camera and use them to view when traveling, on top of watching some movies on flights, etc.

http://www.iaudiophile.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4998
I don't think it's exhaustive, but might give you an idea of what works. At the wedding of a friend of mine the photographer used digital cameras and had something like the A2 and showed him some pictures during the reception. Pretty neat feature.

 

[gundam91]

bungle, thanks for the link. I have a Nikon D70, and the thread says that it is supported.

Went to Frys, Best Buy, and Circuit City hoping to check out the ZVW and listen to some music. Only Frys has them in stock. But they did not have it on display. All of the stores have ZVM on display, but none works. I guess maybe I should think about going to the national meet here in San Jose. I'm sure there will be tons of these gadgets there for auditioning.