Microsoft's Portable Media Center Devices: Exposed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 27, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Creative Labs Zen: The first PMC to market
The first Portable Media Center available for purchase on Microsoft's September 2nd launch date was the Creative Labs Zen Portable Media Center. Although Samsung was also listed on Microsoft's availability page, their more portable unit is still not shipping to retail as of the time of this publication.
Priced at $499, the Zen PMC is pretty much what you'd expect from what a Portable Media Center device would be. It features a 20GB 1.8" Hitachi Travelstar C4K60 hard drive, a 3.8" 320 x 240 color LCD display and, of course, the coveted PMC OS.
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The unit itself measures 5.67" x 3.18" x 1.06" and weighs in at 12 oz. The buttons on the Zen are fairly tough to push, which makes clicking or scrolling for a long time a bit of a pain. On the flip side, you'll never hit any of the buttons accidentally, but then again, that's what the keylock is for. We would have much preferred a scroll wheel or something more comfortable to use than the unit's rigid buttons to navigate around. However, it was the glossy finish of the device, not its buttons, that would end up being the Zen's biggest annoyance. Creative committed the cardinal sin with the Zen PMC by covering the device with a glossy, very reflective overlay and the device becomes incredibly prone to fingerprints. Within a matter of minutes after opening the box, the device was already covered in noticeable fingerprints.
Creative does have a set of four preset buttons across the top of the unit that can be used as bookmarks, if you want to return quickly to watching a particular show or playing a song. Unfortunately, the presets don't save the location within the particular show/song/video that you were at, just the media itself.
The USB sync cable plugs in here. The Zen PMC does not ship with a cradle.
Click to enlarge.
The Zen also features an AV out port, which with the bundled cables, will give you composite video out and stereo RCA outputs to your TV/receiver.
Click to enlarge.
Taking the Zen apart was pretty simple. There are screws all along the outside that can be removed easily with a Phillips head screwdriver. Then, it's just a matter of prying the various layers apart to reveal the unit's innards.
The Zen uses Intel's XScale PXA250 with a maximum clock speed of 400MHz.
The Zen PMC features a very low power 256Mbit (32MB) SDRAM chip to serve as a cache in order to keep the hard drive accesses down to a minimum.
Chrontel's CH7013A-T serves as a TV encoder to enable TV output on the Zen PMC. While the chip does support both composite and S-Video outputs, Creative only supplies composite cables with the unit.
The NetChip 2272 is the USB 2.0 controller.
On the opposite side of the unit, where the battery is located, is where you will find the 1.8" Hitachi Travelstar C4K60 drive.
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Reflex - Thursday, September 30, 2004 - link
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+focuses+on+camera+co...Thats the announcement on MTP. Its an open standard and anyone can support it. Its NOT tied to Windows Media Player 10.
crepticdamion - Wednesday, September 29, 2004 - link
Hello, it seems some people know more than AnandTech concerning this article.There are other MUCH better solutions that are not from Microsoft. I don't have anything against Microsoft (even had a lot of PocketPC generations and still have 2 PocketPCs) but when the Microsoft product is worse than the others, well I won't have it because is Microsoft. With me, the better product (overall) always wins.
Put that apart, this PMC is completely so MUCH weaker than Archos AV400 product, that my heart screams with indignation regarding this article. The diference in Size, Weight, Performance, Capacity (AV480 has 80GB, while AV420 is 20GB as PMC), and what Archos does more is infinite. Microsft ALWAYS looses.
I advise everyone that read this article to go search on Yahoo or Google for an Archos AV400 Review. Your mind will be boggled with its capacities and it is already available.
Archos AV400 is several years ahead of everyone else in these products and they deserve it, they've been working on this for almost a decade.
Good Hunting and always compare the alternatives.
Pjotr - Tuesday, September 28, 2004 - link
#14, That's why the Archos is so much better.Wizkid - Tuesday, September 28, 2004 - link
That hard drive is capable of 16MB/sec minimum. The rediculously slow transfer rate must be a software or implementation issue.mindless1 - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Transcode the video?I think I'll wait for a non-crippled PM player.
ViRGE - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
At 320x240 and 10MB/min needed for the best video quality, it seems Microsoft is working way too hard here. Those specs are right around the sweet-spot for MPEG1 of all things, which is fast & easy to encode and decode, and at such a low resolution would return very similar results. Obviously MS is planning for the future here, and on that note, these devices will be much more notable once they start using full VGA screens instead of QVGA.michael2k - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Hmm, I call.This thing can only do 2MB/s with USB2.0 on video transfer? And you blame the laptop drive for that?
My laptop (PowerBook 400) can field 16MB/s, and my iPod 2G with it's PCMCIA sized drive can field 12MB/s.
Of course they were both using the FireWire interface, and they were talking to other, faster, hard drives, but still...
Reflex - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Pjotr - I have nothing against the Archos or anything, however no special software is needed for the Creative product. The only reason WMP10 needs to be installed is to add MTP support to Windows, but you are free from then on to use any MTP aware software to transfer data, or you can do so simply through explorer if you wish, its browseable through there(something Anandtech forgot to mention).Not saying anything bad about Archos, just pointing out that MTP devices are just as easy to transfer to and from.
val - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
9: yes but think about use case, i do not want to watch movies so often somewhere to buy such a device. PDA makes much more fun on long trips, holiday or waiting for the bus. And if i would watch them, i like to record them in full quality and than convert from PC.Pjotr - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
#8,Maybe for the Windows PMC device, but not for Archos. Archos AV series are fully stand alone with video input for recording straight into MPEG-4 to the device HD for later playback to the video output. Read the product info on the link I posted above. There is no need to transfer movies from a computer, or record onto a computer, or covert into formats readable by the device.
I think the Archos is light years ahead of the Windows version in practical applicability.