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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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!