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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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.