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MP3 and Video Players: Recommendations.

Dublo7Dublo7 Registered User regular
edited March 2007 in Games and Technology
Hey guys,

My iPod mini seems to be failing a bit (after all we've been through :( ), and I'm thinking it's time for a new player.

I think I'm sort of done with iPods. I want something that plays AVI files.


So far, my current possible choices are;

1) Cowon D2

d2_zoom02.jpg

Has touch screen, tv out, divx support, and SD card expansion.
The only problem is it only has 4GB built in memory.

2) Creative Zen Vision M

lowres_zenvisionm6.jpg

Great price, large capacity, divx support.
My only beef with this, is the screen may be a little bit small?

3) Creative Zen Vision

B000IF4TPY.01._SS400_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Large capacity, divx, bigger screen


Has anyone used any of these, or would you have any alternatives?
I'm sort of leaning towards the Zen Vision, as I reckon it looks super freaking hot.
The Cowon really looks great, but as I said, it has a small hard drive :(

[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Dublo7 on

Posts

  • mntorankusumntorankusu I'm not sure how to use this thing.... Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    According to the descriptions, the size of the screens on the Zen M and the Cowon are the same. The Cowon itself is just really fucking small.

    mntorankusu on
  • yalborapyalborap Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Well, I'll say this. Getting a good device that'll play your videos and your music is...Tricky. Even if they do .avi, they'll only do certain codecs that .AVI can contain, or certain resolutions. You're going to be transcoding no matter what you do.

    yalborap on
  • Dublo7Dublo7 Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Well, according to the specifications, most of them can play Divx and Xvid now.
    It seems the Zune and iPod are the only ones that can't do it now.

    edit - I just saw this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpXW3hnd7F0
    I must say... the D2 looks incredible. I love that UI so much.

    Argh... small memory :(

    Dublo7 on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • mntorankusumntorankusu I'm not sure how to use this thing.... Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Dublo7 wrote: »
    Well, according to the specifications, most of them can play Divx and Xvid now.
    It seems the Zune and iPod are the only ones that can't do it now.
    The problem is that they often can't play anything above a certain bitrate, or if they're encoded a certain way (or not encoded a certain way).

    But with these, at the very least there's a decent chance your stuff will just play on it, whereas the Zune and iPod don't have support at all.

    mntorankusu on
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    I would consider the Sandisk Sansa View only 8GB of built in memory, but it has an SDHC slot, so you could in theory double that. At the very least, you can add any SD card you have lying around.

    wunderbar on
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  • tehremotehremo Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    wunderbar wrote: »
    I would consider the Sandisk Sansa View only 8GB of built in memory, but it has an SDHC slot, so you could in theory double that. At the very least, you can add any SD card you have lying around.

    Agreed. That is a nice player and add in the SDHC slot and you're set.

    tehremo on
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  • tofutofu Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Dublo7 wrote: »
    Well, according to the specifications, most of them can play Divx and Xvid now.
    It seems the Zune and iPod are the only ones that can't do it now.

    edit - I just saw this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpXW3hnd7F0
    I must say... the D2 looks incredible. I love that UI so much.

    Argh... small memory :(

    The D2 has a SD card slot so you can always expand the memory.

    tofu on
  • archonwarparchonwarp Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Have you thought about a cellphone to take the place of a portable media device? I think pretty much all of the smartphones hold video in a wide variety of resolutions and codecs. Many of them also support windows mobile, which means that anything wmv encoded, and the large development community means there might be support for divx. Maybe not quite what you're looking for, but it's what I recently decided to do.

    archonwarp on
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  • SithDrummerSithDrummer Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Dublo7 wrote: »
    2) Creative Zen Vision MGreat price, large capacity, divx support.
    My only beef with this, is the screen may be a little bit small?
    I have it. It's a great player, fantastic colors and a large screen. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate the software that comes with it, particularly after using iTunes for two years for my recently-deceased iPod. MediaMonkey seems to be the best third-party music/playlist-syncing option, but it's a superbly clunky jukebox and still has a number of problems syncing correctly. If you change your playlists often, it might not be the player for you, at least unless you can find a better third-party app somewhere. If you don't change them very regularly though, or if you can ignore this one fault, it's a dream and a half.

    SithDrummer on
  • Lucky CynicLucky Cynic Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Today's woot is great for the price...

    http://www.woot.com/

    Lucky Cynic on
  • corcorigancorcorigan Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Today's woot is great for the price...

    http://www.woot.com/

    £50 for 20gb? Ye gods. Makes everything else horrific.

    corcorigan on
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  • ArugulaZArugulaZ Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    These are one day deals, though, so get 'em while they last!

    I've got a cheap iRiver player myself, and I'm pretty happy with it. It's only got 512M of storage, but it definitely gets the job done. I wanted to get a Clix to give myself a little extra room for songs, but it's a purchase that will have to wait until the end of this semester.

    ArugulaZ on
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  • TheBosZTheBosZ Wut? Hillsboro, ORRegistered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Anything But Ipod is a great site to get started on more information about a wide range of different players.

    About that Woot, http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11501 talks about many problems people have had with that player. I'd think long and hard about that before buying it. Granted, $99 is a nice price, but if it's crap, it doesn't matter how cheap it is.

    Personally, I've been looking very hard at that iAudio D2. The screen is absolutely fantastic (16 million colors ftw!) and a great size. The newest models have only 4GB built in, but it has an SD slot that supports SDHC, so you can upgrade the memory quite a bit.

    iAudio is a really great, unknown, brand. My brother owns an older player from them, the X5 and he absolutely loves it. In fact, a lot of Audiophiles love it because of the great sound quality. It's not very good for movie playback.

    If you want more of a portable movie player instead of a music player, the iAudio A2 (a new version, the A3 is coming out in 6 months or so) is also very nice.

    Really, it comes down to a couple of choices:

    1) What should be the focus? Movies or music?
    2) How much space do you want?
    2a) Flash memory or hard disk?
    3) Cost

    Flash memory players are generally cheaper (because they have lower capacity), but hard drive players hold more. If you look for a flash player that's upgradable with SD cards (or I've seen ones that can take compactflash too), you could make due with that. And SDHC can go up to 32GB (eventually).

    If I had the money, I'd go for either the A2 or the D2. iAudio makes some nice stuff. If you get an A2 from their online store (http://www.jetmall.net), you get a free MP3 player.

    http://iaudiophile.net is also a good site for iAudio stuff.

    TheBosZ on
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  • ben0207ben0207 Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Or check out what Archos are currently offering.

    I have an ancient AV420, and it's fantastic (use an iPod as my main mp3 player)

    ben0207 on
  • KyouguKyougu Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    It really does suck that Zune had such gimped video support. I hate having to transcode all my files into wmvs, and haven't put any new videos into it because of it.
    Oh well, it's still a really good player.

    Kyougu on
  • TheBosZTheBosZ Wut? Hillsboro, ORRegistered User regular
    edited March 2007
    I've also heard good things about the Archos stuff.

    One thing to look out for is that Cnet reviews are all over the map, a lot of people have very different experiences than what the Cnet people say. I generally go there and watch the video reviews (to see how the thing looks in person) and to read other's comments.

    Cruise those forums I listed, the anything but ipod ones have some very good discussions on different players versus others.

    TheBosZ on
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  • Dublo7Dublo7 Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Kyougu wrote: »
    It really does suck that Zune had such gimped video support. I hate having to transcode all my files into wmvs, and haven't put any new videos into it because of it.
    Oh well, it's still a really good player.
    Can't you use mp4 with the Zune?

    Dublo7 on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • imbalancedimbalanced Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Dublo7 wrote: »
    Hey guys,


    So far, my current possible choices are;

    1) Cowon D2

    d2_zoom02.jpg

    Has touch screen, tv out, divx support, and SD card expansion.
    The only problem is it only has 4GB built in memory.

    Instead of that, get the Cowon A2. It's JetAudio, but has a bigger hard drive (30GB). I have it and it's the tits after the firmware update. Plays XVID, DIVX, MOV, OGG, MP3, etc. Worth it.

    55-603-835-03.JPG

    Newegg is out of them, but they're at other places too. Here's the stats:
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16855603835

    imbalanced on
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  • Dublo7Dublo7 Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Yeah, the A2 does look pretty freaking hot.
    The only thing is, apparently the A3 is coming out soon?

    The A2 is also rather expensive. But then again, most Cowon players are.

    Dublo7 on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • KyouguKyougu Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Dublo7 wrote: »
    Kyougu wrote: »
    It really does suck that Zune had such gimped video support. I hate having to transcode all my files into wmvs, and haven't put any new videos into it because of it.
    Oh well, it's still a really good player.
    Can't you use mp4 with the Zune?

    Kinda.

    You can grab any mp4 video and stick it into the zune software and it'll convert it to wmv automatically. The zune itself just can't play mp4 videos by itself.
    Which really sucks, cause I can't think of many people who actually have their videos in wmv format.

    Kyougu on
  • SithDrummerSithDrummer Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Kyougu wrote: »
    Dublo7 wrote: »
    Kyougu wrote: »
    It really does suck that Zune had such gimped video support. I hate having to transcode all my files into wmvs, and haven't put any new videos into it because of it.
    Oh well, it's still a really good player.
    Can't you use mp4 with the Zune?

    Kinda.

    You can grab any mp4 video and stick it into the zune software and it'll convert it to wmv automatically. The zune itself just can't play mp4 videos by itself.
    Which really sucks, cause I can't think of many people who actually have their videos in wmv format.
    Bill Gates is the only one.

    SithDrummer on
  • yalborapyalborap Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Kyougu wrote: »
    Dublo7 wrote: »
    Kyougu wrote: »
    It really does suck that Zune had such gimped video support. I hate having to transcode all my files into wmvs, and haven't put any new videos into it because of it.
    Oh well, it's still a really good player.
    Can't you use mp4 with the Zune?

    Kinda.

    You can grab any mp4 video and stick it into the zune software and it'll convert it to wmv automatically. The zune itself just can't play mp4 videos by itself.
    Which really sucks, cause I can't think of many people who actually have their videos in wmv format.
    Bill Gates is the only one.

    A couple of guys from the old 360 megathread converted their stuff to .WMV for streaming to their 360s.

    yalborap on
  • Spore CloudSpore Cloud Registered User regular
    edited March 2007
    Whatever you do, dont get a Sansa e280, im going through hell trying to get it to work correctly. Took me several hours to figure out how to import a playlist and it took me several days just to get tech support to understand that my e-mail address is seward01@pacbellSPAMSUCKS.net so that they can send me a file that was supposed to help me fix my new problem but infact I ALREADY HAD! Im going to call them again in a few minutes after I eat, if they want me to RMA it to them im done, i'll just return it to the store I bought it from.

    Spore Cloud on
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