Microsoft Portable Media Center Reviewed 177
dhopton writes "The first public review of the PMC that I've seen is interesting. It's critical in places, but also praises. It also covers Windows Media Player 10 to some extent. Overall, I'm looking forward to reviews of the non-Creative devices."
Just Great! (Score:5, Funny)
DRM? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also worth noting that the review was posted by someone likely to exhibit bias. I did not RT whole FA (did you see how long that thing was?!), so it may be completely impartial, just something to keep in mind...
Bias, and a review of the review (Score:2)
So recently out of the blue I got an email from my MVP Lead, Andrew, if I wanted a PMC to play with for a bit. I was like, what in the world, why me, why now? Especially since the PMC is not an eHome product like Media Center is. It's a Windows Mobile device that's really under the Digital Media Division at Microsoft. So except for the fact that it's called a Portable "Media Center" and that it's got a very s
Re:DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Oh, you say, "But these will *only* play DRM files". Au contraire. From what I'm reading, they'll play standard MPEG2s. A few hacks and we'll see DivX on these things.
Re:DRM? (Score:2)
Re:DRM? (Score:2)
Re:DRM? (Score:2)
Re:DRM? (Score:3)
DRM-Enabled only players? No thanks.
I've found the iPod to be a nice mix. I can buy stuff conveniently through iTunes, I can load stuff that isn't on the Music Store. Of course bleep.com is better, but having both is a good enough compromise for some of us.
Re:DRM? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:DRM? (Score:2)
Robotic Women? (Score:5, Funny)
If only there was a way to combine the red head with the silicon. *ponders*
Re:Robotic Women? (Score:2, Funny)
Not yet, but with today's technology we can combine red heads with silicone [google.com].
Re:Robotic Women? (Score:2)
Re:Robotic Women? (Score:4, Funny)
\documentstyle{redhead}
\begin{woman}
\height{5ft8in}
\end{woman}
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Homestar... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Homestar... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Homestar... (Score:3, Insightful)
Smells to me like fishy soup.
Re:Homestar... (Score:2)
Either way though, his pro-Microsoft bias is the same. In the light of that, I'm actually surprised that he did have some negative comments to say about the PMC - though of co
Links to mirrors of video and photos (Score:5, Informative)
He has a link to mirrors of his photos and videos of the device (which I'm mainly interested in anyway). They are:
WMV: External Overview of Creative Zen PMC (temporarily down) Mirror 1 [coreygouker.com] Mirror 2 [coreygouker.com]
WMV: Demo of Portable Media Center UI (temporarily down) Mirror 1 [coreygouker.com] Mirror 2 [coreygouker.com]
Gallery of Images from Creative Zen PMC [coreygouker.com] Mirror 1 [coreygouker.com] Mirror 2 [coreygouker.com]
Direct links (Score:2, Informative)
Direct links:
WMV: External Overview of Creative Zen PMC: Mirror 1 [mvps.org] Mirror 2 [ucla.edu]
WMV: Demo of Portable Media Center UI: Mirror 1 [mvps.org] Mirror 2 [ucla.edu]
Gallery of Images from Creative Zen PMC [auroravisions.com] Mirror 1 [mvps.org] Mirror 2 [ucla.edu]
My favorite quote (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy has a real hate on for Apple doesn't he?
Re:My favorite quote (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:My favorite quote (Score:1)
I can understand many geeks alliegence to free software, Linux, etc. But I could never understand why so many geeks have such an allegience to Apple. If you think their products are cool then that is one thing but the company itsel
Re:My favorite quote (Score:5, Interesting)
In reality there is nothing special about the PMC OS. The Creative Zen PMC Player [creative.com] looks like a cheap version of the upcoming Sony PSP [playstationportable.com].
Either way you can't really call the Creative player portable
Re:My favorite quote (Score:2)
Do you realize what you've just typed?
Re:My favorite quote (Score:2)
These people consider the success of the Microsoft to be a real thumb on the nose. How can it succeed when it's so expensive? How can it succeed when so many companies/software/devices do the same thing, only with more features? How can it succeed without ...?
Microsoft is proof that
Re:My favorite quote (Score:3, Insightful)
Simplicity isn't one of them either, though some people aregue that it is. Non geeks haven't got a clue what to do when Windows isn't working right, which unfortunatly is often.
Re:My favorite quote (Score:2)
It's a blog! (Score:4, Insightful)
And we should pay attention to him why?
P.S. that thing looks huge. It has a GUI, for cryin' out loud!
Re:It's a blog! (Score:5, Insightful)
He doesn't ever actually make any points other than showing off at his DVD, music, TV, and movie collections. Honestly I don't give a flying rats ass WHY you were chosen to test something and I certainly don't care about how much music you have...
He said that the UI is fast while loading the songs he put on the device. How long did it take to put those songs on the device? Did you have to load a special driver for it (possible DRM) or did it just use USB mass storage that is standard with more recent Windows versions?
He did mention that the external sound sucks and that the display isn't any good in the daylight. Sounds like a bummer to me. I am not exactly going to be sitting at home watching movies on my portable media player.
I am more concerned with battery life and heat from the 400mhz XScale CPU.
I guess he didn't spend enough time explaining that afterall he did have to type out 204GB several times and count all his tracks in his music collection (44,190).
Re:It's a blog! (Score:3, Informative)
Many PDAs, like the Dell Axim, use the 400mhz XScale CPU. It gets warm but never hot. More details can be found at Intel [intel.com].
I am surprised they did not go with the 624Mhz XScale.
Re:It's a blog! (Score:4, Interesting)
Whoa. I couldn't even get that far. I was skimming but I had to stop because I kept wanting to swallow my tongue and end it. Let's hear it for the weblog revolution!
44,190 music tracks? That is an awful lot of music to own legally. I am impressed.
Assuming that half that is legal freeware/PD music (like the stuff you used to be able to get from MP3.com, or stuff from your buddy's band), that still leaves a lot of music to buy. Or license. Whatever it is these days, I can't keep up.
Let's just say 21,000 non-freely-distributable music tracks... and a generous average of 15 tracks per album... That's about 1500 CDs to buy, and at a conservative cost of US$12 each we are talking about $18,000 in music.
I like music a lot, but not $18,000 worth.
I am more concerned with battery life and heat from the 400mhz XScale CPU.
This is the same CPU as in a Pocket PC. Heat isn't really a problem, that 400MHz isn't doing as much work (or making as much toast) as you would think. You can get a few solid hours out of a Pocket PC with a teensy battery, so if these things are bigger than a Pocket PC I would expect batterly life to be decent.
Re:It's a blog! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's a blog! (Score:2, Funny)
What the hell? (Score:1, Insightful)
Slashdotted Already (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Slashdotted Already (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, shit, remember the Archos? I had to listen to assholes tell me how great that ten pound, boat sized piece of shit was for three years. Then when I bought my svelte little 30 gig, I had to listen to them scoff about how it does nothing new and had a small screen and terrible battery life and no microphone or radio or ogg features.
Man, STFU. Nobody cares who made your webcam or what make and model your 7.1 speaker system is or how many MP3s you pirated from eJackass. Just tell us: was the thing convenient, did it have good response from the controls, was it easy to get your shit on and off it, was it comfortable to hold, did it feel durable, and is it worth $300 over the cost of a comparable iPod?
Philistine! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not. As a patron of the arts, I find this statement unexplicable. Creativity is what separates us from the lower animals! It is the foundation of civilization!
Go and play with your non-Creative devices, plebeian. Some people were just not born to appreciate the finer things in life. Run along now, you're cramping my contemptuos sneer.
Re:Philistine! (Score:3, Funny)
see Creative [creative.com] for an expansive list
Re:Philistine! (Score:2)
That is, if I ever find myself in the position of actually having any device-related purchases to carry out ... rotten things, devices ... but perhaps those Creative ones are better though.
Re:Philistine! (Score:1)
Re:Philistine! (Score:5, Funny)
Sound level of a 747 taking off next to you: 120dB
Sound level of a F-16 doing mach 2: 160dB
Sound level of a joke flying right over your head: 180dB
"non-Creative" devices... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"non-Creative" devices... (Score:2)
The Zen Media Center (Score:5, Insightful)
Mac Portable (Score:3, Informative)
For those not in the know, the Mac Portable was Apple's first portable Mac. It had about 8 hours of battery life, a full size real keyboard, a full size trackball, a 3.5" hard drive with desktop performance, and a whole slew of I/O ports on the back--but it weighed almost 20 lbs!!!
http://lowendmac.com/pb/portable.shtml [lowendmac.com]
(This was a few years before the Sony-designed/built Apple PowerBook 100 and Apple-designed/built PowerBooks 140 and 170)
Affliations put to the side (Score:5, Insightful)
Will people actually carry one of these around for their commutes? How much of an increase will we see in TV viewing? Will it contribute to the growing social isolation I'm beginning to see (a world full of people wearing headphones)?
I'd give it a few revisions and then consider buying one.
Re:Affliations put to the side (Score:2)
I suspect that PDAs will eventually get a full miniature hard-drive attachment, and you'll put your music/video on that. PDAs will continue to pick this sort of thing up is my prediction, and these media-only devices will fall by the wayside.
Re:Affliations put to the side (Score:3, Interesting)
Are people socially isolated if they read the paper or a book, or just stare blankly ahead a fixed point in space.
Isn't the real problem that other people are less interesting than music or reading and that it is socially unacceptable (generally speaking) to communicate with
Re:Affliations put to the side (Score:2)
Re:Affliations put to the side (Score:2)
Maybe it's just me but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it's just me being paranoid, but, this looks like a setup.
I mean, poor english, no train of thought and a site with a single blog topic.
Sounds like Microsoft advertising department to me. (trying desperately to not be an ad).
Re:Maybe it's just me but... (Score:5, Informative)
Fucking insidious.
Re:Maybe it's just me but... (Score:4, Interesting)
With the completion of the 8th grade in July 1997 I was taken out of the public school system in favor of private tutelage by my grandfather, a college professor in English and Comparative Literature, at the California State University of Fullerton, for over 40 years. My family and I agreed that the offerings of the local small town high school were limited, and would interfere with my growing professional responsibilities.
This guy is a smug little prick, isn't he?
Seriously, he is an overachiver if half of what he claims in the Academic section is true.
~Segfault
Re:Maybe it's just me but... (Score:2)
no more and no less than what I would expect from a nerdy kid who has been out of school and financially independent since age fourteen or thereabouts.
Re:Maybe it's just me but... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is either the biggest-- and most clueless-- Microsoft fanboy in existence, or Microsoft's ad department is creating a fake blogger (actually, blog community) to give their products some "street cred."
Re:Maybe it's just me but... (Score:2)
Screen quality is poor and hard to see in light
External mono speaker sucks horribly
DRM'd up to it's eyeballs
Doesn't register as a standard USB storage device in windows
Files on the device are read-only, and have to be copied to a PC for editing in any way
Too big to be properly portable
And.. this may just be me.. but who the hell WANTS to watch movies on a 4" screen? at lea
Trying to be objective (Score:4, Interesting)
This does sound like a neat toy, though it's portability would certainly be limited. The ability to load up video files and play them on any TV certainly is an attractive prospect -- but I would only be interested if it can play back non-DRM encumbered Divx/Xvid files.
Back to the portability issue, this thing looks huge, and would only fit in the largest of pockets. I recently picked up a Rio Karma, and really can't imagine walking around freely with anything much larger than that. Also, I wonder how long this thing can run on battery power. With that huge color screen, I would think not long. (though maybe the screen can be turned off)
Wait for the competition... (Score:1, Interesting)
Also, things like quality of product will be at least partially available for review within a few months. Who wants to get one right away only to find out that 1/2 of all of them die or something?
Personally, I am just trying to get my iPod
Mind numbing review (Score:5, Interesting)
WMP10 Feature (Score:5, Funny)
<sarcasm>Remember, kids, it's a feature, not a bug!!</sarcasm>
Non-Creative devices?! (Score:1, Flamebait)
-psy
What about Archos? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about Archos? (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, this is going to TOTALLY smoke the iPod. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I'm going to break my iPod into teeny little pieces and use the polycarbonate shards to open my veins before I buy one of these POSes.
Re:Yeah, this is going to TOTALLY smoke the iPod. (Score:2)
So not only does it take ages to copy stuff over, but it actually has to convert it too. If you want to use this thing, you can't just grab it and go like any portable device. You have to plan way ahead of time.
Re:Yeah, this is going to TOTALLY smoke the iPod. (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, this is going to TOTALLY smoke the iPod. (Score:2)
copying 14gb of content over a USB connection should only take a few minutes
USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) is supposed to be comparable to FireWire 400 at full data transfer speeds, and it only takes minutes to fill up that much content on an iPod through FireWire 400. Actually, USB 2.0 can work at 480 Megabits per second while FireWire 400 works at 400 Megabits per second, although FireWire performs [digit-life.com] slightly better than USB 2.0 for some reason.
Whatever the reason is that this thing takes hours to complete, it is
multimedia? (Score:3, Interesting)
He must make the RIAA proud (Score:4, Interesting)
So that's about $80,000 of CDs (which of course he purchased legally, right?)...all college students should follow his example.
I saw these things in California (Score:3, Informative)
There are three models and all of them are excellent. All of them feature TV-out as well which was truly awesome.
The software was excellent, the GUI was pretty intuitive, and the formats it supports are entirely up to the manufacturer outside of WMV and WMA. They can support whatever they want, be it OGG, AAC, whatever.
Re:I saw these things in California (Score:1)
The iRiver PMC was awesome and the Samsung is a flitop style device that fits in the palm of your hand and still makes video look good.
The battery life is supposedly pretty good, but I didn't get to spend hours with it.
Who's the target market? (Score:3, Insightful)
Techno-saavy users who want to watch / listen to media on the go? I may be in the minority, but a main reason I have a laptop is so I can play my movies and music on the go. (Oh, there's that whole job thing too...)
Mr. & Ms. Adult Consumer? They don't know what "Creative" is unless they also fit into the computer geek category. They're going to spend their money on the portable DVD player for home and car at Wal-Mart or Best Buy.
Mr. & Ms. Consumer's kids? They're going to go with what all the "cool kids" have, and around here that'd be an iPod.
I think only the techno-saavy are going to go for this, and look how many of them won't buy these things because of DRM or Apple loyalty or because they already own 3 other devices that'll do the same things and possibly do them better. I just don't understand how the companies expect to crack this market.
cat got my tongue (Score:4, Insightful)
Your friendly neighbourhood troll.
Re:cat got my tongue (Score:2)
wow (Score:2, Funny)
Sincerely,
The '80s Cell Phone
Re:wow (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely,
Betamax
The only thing more (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW: if nobody on
Obligatory... (Score:2, Funny)
Surprise, surprise (Score:2)
Re:Surprise, surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Surprise, surprise (Score:2)
Article Summary (Score:5, Funny)
He is reviewing Microsoft's "iPod killer". It is gonna be like iTunes, except instead of buying music, you rent it. We all know this is a foolproof business model. It is loaded up to the gills with more of that tasty DRM that everyone loves.
The first thing he did was plug it in to the mains. Then he tried to take it apart. I think we have a potential Darwin Award nominee, folks. Then he had trouble turning it on.
The device has a 400MHz XScale CPU and 64Mb of RAM. It can play videos on its 320x240 screen. It performs well, apart from the artifacts and frame drops.
The device has cables coming out of every side but one. The good news is, you can add blue LEDs and make it really sexy.
Battery life is 22 hours for audio and 7 hours for video. The device weighs as much as a can of coke.
If you scroll to the bottom, you can download a 23Mb video. I'm too bored to watch it, maybe someone else can post a summary of that.
Re:Article Summary (Score:2)
Words like "Microsoft beta tester!" and "Smug Microsoft schill!" float past his head whilst women in the backround swoon as they see his manly fingers caress the smooth, polished surface of the iPod killer whilst Windows XP icons zoom around his chiselled features. Corey's disembodies head then goes on a rampage, takes a bite out of a giant apple, and s
Re:Article Summary (Score:2)
Argh!
I read "iPod Killer" as "iPod Puller"...
Excuse me. I must go scrub my brain.
I could be wrong but... (Score:2, Insightful)
For an alternate view.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Then, after being raked over the coals by Microsoft apologists, I revised my opinions. The PMC is actually a brilliant trojan horse that'll let Microsoft take over the porn industry! [extremetech.com]
jim
I think this is going to as successful... (Score:4, Insightful)
... as Tablet PC's. iPod killer, my ass. This thing is too big. If portable TV's [google.com] were popular, people would be carrying them everywhere, but they're not. There are portable DVD players [google.com] out there, but I've never actually seen anyone running around with one either. Microsoft just thought "hey, let's make it better than the iPod by adding video." Unfortunately, that was the wrong idea.
If they had any brains, they would simply add HD capacities to their existing Pocket PC PDA's so they could store a lot of media. Something this size would only catch on if it were a portable XBox, combining the Media Center features with it. In fact, if they combined the XBox and a Windows Media Center set-top box, and let this thing be a portable extension, then maybe this would work. Then again, why bother with that kind of a setup if this device [oqo.com] is already on the market?
Gotcha... (Score:4, Funny)
This is the RIAA.
You are surounded.
Come out with your hands up.
Cheap portable DVD player to the rescue (Score:2, Interesting)
before I go any futher... (Score:2, Interesting)
Article Summary (Score:5, Funny)
Hi! My name is Corey! I love myself. I'm a big geek and take lots of photos and have a big movie collection. And I like girls! I spend all my time on the Internet chatting about stuff
I spend lots of money on electronic things. And because I'm so important and special I got a Portable Media Center! It's way cool! It's not an iPod! It's something different
I have such a large movie collection, I'll wear once of these out a week! I have lots of on-line friends who love to read my blog. I live in my parents basement
Even though I just said I'm an ultra high-tech geek, I serve this web site on a slow DSL connection from my l33t Linux box. Please use a mirror!
Re:Article Summary (Score:2)
$ lynx -head -dump http://blogs.coreygouker.com/
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: close
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 23:03:44 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
What the hell is Microsoft Office Web Server? Surprisingly, he is on a Speakeasy DSL line, not MSN or something.
Not really a review... (Score:2)
As for being a geek, he didn't try to take it apart because he didn't have a small enough screw
Definitely an iPod-killer.... (Score:2)
Re:mirror (Score:1, Informative)
http://cainsconsulting.net/slash/PermaLink.aspx.h
Re:Big Brother (Score:1)