Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Creative nearly hit bullseye with this device. It's perfectly sized, easy to use, and has plenty of capacity. Images are crisp and colors rich, but the unit falls just short with a narrow viewing angle and sluggish navigation.
First, the bad. The screen is uncomfortable to watch head on. The left tilt helps but it's still not satisfactory. In addition, my unit has several tiny starlike specs that distract me from my movie. Compared to my HP iPaq, the unit takes time to boot and navigation is much slower. Finally, I don't understand their claim to support a variety of formats. For some of my movie clips, like from my digital camera, I can play them right away on my PC on Windows Media Player 10 but have to go through a conversion process to play them on the Creative. And the conversion lowers the quality of the file.
Now for the good. 30GB holds a lot of portable movies. Navigation is a breeze. The sound is wonderful and the screen displays color beautifully, with sharp clean images. The file management software is straightforward. The unit is well constructed and feels good in the hand.
Now for a word about getting content onto your portable video player.
There's always CinemaNow. But if you want to watch the DVDs you own, you've got to rip. Creative includes Video Vault demo software to help get your movies portable, and it's pretty good. I prefer it to the software called "DVD to Pocket PC" because it's more stable. The downside is it creates much larger files (an average movie is 600MB rather than 300MB).
To get DVDs onto the Creative using the demo software, you have to
(1) rip the DVD into a file format the demo software will accept (I use DVD Shrink freeware)
(2) use the demo software to convert that ripped file (2-5GB) into a portable movie file (400-800MB) to put onto the Creative. This step takes 1-3 hours per movie, so I run it overnight.
To get TV onto the Creative, it's helpful to have a Media Center PC with a DVR. This way you can move recorded TV shows to the Creative and watch them on the go.
Yes, this is all very time consuming work, but no different than ripping your CDs to create an mp3 music library. Using this process, one snag I haven't figured out yet is how to get my 16x9 (and wider) movies to play in the correct aspect ratio on the Creative Zen Vision. It ends up being slightly stretched top to bottom. Thankfully, the stretch isn't so bad.
For me the results of all this digital transfer are worth the effort. It's a blast to have this on a trip. The Creative Zen Vision is a pioneer product and a fun toy for the electronics enthusiast.
update: I solved my 16x9 problem. The full version of Video Vault software (whose demo is included with the Zen Vision) has an option for 4:3 or 16:9. This is the best program I've found for converting movies into portable-sized files.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Creative Zen Vision 30 GB Multimedia Player Black
Zen Vision takes portable digital-media another step into the future with this very compact multimedia player. Featuring a transflective screen that provides excellent image and video quality even in bright sunlit conditions, the 30GB Zen Vision carries up to 15,000 songs, tens of thousands of photos, or up to 120 hours of video. With a convenient size 4.9 by 2.9 by .8 inches at only 8.4 ounces, this compact digital-media player offers MP3 audio storage and play, digital photo storage and display, plus MP4 digital video storage and play. Plug&View slot on the side of the player supports both Compact Flash Type I and Type II media. An optional Compact Flash Adapter plugs directly into the Compact Flash slot to accept the most popular memory card types including SmartMedia, MultiMedia Card and Secure Digital, 17 variations in all Supports a wide selection of video formats for enjoyment of movies downloaded from the Internet, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Simple Profile formats such as DivX and Xvid, WMV, and MJPEG. The Zen Vision also supports TiVoToGo, for viewing of TV content recorded on a TiVo personal video recorder, and digitized home movies transferred from the PCUSB 2.0 connectivity Built-in microphone - shows volume levels on screen for optimum voice recording qualityOrganizer - Provides calendar, tasks and contact lists, and syncs with Microsoft OutlookEnables setting of Date & Time, plus allocation of Removable Disk space for dedicated storageClock with wake-to-any-music alarm Color - BLACK
Click here for more information about Creative Zen Vision 30 GB Multimedia Player Black
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