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Microsoft Portable Media Center Reviewed
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."
More goodies to spend my unemployment check on!
[intekra] - [www.plex.nu]
DRM-Enabled media players? No thanks.
^^
From TFA: And please, I don't mean to get you worried at this point, I don't find them attractive in a sexual way or anything like that, I'm much more drawn to a nice 5'8" red head than anything made of silicon, LOL, err, no pun intended.
If only there was a way to combine the red head with the silicon. *ponders*
I'm pretty much an average geek...
As Homestar would say: More like NOT AVERAGE GEEK!
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 Mirror 2
WMV: Demo of Portable Media Center UI (temporarily down) Mirror 1 Mirror 2
Gallery of Images from Creative Zen PMC Mirror 1 Mirror 2
-- "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."
This guy has a real hate on for Apple doesn't he?
It's long-winded, reminescent of Jerry Pournelle's columns in Byte. It takes forever to get to the point. It's from a guy who (apparently) has a 204 MB music collection!
And we should pay attention to him why?
P.S. that thing looks huge. It has a GUI, for cryin' out loud!
Site is already slashdotted but why are we supposed to read a review on a blog on coreygouker.com? Is there not some more reliable site we could get a review from? Maybe a little background on who this Corey guy is would be nice?
Slashdot = ((Technology + Politics) / Trolls) % Grammar Nazis
http://cainsconsulting.net/slash/PermaLink.aspx.ht ml
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.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
If it's a Microsoft product I'm pretty sure you can count on it being non-creative.
-- Gargonia
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
It's a Media Center, perhaps, but it looks about as portable as a Mac Portable. Can I carry it with me? Sure. Do I _want_ to carry it with me? Absolutely not.
Ignoring it's Microsoft, and ignoring that there will probably be a million posts about iPod in a few seconds, I think this is going to be very interesting to watch for an entertainment and psychological standpoint (outside tech).
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.
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).
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)
Those links all go to his (slow) Web site, which then redirects to the mirrors themselves.
Direct links:
WMV: External Overview of Creative Zen PMC: Mirror 1 Mirror 2
WMV: Demo of Portable Media Center UI: Mirror 1 Mirror 2
Gallery of Images from Creative Zen PMC Mirror 1 Mirror 2
I plan on waiting at least a few months after the holiday season to see what kind of competion is available next year. I have to imagine these devices will really catch on, and if I decide to get one, they will likely be a bit cheaper once their is lots of competition.
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 first! Help me out and sign up for a free one with my link. (not trying to be a spammer, sorry there really is content in the post...)
That has got to be the most long, drawn out review for a product I have ever seen. How about not writing it like a book that involves your mothers TV viewing habits, and your walk to the store.
Stay tuned for new sig...
<sarcasm>Remember, kids, it's a feature, not a bug!!</sarcasm>
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I guess you've been asleep while Apple have been DOMINATING the personal audio market?!
-psy
Archos has had these kinds of portable media players out for at least a year now..with no drm, and recording from video sources to mpeg4 or divx I believe. Definitely something fishy in that blog
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.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
When will slashdotters quit making completely offtopic comments about 1984?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
all i saw in the gallery is nothing more than some wma/mp3 palyback screenshots. Where are the tv play back, wasn't that suppose to be the key feature of this device? or perhaps at least some divx/xvid riped movie? Pocketpc with intergated svga resolution and powerful 624 intel processor(powerful enough to play dvd riped move at full speed with no frame lost, confirmed on axim x30 high) will be out before holiday, as far as i am concerned, that will be my mobile media center, after all there are a lot more you can do with a pocketpc-GPS navigaion, for instance.
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
So that's about $80,000 of CDs (which of course he purchased legally, right?)...all college students should follow his example.
I was in Silicon Valley last month when Microsoft debuted these at the National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology. Honestly, I loved the things.
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.
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.
Any article that has "LOL" in it is not worth reading.
Your friendly neighbourhood troll.
That's a pretty small, lightweight, and easy-to-carry device.
Sincerely,
The '80s Cell Phone
Maybe he was talking about Emmanual from 2600? This is a geek website after all.
more disappointing then this article is the fact that it has not been slashdotted.
/. reads the articles, how are these sites getting slashdotted?
BTW: if nobody on
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yeah it looks nice, but does it run linux?
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
I would like to know how people use these gadgets. If you ride a train every day, you could certainly occupy yourself with such a gadget. Otherwise, when would you use it? If you are sitting in an airplane, wouldn't you prefer to use a notebook computer? It would have a bigger screen.
I suspect that these gadgets will sell in a few places such as Tokyo, but not elsewhere. What am I missing?
Wow! This is what I have been waiting for. A portable emitter of the Blue Screen of Death!
A Slashdot thread bashing Microsoft and Creative Labs. What next dogs sleeping dogs, water falling from the sky, gravity pulling things towards the earth? Yes, we all know Apple is the king of cool and never makes any shitty hardware... that Newton thing worked out real well.
Mac Portable
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
(This was a few years before the Sony-designed/built Apple PowerBook 100 and Apple-designed/built PowerBooks 140 and 170)
Does this player BSOD?
Corey Gouker is a 20 year-old geek who likes 5'8" redheads. He sits on 204 GB of music. He has one media device. His hobbies including hanging out in Microsoft newsgroups.
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.
fish and pipes
He's already got 204GB of music that he owns. What does he care if he pimps Microsoft's Subscription service?
- From Dana Haynes at Astrology World News ...you add the nature of my profession, and what I wanted to project, I wondered how Corey Gouker would meet the challenge....
To Whom It May Concern,
Corey took a subject matter associated with "hocus-pocus", and did exactly what I requested.
with all these bells and whistles and Janis DRM glistening in the sun, did they installan ALARM CLOCK? Or is that just too passé?
/.BANG
The article is bloated and two third of it is off topic, ...just like the average M$ product. ...Just like Microsoft Office, nobody has ever used half of the features
204 GB of music ( 44,190 tracks ) ! This represent of the order of 4 to 6 months of continuous listening ! I'm pretty sure he never listened to half of it.
WTF?! I was responding to somebody elses post. I'm not trolling.
^^vv<><>BA
I'm pretty down on the PMC. I put my reasons together here on ExtremeTech. It's not a review, but I've had hands-on time with all of them (real reviewers are forbidden to post a review until the Non-Disclosure expires sometime in the near future).
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!
jim
... as Tablet PC's. iPod killer, my ass. This thing is too big. If portable TV's were popular, people would be carrying them everywhere, but they're not. There are portable DVD players 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 is already on the market?
+5 Informative
This was just about the most asinine article ever, and that's saying A LOT! Thank you for boiling it down so that nobody else has to suffer the fate of us rubes who attempted, in good faith, to RTFA. Wish I hadn't blown all my mod points now...
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Emmanual from 2600 being a nome-de-plume taken as a direct reference to 1984 anyway. Did you not notice they were both Emmanual Goldstein?
#include "disclaimer.h"
>>I was sitting on a 204GB collection of music. That's approximately 44,190 tracks for the curious. My main Media Center Edition PC has a 250GB HDD which at any given time has about 200GB of recorded TV. Then there's about 500 or so DVDs as well.
This is the RIAA.
You are surounded.
Come out with your hands up.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
Cheaper open way to go is to just burn MPG files to a DVD-RW disc and watch up to 8 hours worth on a portable DVD player. Most of the players out there can play MPG, JPG, and MP3s. I just bought one with a 7-inch screen for $299 that can also double as a video screen for a camcorder (VIVO). Now they just need to add DivX/XviD and OGG support.
Science is the Real TRUTH!
Is this a review of this guy's qualifications and choice in schools, or does he get on with the review after 3 paragraphs?
three shorter reviews (still MS weenies) at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/defa ult.mspx
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!
Best Buy can have you arrested
So from what he's saying about this device compared to his Ipaq. We would be better off to just buy a pocket pc since it's got a better screen, faster processor, and is a lot more useful.
Now all I need is either a 20gb cf drive or a portable drive sleeve. Anyone looking to make a killer add on for an ipaq, give me a 200gb drive sleeve with a video out that I can attach and use to make my ipaq a better version of the PMC.
The comment has already been made. Let's move it along people. Nothing to see here.
More like a 'first impressions' or a 'steaming pile of subjective blabber.' He drones on and on rarely talking about the actual device. He fails to compare to other 'PMC's like the Lyra or Archos. No mention of Divx, mp4, ogg, And the whole time he sounds like he's plugging DRM, monthly subscription licensing, and WMP of all things. Either he is truely a cool-aide drinkin' fanboy or he's getting a paycheck.
As for being a geek, he didn't try to take it apart because he didn't have a small enough screw-driver? What? He couldn't even get it to turn on!
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
I'd mod down this entire thread.
along with playing your drm movies - you can view the lates powerpoint presentation from Bill and Steve. And it can also do word processing just like your laptop Uh! Uh! wait Uh! nevermind.
"I played my copy of the Dark Side SACD which was encoded with 90% VBR WMA" I thought SACDs were copy protected... I guess the "legal" music comment may be out.
I met horace luke a while back, and he had an early protype of a similar device.
Man, my iPod sucks, it doesn't even have a reset button.
The DRM is entirely optional, you can use your illegally downloaded MP3 collection on the device fine. the size is (somewhat) based on the manufacturer, there are different sizes and designs. DivX support is up to the manufacturer (because of the licensing issues of DivX). The Project head for PMC is actually a twenty something guy. He and some coworkers came up with the basics for PMC after hours (unpaid) and presented their idea to the Microsoft execs. So it wasn't some suit's idea. I talked to him, hes a pretty cool guy. He demoed a couple of the different pieces of PMC hardware for us, connected them to a projector, ect. The whole time his agent was telling him he had to leave, but he just said "not yet."
Computers can make otherwise intelligent people stupid, much like slashdot.
Yeah I know. But then it wouldn't be a 1984 reference it would be a 2600 reference. If you talk about Jello Biafra are you referencing the old lead singer for the Dead Kennedys or are you referencing a food that Bill Cosby eats and a small starving African nation?
That's because no one gave a rat's ass what you have to say about anything, you, whiny, mincing nincompoop.
You successfully posted on Slashdot? Fucking amazing! WOW! Opposable thumbs and everything!
Not only that, but his apparent obsession with details of Microsoft internals was a little spooky:
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 similar Start (green) button and the UI is also very similar to the desktop Media Center. It is not a Media Center and doesn't belong to eHome.
Yikes! Now that's getting to know Microsoft up close and personal. This guy should know his audience and realize that few people care whether it's an eHome or a Windows Mobile device. They just care about what it is and how well it works.
After I read that I came to two conclusions: First that this guy is trolling for a job at Microsoft, and that's probably why he knows the division structure. Second, he's not likely to give an honest review of the device, because he really wants a job at Microsoft.
Much to his credit, though, I can pretty much guarantee that he gave an honest review because it's none too positive. I wouldn't say the piece is really worth reading because it's awfully long and rambling, but it does bring the point across.
Here's a portable media player that you can't use outdoors. It takes two hours to shove 14gb of media into the approved playback format. If you add a projection TV to it, you can use it to play back presentations as though it was a laptop, but a laptop would be hugely more versatile and not that much more difficult to carry. And if you use it as a portable hard drive, you have to copy your documents over to the mothership PC before you can edit them; it doesn't work like an iPod, which is a full-fledged portable hard drive.
In the end, he refused to compare it to an iPod because it's so different. It can play video as well as audio, but I found it interesting that he seemed to use it mostly as an audio player, despite having plenty of video material available. Does this vindicate Steve Jobs' contention that a portable video player is a silly thing?
I think a portable video player might be a useful thing for kids to use in the car, so I wouldn't dismiss this device entirely, especially since built-in in-car video's pretty expensive. But if even someone in love with the Microsoft Corporation doesn't see much of a use for this thing, I don't think I do either.
D