The macro Media Center

Author's Rating:

Pros: Battery life, speaker, Screen

Cons: Size. Lacks features from the full media center. Bundle is not good

The Bottom Line: 
If you want a Macro Media Center, get this device.

Author's Review
Why I chose this player:
I got this player as my Creative Labs Zen NX can't play MSN music DRM protected, so when I saw this PMC for $199.00, I said GREAT! But ZipzoomFly will not shop to PR, so I had to get it from Newegg.com for 229.00. :-(

What’s in the Box?
Portable Media Center
Creative Labs Ear buds
Cinema Now 2 free movies add
Creative Labs manual
Microsoft Portable media center manual
Protective case

The Interface :
This device, as the name says, is like its big brother, Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (you can see my review about it). Some of the things from Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 are in the Portable Media Center, such as My Music, My Photos, and My Videos, some of the things are changed, like My TV, and some of the things don't exist, like Radio. I will tell you what each thing has, and what has changed.

My TV
My TV, which is the first option in both XP MCE and the Portable Media Center. However, you can't watch live TV, as this device doesn't have a TV tuner. In other to watch TV, you have to have a TV tuner in your PC, preferably XP MCE. However, if you don't have XP MCE, your TV files will go to My Videos, as they will not be in .msdvr format. However, you can overcome this problem by accessing the device from My Computer the, and moving the TV files from my Videos, to My TV. This device does not use MSDVR, like XP MCE, it uses WMV video format up to 800Kbs quality (however, the quality is fine at that bit-rate for the small screen, but if you want to show it on a but screen, I recommend that you copy the file to your PC, and have a nViDiA Pure Video {ATI Avivo sucks!} capable card to make the video look great.) So that means that you will have to down convert the videos, which, if you have a slow PC, will take a long time to do. Like on the full XP MCE, you have that 30 sec. FF and 10 sec. RW, but it's not changeable.
One other missing feature, you can't watch TV and look at something else, like photos or the TV show list, or to make a long sentence short, this device doesn't have PiP capability (and this goes for Video as well). One last comment on My TV, this comes with 4 TV programs, however the only one that I remember is, The Incredible Hulk

My Music:
My Music is very like the My Music on XP MCE. However, there are some differences, such as it starts by showing you the artist, rather than the album and album art. However, you can change the first page by using the left and right arrow keys that are on the player. You can tell it to start up in Artist, Album, Portable Playlist, or Genre. But if you use album art, the pictures are very small. You can select which Album, artist, or genre you want to play, and to some extent, which track, however, this device does not support that repeat one track only, when it finishes one track, it will go to the next track, so if you want to listen to the same track over and over, you will have to add that track to the portable playlist. That also brings up another flaw in the Portable Media Center; you can only have one Portable playlist. Yes, you herd that right, ONE PLAYLIST! Even the older Creative Labs Zen NX player supports all the playlist that you need. However, luckily, the firmware can be upgraded, so if MS ever makes more playlist available, you will be able to upgrade. Another limitation is that you can't play only some albums from an artist, you have to play one or all, and also, you can't combine artist, albums, or genres. When playing the music, you can look at album art, the track list, or the track name and time. It also comes with 5 preset equalizer settings. Oh yeah, and one last thing, this player comes with only 3 songs,
Etta James; At Last,
Johnny Cash; Men in Black (The Very Best Of Johnny Cash); I Walk the Line, and
KC and the Sunshine band; The Best of KC & the Sunshine Band; Get down tonight.

My Photos:
Remember that you can play a slide show and play music with your media player you PC? Or you can even have the album art display with the photos and track info in XP MCE? You can still do that in the Portable Media Center. What you have to do in order to do that is:
1: Go to My Music, and select the music you want
2: Start playing the music
3: Go to My Pictures to show off your images. It's that easy!
This player supports only JPG photos, you can't put gifs, or the player will say, "The item is missing or corrupt, check the help file on your PC." To add photos, it is a little different than with Music, Videos, or TV. For photos, you plug in the device, and then you add the photos to the device via My Computer (or Windows Explorer, whichever you prefer.) You can add folders to the player to organize the photos, like if you have summer vacation photos, you can add a folder titled; "Summer vacation in Santa Clara, California", then you add your photos to that folder, and when you open the player, you will see the folder on your Portable Media Center, and your photos within it. So the My Photos area has not changed a lot, however, there is one change, and that is that you don't see thumbnails on the folders.

My Videos:
The My Videos area is kind of like the My TV area, so this section will not be so long. Like the My TV, the quality is quite good on that small screen, but it doesn't look as good on a ol' analog 640X480, much less on your nice 720P HD screen. OK, let's get to the facts. For my videos, you still have the 800K video limit, and you still have to convert the video. Like the full XP MCE, you have the 30 second fast forward, and 10 second reverse. However, you can't change the FF or RW speed, like you can in XP MCE.

Settings,
The last option in the menu is the settings option. In this menu, you can change the settings like the brightness, to display the out as NTSC or PAL, and check how much space you have.

Size :
This device is MASSIVE; it won’t fit in my pocket with the case. This brings another point, the case DOES NOT HAVE A BELT CLIP. I don't know why CL didn't add a belt clip, but they didn't. This device also is heavy, but not so heavy that it will tire you out, but it's no I-Pod.

Sound :
The speaker is excellent, however, it is not very loud, so you really need to crank up the volume, and there is no way that you will be able to use it in a noisy place with the speaker, you will need the ear buds or a headphone.

The Display
The LCD monitor is very nice and very large; however, the video chip is a tad bit slow, as the video can stutter sometimes. The color quality is quite good, however. In the settings menu, you can set the brightness of the screen from 1 to 5, 3 being the default, however, there in not much difference between the brightness settings.

Rant's and Raves:
The buttons have a cheep plastic feel to them, but they work well, however I would have preferred that they used soft rubber keys like on the media center remote. The PMC has some missing features, such as FM radio or deleting media.

The bottom line:
If you want a macro media center, I recommend it for $250 or less.