Commodore 30 GB Multi Media Player PMC30 - Any Good?

hamrog

Hi,

I've seen a few posts here from people who have bought the Commodore Multi-media player. How do you find it? Would you recommend it?

Bard

I didn't think there was such a thing as 'Commodore' any more...???

Have you any links to more info about this device?

fuse

It was on ibood last week....
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055072077

Dave!

Anyone selling one of these?

neacy69

I got one from Ibood last week and i thinks its brilliant so far. Play most formats incl divx but only some xvids. video playback has been very good with excellent battery life.
there is a review here
http://www.xtremecomputing.co.uk/review.php?id=259

EDIT thats the wrong link trying to find the right one....ok corrected it

mawk

yeah it seems pretty much happy out but ive had zero luck playing xvids. i tried a bunch of them and no avail. just a green screen and a crashed player. but I "legally procured through propper channels" a copy of the divx converter and once I ..slowly.. converted all the xvids its been happy out.

tv is perfect and its acceptable as a music player. photo viewer may even be used at some point.

only problem is that its a brick.

more of a cavity block maybe..

bittihuduga

tv out not working
doesnt play most of my videos in avi format

Dingatron

Very happy with mine. Yes I've had a few problems but after converting to divx have had no problems. TV in/out great. Screen is nice and clear although 16:9 or the ability to Pan and Scan would be nice. Yes there is the odd niggle here and there but for <€99?> The gui could be a bit more intuitive i.e. when I select => Video I don't need to have to scroll down past Audio Photo etc. Recorded CSI off 5 last night and watched it later using TV out and the quality was grand. I will be recording all my HI8 videos through it next week which is handy.

jArgHA

could someone tell me:

a. what is the approximate battery life when fully charged for watching video?
b. does this player not support xvid? do you need to convert to divx?

if the player really doesnt support xvid i would be very reluctant to buy it.

jAH

edit: has anyone tried unpacking an xvid which did not work on the pmp? my philips dvd/divx player only runs xvids properly after i 'unpack' them using a tool called MPEG4Modifier.exe (there's a link on www.videohelp.com). maybe xvids which have packed bitsreams simply need to be unpacked before they will play properly on the pmp..

Dingatron

a. what is the approximate battery life when fully charged for watching video?

Approx battery life is 5hrs+

b. does this player not support xvid? do you need to convert to divx?

if the player really doesnt support xvid i would be very reluctant to buy it.

Video support: MPEG 4/DivX 5.0/WMV9

xvid is not mentioned in the specs although some people have had some sucess with xvid some have not. I'm not sure what the difference between the xvid files were although I think someone mentioned possible audio encoding maybe?

edit: has anyone tried unpacking an xvid which did not work on the pmp?

I have an xvid file that didn't play so I may try this if I've some time on my hands. Details of the file are:
Video Codec: XVID
Frame Rate: 25.0
Video Size: 704 X 400

Scruff

jArgHA wrote:

edit: has anyone tried unpacking an xvid which did not work on the pmp? my philips dvd/divx player only runs xvids properly after i 'unpack' them using a tool called MPEG4Modifier.exe (there's a link on www.videohelp.com). maybe xvids which have packed bitsreams simply need to be unpacked before they will play properly on the pmp..

tried that, in so far as i didnt tick the pack box. didnt work.

Gran Hermano

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
Have a go at installing Super and using it to convert the
video that will not play into a format the player does support.

Whilst recoding from one lossy format to another is never ideal, you
should have no problems if you drop the file into Super and
output it into one of the Divx formats your player supports.

bittihuduga

bittihuduga wrote:

tv out not working
doesnt play most of my videos in avi format

TV out is working fine for me atlast...

Dingatron

Nice one. What was it in the end?

Had a go at SUPER last nite as I have 15 mpeg films that won't play on the PMP so the batch feature is handy. Tried to convert them from mpeg => divx5 but the player didn't like it. I'll give it another go today maybe. Anyone recommend any other 'free' converters out there?

Scruff

Have you tried the one that came on the cd? Thats been worrking fine for me.

mal1

Dingatron wrote:

Nice one. What was it in the end?

Had a go at SUPER last nite as I have 15 mpeg films that won't play on the PMP so the batch feature is handy. Tried to convert them from mpeg => divx5 but the player didn't like it. I'll give it another go today maybe. Anyone recommend any other 'free' converters out there?

I have been using SUPER to convert mpeg films to divx5 and all the converted films have been playing fine on the PMP.

Dingatron

Scruff wrote:

Have you tried the one that came on the cd? Thats been worrking fine for me.

Unfortunately it doesn't play well with Vista.

neacy69

What are the advantages of upgrading the firmware on the player?

Nunu

When playing music through the audio files, on all tracks the audio jams for about 3 secs when a songs just finishing before playing out the last couple of secs and moving on to the next track.

Anyone any ideas how to resolve this - I've never heard of this problem on any player before. I really don't want to have to send it back for repaair or whatever because I'm off travelling in 2 weeks for the summer and bought this for that specific reason!

Techless

I must have lost the original cd that came with this, where would I be able to get the drivers I need to install this ?

Dingatron

Wow I remeber this old thread. As far as I remember the cd only contains windows media player?? Shouldn't need anything asuming your usng XP/Vista at least.

neacy69

Anybody know where I could pick up a replacement battery for this?
And maybe a bigger HDD on the cheap?

mine is still going strong although the battery seems to have packed in as I only got 30 mins video off it last night.....oh and the screen has turned upside down...oh and I had to open it a few times to reconnect the battery
other than that its been great and all for free