Creative - am i making a mistake!?

Mr Alan

i'm going to buy a 30Gb Creative Mp4.........am i making a mistake?!!?

lord lucan

No:d

dulpit

I don't own one, but 2 of my buddies do, its all sorts of class... 1 of the lads has a ton of videos, music videos and t.v. episodes etc, and the quality is great (if a bit small). And while i can't vouch for this, i've heard that the battery life is quite good... (better than an iPod anyways)

Bard

Presuming it's the Creative Zen Vision:M you're thinking of buying, by all accounts, you're onto a winner there. From what I've seen, it's a brilliant piece of kit. Go for it!

Ryaller

I've had one for a couple of weeks and it's fantastic. Almost fits my entire CD collection. The accessories pack is a must (cheapest place I saw them was HMV for €50) I can play .avis straight to the TV with the video cable - quality is surprisingly good.
Two downsides:- the stupid dongle that you have to stick on the bottom for everything from charging to transferral of data, and for using the video out etc. I can't see why this couldn't have been integrated to the Zen itself, 'cos if you lose this, you're screwed.
Also, the lack of compatible extras compared to the ubiquitous Ipod. I've been looking for a device similar to the itrip, and the selection is poor. I was hoping to find something neat, that connected straight to the bottom, but everything I've found seems to have tons of wires and chargers coming out of them. There seems to be only one docking station available also, the Z600. I was hoping to use the Zen as a hifi replacement, but the selection is pathetic compared to what's available for ipods.
Apart from this - they're great.

Mr Alan

cheers for the feedback folks, i picked it up at lunch time in dixons and cant wait to get it home!

run_Forrest_run

I just got the Creative Zen Vision:M 60Gb yesterday and I am chuffed with it so far. Sound quality is excellent (I use a very good pair of closed back Technics headphones, but sound still very good on the phones provided).

Things I don't like: Takes ages to fully charge via USB Port and if you want to charge from the mains U have to buy the mains adapter..more money!

It is not UMS compatible: Means U cannot just plug it into any PC and it will pick it up as a Universal Mass Storage device. You need to have the Creative software installed to be able to browse the device. You can however partition your Zen to have a part of it behave as a UMS device but then your player will not look at this partition for music etc..

<If I am wrong about any of the above please let me know!>

But with that said I am delighted with it and am already wondering how I ever lived without it!

Gran Hermano

run_Forrest_run wrote:

It is not UMS compatible: Means U cannot just plug it into any PC and it will pick it up as a Universal Mass Storage device. You need to have the Creative software installed to be able to browse the device.

I too am open to correction but it is my belief that if you have XP SP2
and Win Media Player 10 or 11 you do not need to install any additional
software. I know I just drag and drop files on to mine.


Be careful not to loose the white block for connecting the AV/USB/Power
leads.. last time I checked they were about €40!

I'm using one of these at the moment:
http://www.i-nique.co.uk/showdetails.asp?id=751 means I dont need the
white block/adaptor. You can also get AV cables that connect without the
white block.

Mr Alan

got mine yesterday . . . . . . i'm in love

dave oc

Lads check ebay for chargers and accessories. I got a wall charger for my vision m for €10 delivered.

Patricide

I was a creative guy for AGES, decided there to get an 80 gb i pod video........BIG MISTAKE.

The ipod itself is dandy, Itunes however is to put it mildly one of the banes of my life.God i miss creative media source.

Gran Hermano

I believe the resolution of video playback on a TV from the Ipod video is
a lot less than the resolution you get from the Zen M. It was a BIG factor
for me as I use the Zen a lot for watching Divx on the TV. I still use
my Iriver with Rockbox for most of my music but the Zen is great for
watching downloaded tv and vids. There is also talk on epizenter and
anythingbutipod about replacing the drives in the Zen M with larger
capacity drives... now to get a 100gb plus HDD in mine

Plus I'd never use Itunes at all... not even if Apple paid me!
Lemon is much better for podcasts.

cooperguy

Definatly not

Gran Hermano

cooperguy wrote:

Definatly not

Definitely not what?

If you talking about resolution on the TV
the Zen supports NTSC and PAL up to 720x576 output to a T.V.
whilst the Ipod only supports video up to 320x240 (unless a
very recent firmware on the Ipod has improved this).

http://dapreview.net/zune_vs_ipod_vs_zvm.html

mikeruurds

Creative all the way! I just bought my wife a Vision M 30GB and got myself a V Plus 4GB for the gym.

Mr Alan

love my zen to bits, but have to admit its started giving me a little trouble- see my other post on this page outlining the problems!

dulpit

millersangel wrote:

love my zen to bits, but have to admit its started giving me a little trouble- see my other post on this page outlining the problems!

em... where?

Nephew

Was kind of impressed with my sisters 30gb so I just ordered the new slim 60gb version as I wanted a pocket friendly, 60 or 80gb mp3/divx player, and well there wasn't any other decent options tbh.

Having owned two excellent Archos mp3 players, gmini400 and av500, I must say transferring files on the Vision M is rather ****, you can't do multiple transfers, its slow for usb2, and copying stuff off it to a pc requires a bit of googling.

Overall its pretty good value, buy a wall charger because it takes 6 hours to fully charge via usb.

muckwarrior

Gran Hermano wrote:

I too am open to correction but it is my belief that if you have XP SP2
and Win Media Player 10 or 11 you do not need to install any additional
software. I know I just drag and drop files on to mine.

Yep that's right. Actually only realised it meself recently.

lodgepole

run_Forrest_run wrote:

It is not UMS compatible: Means U cannot just plug it into any PC and it will pick it up as a Universal Mass Storage device. You need to have the Creative software installed to be able to browse the device. You can however partition your Zen to have a part of it behave as a UMS device but then your player will not look at this partition for music etc..

I know it works straight out of the box with Vista, you can access the drive directly or use WMP11 to sync or manually transfer music.

Mr Alan

dulpit wrote:

em... where?

meant that i have a seperate thread in this forum that i put up yesterday!