Anyone here have a Cowon O2?

J-blk

And if so, how do you find throwing various .mkv files at it? It's kind of hard to tell from the various reviews how it does with them...

pleasant Co.

I have.

Its pretty much a POS.

Awful GUI, poor SQ...but

great battery life and xvid support..

mkv support is pretty much non existant...you'd need to be using simple profile avc for mkv to work but what can you expect, most mkv encodes are extremely cpu intensive, even on new systems..

J-blk

Thanks - not the news I was hoping for, but at least it saves me finding out the hard way . I was only interested in the .mkv support of the player and not much else, so if it's that bad, it's a non-starter for me...

pleasant Co.

Well if you want me to test a specific vid i'd be more than willing to. Of course the O2 is Fat32 formatted so the file would have to be smaller than 4gb...

I don't think there is any PMP out yet that is powerful enough to playback x264 HP, or even x264 MP...x264 SP seems to be supported (but in that case you are nearly better off using xvid)

J-blk

Thanks. I was thinking more along the lines of TV shows "readily available" in .mkv, which are mostly anywhere between 600MB to 1.1GB in size but I don't think any of those use SP x264 - I was thinking I might be able to use the O2 to play .mkv on an HDTV with good results, because why would it matter on the built-in screen - Xvid would be fine there - but I think a dedicated streamer may work better, something like Western Digital's new unit:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/01/western-digital-quietly-intros-wd-tv-hd-media-player/

I just was hopeful I could combine it with a PMP/DAP, since I hate converting stuff for my iPods/iPhone...

Other than .mkv, do you find most Dvix/Xvid stuff works without conversion, even if the audio is 5.1 (regardless if the Cowon downmixes it to the stereo or not)? Would the S9 match the O2 on Dvix/Xvid performance - if you have any idea of that?

pleasant Co.

I haven't tried a 5.1 mix yet...i'll look into that and get back to you in a couple of days...maybe tomorrow, but we'll have to see just how much I end up drinking tonight..i've yet to convert any of my divx/xvid stuff though and as far as I am aware the S9 will play any divx/xvid up to PAL DVD res, I think it can go higher but it gets stuttery (unfortunately I haven't gotten an S9 yet to test that).

A deadicated streamer might be a good option...or wait and see what happens with a possible new mac mini...?

J-blk

No worries, but if you do test any 5.1 Dvix/Xvid movies, I'd love to know if they work ok or not. I'll be definitely getting a new Mac Mini if one is released soon, but I still wanted some kind of smaller streaming solution for holidays, etc so the WD unit might still be on the cards... I also am considering a PMP for Dvix/Xvid, as I am sick and tired of converting stuff for iPods - I've never owned a Cowon, but have always heard fairly good things about them and they do seem to have "kitchen sink" support for most codecs. Too bad .mkv doesn't really work, but that's not surprising given the x264 files usually packaged within them...

pleasant Co.

As expected 5.1 was a no go...the Cowon O2 is really a bare bones PMP, one of the poorest things Cowon have released in years.

J-blk

Thanks for the replies. Seems I'll have to look at something else then, even for DivX/Xvid - possibly one of Cowon's other products. Not too keen on Archos and there's not much else with half-decent codec support I think...