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Creative Zen 20 GB Portable Media Center
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Computers & Accessories > Creative Labs > Item 9
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Creative Zen 20 GB Portable Media Center
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by Creative Labs
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List Price: $499.99
$349.99
At Amazon
on 11-16-2008.
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Features
Watch up to 85 hours of movies, recorded TV or home videos
Store and listen to over 9,000 songs
Carry and enjoy tens of thousands of photos; Up to 7 hours of video and up to 22 hours of music
Large, high resolution 3.8" TFT LCD Screen
Removable rechargeable battery for up to 7 hours of video or 22 hours of music
Product Description
The Creative Zen Portable Media Center is the ultimate portable player for audio and visual entertainment. Watch up to 85 hours of video, listen to over 9,000 songs and view tens of thousands of photos. Its intuitive Microsoft interface offers familiar, fast and easy access to all your favorite digital media and gives you the freedom to take it with you anywhere. Watch it, listen to it, share it or show it off - As the flag ship of the Zen family of portable media products, the Zen Portable Media Center truly delivers an unparalleled audiovisual experience for people on the go. Movies, TV, music and photos can be enjoyed on the Zen's bright 3.8-inch color screen, through high quality headphones or its built-in speaker. You can even connect your Zen to external entertainment systems to sharedigital media with friends and family. This powerhouse entertainment player is housed in a compact and sleek design that is truly mobile. The Creative Zen Portable Media Center's rechargeable Li-Ion battery is removable, which means you can carry a spare battery and have many more hours of digital entertainment at your fingertips. Plus, Zen connects to your computer with a USB 2.0 port, giving you high-speed transfer for all your media. Zen supports all popular audio, video and picture formats including MP3, WMA, WMV and JPG. And, because it supports Windows Media Audio with DRM, the Zen Portable Media Center works will all popular download music services. You now have all your home entertainment wherever you go - experience the new wave of digital entertainment with Zen.
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
I've had a few days to play with a Zen Portable Media Center because a friend of mine, who's the owner, had trouble getting content loaded. The Creative support folks were friendly, but clueless on this very newly released product. Since I'm his technology guru, he asked me to show him how to get it working. The Zen is about the size of a paperback novel. It's small but is too large to carry in your pocket. It comes in a nice case the folds nicely into a simple stand. This let's you set the Zen on a table or airline tray-table while using it. My first impression when I turn it on is that UI is a clone from XP Media Center Edition (which is Microsoft's Media Center PC OS). I own a couple of XP Media Center PC's so found the UI very familiar and intuitive. However, my first reaction was the navigation and play back controls were reversed. I've had a couple of other folks who played with the Zen make the same comment. Perhaps the UI control layout was designed by a lefty (I'm right handed) or perhaps they were XBox users (many XBox games use the left thumb for naviagation). It's a minor nit in any case. To load content on the Zen you must load Windows Media Player 10 which was just released from Microsoft. Clearly Microsoft wants to get into the content management market and is trying to "one up" the iPod and iTunes by supporting not only audio but video. However Windows Media Player 10 was where my friend had difficulty. He was not able to figure out the new quirks of the substantially changed Windows Media Player UI. To load new content you must have the Zen plugged in, be in the Sync tab, and then create "play lists" of video, audio and picture contents that you want synced. Once the "play list" is created then the content can be synced to the Zen. It's not hard, but it's a bit of a stretch to call that a play list. Once you've start the sync process you can prepare to wait... and wait... and wait some more. TV shows saved in XP MCE can be added to the "play list" and synced, however they must be converted to a WMA file that is compatible with the Zen. This takes about the same amount of time as the play time of the show. A half hour show takes about a half hour to convert and download, an hour show takes an hour and so on. Also, TV shows that I downloaded from my XP MCE machine had the colors goofed up. It was sort of like watching the film negative of the TV show. I suspect that's something that will get fixed in a software update (and is not a significant issue for my friend since he doesn't care about TV content). My friend really wants to load DVD movies for long plane trips (he owns them and doesn't want to pay for them again to download them to his Zen). So this is where I went to work. My first attempt to load a movie was using a product called "DVD To Pocket PC" by Makayama. It is suppose to convert DVD's directly to wma files for Pocket PC's and is suppose to work for the Zen. I tried the trial version and was initially unsuccessful (presumably because XP SR2 was installed). I ended up trying it on a non XP SR2 machine and it worked well. Since the application is fairly turnkey, it's probably a good choice for moving content from DVD's you own to your Zen. Next I tried Dr. Divx. This application can convert unencrypted DVD's to Divx avi files. This worked for me (though it took a few tries to get the hang of it), however it's not nearly as turnkey as "DVD To Pocket PC". Also, Divx conversion takes awhile (somewhere between 2-4 hours for a full length movie). Be sure to use one of the portable formats because the Zen has a limited bit rate it can support. I had a little trouble getting the aspect ratio right, but a few tries resolved this too. Once the movie is converted then you must go to Windows Media Player 10, put it in a "play list" and sync it with the Zen. This takes awhile, but is worth the wait. The movies look and play great. Having used it for a day or so I have a wish list of features that the Zen doesn't have (nothing here is a killer problem, but would make a good product even better). * It needs parental control - I'd like to protect some content from my kids. Currently there is no way to do this. * I'd like visualization plug-ins when listening to music. * Since it's used during travel, a travel alarm clock feature would be very nice. Pros: * The player sounds good, the UI is great, and the size is very convenient, and the features are fantastic. Cons: * It's a bit pricey * Moving TV content was only partially successful from my XP MCE machine (though I suspect this will get fixed), moving content is very time consuming and is probably something you want to do over night. * It's not really a direct replacement for an iPod (it's too darn big). Though that's not really a fair criticism of the Zen because it's not intended to directly replace the iPod All in all, this is an impressive product, even considering this is V1.0 of the software management (WMP 10), and the hardware, and the firmware. .
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Creative Zen 20 GB Portable Media Center
Available from Amazon
Price: $349.99
Updated on 11-16-2008.
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