About a month ago a friend of mine asked me what I thought of portable video players…I basically said that IMO they aren’t worth the price because of several flaws…

1. Confusing/slow menus
2. Bad Video Quality
3. Poor battery life
4. Price

Anyway, I found out that Ecost had the Go Video Personal Video Player/Recorder for $99. It includes 128mb of internal memory (most others have 20 GB) and has an SD expansion. MSRP $299.99. I figured for $99 it was worth a shot.

In a nutshell this one differs from most because it has no internal speaker or huge hard drive. I found a free program, PocketDivXEncoder, that makes AVI files of DVDs. Each 2 hour DVD takes about 30-45 minutes to encode. I did a 4 hour movie at worst quality and it took up 205 MB. The quality of the video was a bit better then webcam but was certainly viewable from arms length away. Keep in mind this is worst quality…a basic movie would be about 100MB at this quality giving you at least one movie on the internal.

This also plays Mp3s, nothing special about that. It can also record from any AV source with the included RCA cables. It can also display any RCA source, so you can use it as a portable screen for your PS2, I guess.

The screen is 3.5” and the battery lasts about 2-2.5 hours with video and about double with MP3s and the screen shut. It can record 2 hours of video internally.

Included is a unique stap that doubles as a stand (see pics) and a leather case that flips up to reveal the screen (magnetically bound).

Overall, worth $99 IMO if you have SD cards already (256 mimimum), not so sure if its worth it otherwise since 1GB SD cards run about another $115 or so.

Oh, one more thing, its about the size of a deck of cards, thinner, and very light. Def. a portable unit. I guess I will be able to catch movies in between classes and such…i’ll load 128MB of mp3s on the internal, and put my movies on the SD.

Before I got rid of my Clie I did watch my Simpsons and some movies on the unit, so I guess i’m used to the small screen, for newbies it might be a bit weird. I would double check the return policy before buying.

Erik

guess its worth what you paid for the unit. have you try watching movies/videos on your treo 600? the quality is acceptable but can’t compare to the ux50..

Yes I tried and failed. I couldn’t find a decent player and when I did I ran into encoding issues. To top it off, you need an adapter to use the headset, so i’d rather not. Plus, I dont want to kill the battery, I need it for the phone/pda more then entertainment.

Erik

Using flash instead of a mechanical HD certainly helps with battery life. :D

Before you hit me with the standard “capacity” backlash, flash is getting there.

I’m getting visions of Herbert Hoover saying in 1933 that “prosperity is just around the corner.”

I’m getting visions of Herbert Hoover saying in 1933 that “prosperity is just around the corner.”

About 15 yrs later, it was….... I don’t think we will wait that long for flash to be a big player in the ‘boot drive’ segment. 

(linc, you might want to fire up the popcorn.  I’ve got a major hurricane off my coast and a lot of spare time. :D )

I’m getting visions of Herbert Hoover saying in 1933 that “prosperity is just around the corner.”

About 15 yrs later, it was….... I don’t think we will wait that long for flash to be a big player in the ‘boot drive’ segment. 

(linc, you might want to fire up the popcorn.  I’ve got a major hurricane off my coast and a lot of spare time. :D )

Think about it, they want $299 for a 128mb player, for $399 you can get a 20GB player…if mine wasn’t on sale and I had extra SD cards, I would have been stupid to buy it.

It will be a while before flash will be in contention.

Erik

For those interested I just did Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (best movie of all time) which is 1:42 long…on the next to highest quality setting it took up 220MB and is flawless in sound and video, VHS quality or better.

Very happy with the purchase and using the free software to encode works really well. I should mention for commercial DVDs you need to decrypt it, I used DeCSS…so each movie takes about 1.5 hours from start to finish to decrypt and encode…a bit long, but if you do all your movies one by one, it will go by quickly…

1 DVD down…350+ more to go…

Erik

[quote author=“tifosiv122”]1 DVD down…350+ more to go…

have fun..  :shock:

[quote author=“linc”][quote author=“tifosiv122”]1 DVD down…350+ more to go…

have fun..  :shock:

Thank you, 2 down…349+ more to go…lol

I can’t wait for it to just be + more to go…

Erik

[quote author=“tifosiv122”]For those interested I just did Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (best movie of all time) which is 1:42 long…on the next to highest quality setting it took up 220MB and is flawless in sound and video, VHS quality or better.

Very happy with the purchase and using the free software to encode works really well. I should mention for commercial DVDs you need to decrypt it, I used DeCSS…so each movie takes about 1.5 hours from start to finish to decrypt and encode…a bit long, but if you do all your movies one by one, it will go by quickly…

1 DVD down…350+ more to go…

Erik

As an aside, how do they look on the TR, full-screen? If the quality is decent you could get get 4-5 movies on a 1GB memory stick.

[quote author=“dbs”][quote author=“tifosiv122”]For those interested I just did Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (best movie of all time) which is 1:42 long…on the next to highest quality setting it took up 220MB and is flawless in sound and video, VHS quality or better.

Very happy with the purchase and using the free software to encode works really well. I should mention for commercial DVDs you need to decrypt it, I used DeCSS…so each movie takes about 1.5 hours from start to finish to decrypt and encode…a bit long, but if you do all your movies one by one, it will go by quickly…

1 DVD down…350+ more to go…

Erik

As an aside, how do they look on the TR, full-screen? If the quality is decent you could get get 4-5 movies on a 1GB memory stick.

Prob. bad…they are encoded at 320xXXX

Erik

Yeah, twice that might be watchable.