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August 4, 2005

New: Creative Zen Vision mp3 player

Creative has announced the Zen Vision MP3 player with a 3.7-inch SharpPix high-resolution 640x480 262,144-color screen for photo viewing and digital video playback. Featuring a transflective screen that provides excellent image and video quality even in bright sunlit conditions, the 30GB Zen Vision carries up to 15,000 songs, tens of thousands of photos, or up to 120 hours of video. Available in either pearl white or black, the Zen Vision measures 4.9x2.9x.8 inches and weighs only 8.4 ounces. It is available for pre-order for only US$399.99.

Personally, it's nice to see other alternatives for hard disk players that provide crisp looking screen. Although it's not the biggest capacity, what it looks to be good is in to be a contender in the portable video/mp3 arena. With support of modern codecs like DivX, Xvid, MWV, it's compatible with the majority of video/movies you can download with requiring a complex and time-consuming video recompression. 30 gbs is enough to even carry whole seasons and various movies.

It's memory slots are also handy, but not all users see it as a selling point. It's compatibility with the online services is proving to be a good thing also. Carrying around photos may not appeal to everyone, but if you can play video, it's certainly easy enough to display pictures too.

Read along for more info on what Creative announced.

"The Zen Vision is our most versatile and coolest-looking digital entertainment player ever," said Sim Wong Hoo, chairman and CEO of Creative.

"It supports download and subscription music services, photo transfer directly from a Compact Flash card or up to 17 variations of media through our optional Compact Flash Adapter. With the SharpPix technology, your digital photos can look even better than prints. Plus the Zen Vision supports video from TiVoToGo(TM) and popular Internet video formats including DivX(TM), so it's really easy and fun to enjoy your favorite music, photos and videos wherever you go."

The Zen Vision also supports music subscription services such as Yahoo! Music Unlimited and Napster to Go. The player also includes a built-in FM radio with 32 preset options, and FM recording.

Users can watch slide shows set to favorite music played through headphones, the built-in speaker on the face of the player, or by connecting speakers such as a Creative I-Trigue(R) 2.1 system.

The convenient Plug&View(TM) slot on the side of the player supports both Compact Flash Type I and Type II media. An optional Compact Flash Adapter plugs directly into the Compact Flash slot to accept the most popular memory card types including SmartMedia, MultiMedia Card and Secure Digital, 17 variations in all.

The Zen Vision supports a wide selection of video formats for enjoyment of movies downloaded from the Internet, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Simple Profile formats such as DivX and Xvid, WMV, and MJPEG. The Zen Vision also supports TiVoToGo, for viewing of TV content recorded on a TiVo personal video recorder, and digitized home movies transferred from the PC. Easy alphabetical scrolling enables quick access to movies and video files. The removable rechargeable battery provides up to 4.5 hours of video playback. Up to 120 hours of video can be stored on the player.

Additional Features
The large, bright screen of the Zen Vision displays a full menu to access music, pictures and video. In addition the intuitive menu accesses the following features:

= Built-in microphone -- shows volume levels on screen for optimum voice recording quality
= Organizer -- Provides calendar, tasks and contact lists, and syncs with Microsoft Outlook
= Extras -- Enables setting of Date & Time, plus allocation of Removable Disk space for dedicated storage
= Clock -- A clock with wake-to-any-music alarm, color themes and different languages for further customization

The Zen Vision connects to the PC via USB 2.0 for fast, easy transfer of content, and can also connect through an optional docking station for elegant freestanding display."

Posted by mp3fan at August 4, 2005 10:39 AM

Comments

VGA Screen, nice size, hard drive on the small side for photo / video but it looks like the best thing going. Nice job including the screen specs, I looked at 2 photo sites and all they said was high-res. I'm signing up for your email list.

Posted by: Steamboat Realtor at August 4, 2005 11:33 PM

This sounds so brilliant, I totally want one, but I read somewhere that the sound quality's not so hot-anyone got an opinion on this? It's an expensive gadget after all.

Posted by: Catie at November 30, 2005 4:37 AM