Creative Has A Zen Vision
August 03, 2005 | by Nino Marchetti
New portable video player from MP3 player manufacturer and Sound Blaster company Creative brings a nice LCD, 30GB hard drive and small form factor to the PVP party.
There's a hot new portable video player out from Creative today. The Zen Vision, priced at $399.99, is available for pre-order at Creative's website.
The Zen Vision, said Creative, features a 30GB hard drive and comes in white or black. It offers up a 3.7" high-resolution color LCD for photo viewing and video playback. Among the many features the Zen Vision offers, the list includes MP3 and WMA/WMA-DRM audio file playback, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV, MJPEG and TivoToGo video file playback, JPEG picture display, a built-in FM radio with recording feature, a Compact Flash card slot, USB 2.0 support, built-in microphone for voice recording, personal information organizer and a multi-function alarm clock.
Measurements on this portable video player come in at 4.9" x 2.9" x 0.8" with a weight of 8.4 ounces. The standard rechargeable battery is capable of playing up to 13 hours of music or 4.5 hours of video.
"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."
Post Your Comment...Comments
RX8 on Aug 5th, 2005 at 12:02 AM:
Yeah no way this thing should support RAW formats. I was thinking about purchasing the Palm Lifedrive for its media capabilities, but the Zen Vision fits my needs a little better. Lets just hope Creative made this thing correctly, their Zen micro is full of flaws and bugs.
Finker on Aug 8th, 2005 at 6:28 AM:
You cannot really compare palmtops with that thing. Take resolution: Palm -320x480, Zen -640x480 Take color count: 65,000 for Palm, 262,000 for Zen. Finally: harddrive - Zen has 30gigHD not 4...IMHO this new Zen is #1 for multimedia. But go to their website, check features, make your own well informed decision...
http://www.creative.com/products/pmp/
RX8 on Aug 8th, 2005 at 4:07 PM:
Well I agree, but up until now there hasn't been a device with the storage the Vision has, so I was thinking of the LifeDrive as a subsitute. Now that might be chaning.
I just hope Creative doesn't mess this one up with buggy software.
Charles Chang on Sep 1st, 2005 at 2:39 PM:
Everything sounds great. It would be even better with a line-in port, and have the video resolution play 640x480 and not 320x240 (pictures only support 640x480). Also, what would top it all off would be the capabilities to play some limited games.
Ian Bell on Sep 9th, 2005 at 10:51 AM:
We just added the user review page here: http://reviews.designtechnica.com/review3129.html
So if you have experience with this player, please post it there so others can read it before buying.
Ian Bell on Sep 9th, 2005 at 3:10 PM:
I just preordered the Vision and will post a review on the site as soon as I get it!
djayrage on Oct 3rd, 2005 at 1:55 PM:
I just ordered mine as well. I'll also try and post a review as soon as it arrives and I have a few days to play with it.
fungku on Oct 4th, 2005 at 10:23 AM:
Review is up at http://reviews.designtechnica.com/review3129.html
djayrage on Oct 16th, 2005 at 3:40 AM:
There's not much more info that I can offer that the million and 1 reviews out there don't already offer, but I can say that any video's (dvd's) that you may want to rip to the device definitly require patience, the screen can only be viewed from certain STRICT angles, and there is no proper carrying case or screen protector, otherwise no complains. I do appreciate the fact that I can delete any media from the device without having to do so from a PC, and after dropping the device accidentlly a few times (yeah I'm clumsy)I'm impressed by the fact that the device is still working perfectly (unlike other hard drive based devices, included older Creative devices). The vision is worth it's asking price, period.
Alvin on Dec 30th, 2005 at 9:03 PM:
To the person wondering what the screen resolution was, it's a VGA LCD screen at 640 x 480 resolution. For a 3.7" screen, that's pretty darn good.
Peter on Jan 27th, 2006 at 7:16 AM:
Anybody seen the screen side by side with the archos V500?
fungku on Jan 27th, 2006 at 10:34 AM:
not side by side with an archos, but I have seen it side by side with an iPod Video. The iPod video has a much better viewing angle, but the zen's screen is obviously bigger.
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Steamboat Blog on Aug 4th, 2005 at 9:23 PM:
Creative may have a winner here, size check, industrial design check, storage marginal but passable ... I need more details. What is the screen resolution? Will it display RAW formats? Give it up gang, I've been holding off buying more CF for the right photo storage / viewer product is this it?