Jason Dunn
08-13-2002, 06:00 PM
Colorgraphic was the first company to have a VGA out card that was compatible with Windows CE – they had early drivers for HPC devices. When the iPAQ PCMCIA sleeve came out, this product was on everyone’s radar scope: all they needed was drivers. After what seemed like an eternity, Colorgraphic released their first Pocket PC drivers. They followed up with a cutting-edge CompactFlash card the addressed some of the major limitations of their previous PCMCIA product – namely the 8-bit colour. Now, armed with a card that can do three resolutions (640 x 480, 800 x 600, and 1024 x 768) and either 8-bit or 16-bit colour (depending on resolution), Colorgraphic has continued their tradition of blazing a trail with mobile device video out products.<!><br /><br /><b><span>Take a Trip With Voyager</span></b><br /><span>Un-published PocketPC.com article originally written April 21st, 2002.</span><br /><br /><b><span>Device Requirements</span></b><br />The Voyager Type 1 design will work with any Pocket PC that has a CompactFlash slot.<br /><br /><b><span>What’s Hot</span></b><br />The Colorgraphic Voyager VGA card offers mobile workers the ability to give presentations, without a laptop, using a projector, a monitor, or even a television screen.<br /><br /><b><span>Languages Supported</span></b><br />English<br /><br /><b><span>Where to Buy</span></b><br />The Colorgraphic card can be purchased from <a href="http://www.handheldcanada.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=H&Product_Code=MS0032&Category_Code=DC&Affiliate=ppcthoughts">HandHeld Canada for US $158</a>.<br /><br /><b><span>An innovative solution</span></b><br />When Colorgraphic created the new CompactFlash Voyager card, they obviously wanted to expand the possibilities of what a card like this could be used for. Pocket PCs were far more portable than a laptop, so where else might a person take it and do presentations? By adding the ability to present on a TV set, users were given a wider range of choices. Not everyone has a $5000 projector, but almost everyone has a TV set.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/articles/JD-702-fig1.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 1: The Voyager bundle</i><br /><br /><br />The bundle from Colorgraphic is quite basic: CD-ROM with software drivers, a PCMCIA adaptor so you can use the card in a laptop or a PCMCIA-equipped Pocket PC, and the card with integrated cable (Figure 1).<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/articles/JD-702-fig2.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 2: An innovative connector</i><br /><br />The connector head of the Voyager card is an impressive feat of engineering – unlike other competing products which are based on external cables that you might lose, the Voyager card has three video output jacks: VGA (for monitors or projectors), S-Video (a high-quality TV output), and composite (a lower-quality TV output, but offers more compatibility). Offering flexibility like this is great – with the composite video output, you could connect the Voyager to a VCR and record your Pocket PC screen taps for training others!<br /><br /><b><span>Simple, but flexible</span></b><br />The software bundle with the Voyager is very simple: it comes with Voyager Shadow, which enables you to output the video signal from your Pocket PC. Whatever you do on the screen, it will be send out to the VGA card – this makes it useful for training, demonstrations, etc. Figure 3 shows some of the options – it will work with both NTSC TV signals (North American) and PAL TV signals (Europe). You have a choice of several TV resolutions (as shown in Figure 3).<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/articles/JD-702-fig3.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 3: Plentiful options for VGA output</i><br /><br /><br /><b><span>Image output quality</span></b><br />The image output quality of the Voyager to a VGA monitor was great – crisp edges, nice colour range, and bright images. I looked at several photos, and they looked excellent. I also fired up Conduit’s Pocket Slides and the images and text looked the same as with other cards. The VGA output has three resolutions (described in the introduction), and all look excellent. The 8-bit color in 1024 x 768 mode is a little lacking however – I suggest sticking to 800 x 600 resolution at 16-bit colour when using a presentation with photos. The S-Video TV output was great, although TV output overall suffered from a few issues described below.<br /><br /><b><span>Gotchas</span></b><br />There were a few issues I noticed with the card:<br /><br />• When using the S-Video output on my 50” Hitachi TV set, the “stretch to fit” function pushed it off the screen. And since there’s no way to adjust the display from the Pocket PC (unlike what the LifeView FlyJacket offers), I couldn’t use this feature<br />• The composite video signal when displayed on a TV looked quite bad, with distortions in the display – stick to S-Video when hooking up to a TV set<br />• The image on my TV was stretched a little vertically – it didn’t constrain itself to the proper aspect ratio, so photos looked a little odd<br />• When the Voyager Shadow is running, the entire Pocket PC becomes very sluggish and slow to respond. This has a significant impact on any form of presentation software – the transitions that would normally be smooth aren’t because the CPU is working so hard on the Shadow program. This is a significant limitation – stick to presentation software that will allow you to de-activate the transitions (like Pocket Slides)<br /><br /><br /><b><span>Conclusion</span></b><br />The Voyager is a great tool for mobile warriors. They recently announced plans to ship <a href="http://www.westtek.com/clearvue.htm">Westtek’s ClearVue suite</a> with all their cards, which will be a great benefit for Voyager owners. If they can fix up the Voyager Shadow so it doesn’t slow down the Pocket PC so much, they’ll have a superb product. As it stands now, this is still a great card as long as you can live with the limitations.