PC World Test Drives Creative Zen Vision

[Kent Pribbernow]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/000812.html' target='_blank'>http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/000812.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"I did experience some quirks with video playback, the most irritating of which was that I couldn't bookmark my place in a video file, as I could with music. (The ZV does remember where you were in the last video you watched.) The device's fast-forward and reverse video modes didn't let me see high-speed playback as I jumped around. Actually, with my test unit, fast-forward and reverse occasionally failed to work at all, although this may be fixed in the shipping version of the device. "</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/vision.jpg" /><br /><br />The Vision looks amazing. I'm a little disappointed by the video resolution capability, which is apparently limited to QVGA (320x240) despite the Vision having a VGA screen. Overall it looks like a good product for $400. I especially like the simple UI.

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Could it be capped at QVGA because the hardware cant handle bigger throughput?

This IS a sexy mofo. I'm a bit Creative-sceptic though, after returning my Zen Micro twice for freezing permanently.

[jlp]

...
The Vision looks amazing. I'm a little disappointed by the video resolution capability...
The unit used was still a pre-production one. Let's not jump to any conclusion as it seems to be a software limitation.

Was it tailored to the pre-prod unit capabilities? Will it be different on the shelf unit?

Wait and see, at least we have good information about the device itself and its features and ergonomics.

Let's hope the shelf version is capable of more than QVGA movies...

[jeffd]

if the thing cant play my videos without me needing to recompress them.. then its a deal breaker for me. ^^ Its 2005, id like to see some advances in video playback from 2002.

[jlp]

...I'm a little disappointed by the video resolution capability, which is apparently limited to QVGA (320x240) despite the Vision having a VGA screen...

According to IGN, the Zen Vision CAN handle video above QVGA, especially using third party converter apps:
"Video compressed in a supported format (MPEG2 and MPEG4, including DiVX 5 and XViD) can have as high a resolution as 720x576@25fps or 720x480@30fps however, and video at these resolutions looks quite good. As we'll get to in a second, the screen is very sharp and works really well for video at or near these resolutions."

And in the Conclusion "The video playback is decent, though we'd have liked to have seen 640x480 support via the included software. You'll need to grab third-party software to hit 640x480 compression."

(Emphasis added in the quotes of this article.) (http://gear.ign.com/articles/640/640939p2.html)