New Toy for my GBPVR System...

[Pilot]

Now my GBPVR is going portable -- I picked up a Creative Zen Portable Media Center player. Now I can just sync my show recordings from GBPVR over to the Creative Zen PMC, and watch it wherever.

Actually, it's a Christmas present for my son, but I'm sure he'll be wanting me to copy some shows over to it for him. My entire family is jumping on the GBPVR bandwagon these days.

Anyway, I thought some of you who like these types of toys may want to know about it because you can get a really good deal on them now since they're being phased out. I bought mine from Buy.com for only $189 with free shipping. It's normally $449, but they had an instant $10 rebate and a $250 mail-in rebate. That is definitely the biggest rebate I've received on anything that wasn't a car!

Anyway, my fellow gadget geeks might want to check it out. I'm still going to be using my Palm device for watching videos in portable fashion, but this Creative Zen PMC is a pretty nifty device -- plays MP3s, videos, store pictures, and can even be used as a portable USB drive (20GB total).

[pBS]

hey,will it play ms-dvr files directly? then you could have GBPVR do the transcoding automatically for you! or even record in that format directly..
[but i guess that would make all your recordings into ms-dvr]
can GBPVR do selective transcoding only on certain files?

oh and LOVE your signature...LOL!!
we should write a GBPVR x-mas song...

"My GBPVR X-Mas Song"
On the fifth day of christmas, my true love gave to me..
FIVE M-V-P 'S...!!
four new remotes, three DVD's, two Hauppauge cards...
and the latest GBPV-R...... :p
ROFL

Merry Christmas Y'all

[i know it's early ]

[Pilot]

Actually, on the Creative Zen PMC the "my TV" function of it will ONLY play DVR-MS files -- otherwise, it's automatically sync'ed over to the "my Videos" function. There's no difference between the two, other than the "my TV" function apparently having some extra information with it (like when it was recorded, etc.).

I did not know that GBPVR could record in DVR-MS format. Do I have to have Windows XP MCE to do that? I might need to change this thread to a different forum since I'm now talking more about GBPVR! Haha. Seriously, that would be very nice to setup my son's PC to record in DVR-MS format, so that he can just easily sync all his TV shows over to his Zen PMC to watch when he's out and about during the usual rather busy school week.

PS - My wife is still digging GBPVR, but truth be told the entire family is now. It's getting a little annoying, since my hard drives are filling up rather quickly with a bunch of crap that I'm not watching!

[bgowland]

DVR-MS is one of the options for recording from BDA/digital cap. sources. You select it on the Misc. page in Config under BDA multiplexer. It has no effect for analogue cap. cards.

Cheers,
Brian

[Pilot]

Nevermind...did some reading up on it and it looks like it's for BDA or only if you're recording via MCE. I'm a straight up PVR150/500 and GBPVR man myself.

I did notice that I can set GBPVR to convert to WMA...I wonder how well that would work? I've had a lot of audio sync problem converting my MPEG files to WMA using WME9 and a couple of other conversion utilities. I have found that if I run it through one of my MPEG to AVI (DivX) apps that I have for converting video for playing on my Palm device, I can then just use the sync function of Windows Media Player 10 to convert to WMA and sync it directly over to the Zen PMC. That's actually the better way to go for me since I then have a Palm compatible DivX file as well as the WMA. It seems to take about the same amount of time whichever way I do the conversion (ie, LONG TIME). Nothing's worse than converting from DVD though, but what's the use of having a 20GB media player if you don't put your favorite DVDs on it, right?

[Pilot]

DVR-MS is one of the options for recording from BDA/digital cap. sources. You select it on the Misc. page in Config under BDA multiplexer. It has no effect for analogue cap. cards.

Cheers,
Brian

Thanks, Brian. After doing a search for "DVR-MS" here, I quickly realized that it was something that didn't apply to me with my analog cards. I'm using MVPs to distribute my video around the house, so until I can convince the wife that I need a new PC for the office so that I can dedicate this one to the HDTV in family room, I'll have to stick with analog!

[Pilot]

Hey, it looks like Hauppauge may be doing something similar but combining it with the MediaMVP. Look at the photos in the link below in the pMVP section:

http://www.hauppauge.com/Pages/press/pre...s_mvp.html

If that has a hard drive, that would be pretty nice. If it doesn't and you're just limited to the wireless range of your MVP system, then that wouldn't be very useful in my opinion.

[Pilot]

I don't know -- it seems to be more of a phone without the phone features, and extremely limited quality wise because they tried for that formfactor.

The screen is just 1.8", which is less than 1/2 the size of the Zen's screen. Just looking at the font on the display, it doesn't seem to be very high resolution either. I have nothing really to go by though, because even on the Samsung site they list very meager specs -- definitely nothing technical. The FM radio is something missing from the Zen, but to be honest that's a yesteryear feature. Everyone's disastisfaction for FM radio is why Satellite Radio and MP3 players are so popular. It does play more audio formats, but you have to remember that most people are not technically minded -- they just want to download their songs and press a button to sync it over to their MP3 player. Most people couldn't tell you if their download was WMA, OGG, MP3, etc.

To be honest, the Creative Zen PMC is limited a bit by WMA/WMV, but the Zen PMC is the older model (which is why it's so heavily discounted now). The new model, Creative Zen Vision, plays DivX, AVI, Mpeg 1,2,&4, WMV, XviD, etc. For audio it plays WMA, MP3 and PCM WAV. Of course, to get those improvements you have to pay like $600 rather than the Zen PMC's sale price of $200.

Personally, I wouldn't own any of them if I wasn't buying the PMC for my son as a present. I'm very happy playing audio and video on my Palm, which I already have and cost me a fraction of the price of these media players (and the batteries last longer!).

[andlju]

http://www.hauppauge.com/Pages/press/pre...s_mvp.html

If that has a hard drive, that would be pretty nice. If it doesn't and you're just limited to the wireless range of your MVP system, then that wouldn't be very useful in my opinion.

Specs:
http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/product..._pmvp.html

Have to say it looks pretty good..!

[blader_se]

http://www.hauppauge.com/Pages/press/pre...s_mvp.htmlIf that has a hard drive, that would be pretty nice. If it doesn't and you're just limited to the wireless range of your MVP system, then that wouldn't be very useful in my opinion.

I can't see in the spec that it have wireless connections.

Now if that would have been hard drive AND wireless...