A
s far as lustworthy
gadgets go,
Creative’s Zen
Portable Media Center is
guaranteed to elicit jealous
oohs and aaahs from
friends, family, strangers,
and crusty Maximum
PC Lab personnel alike.
Aside from Archos’ AV400
(which received a 9 rating
last month), RCA’s Lyra
(soundly dissed a few
months prior), and a
handful of other Portable
Media Centers, not many other handheld
media players boast a 3.8-inch, 320x240
screen that can play TV, movies, pictures,
and music on the go. Unfortunately,
DRM issues and limited recording options
disappointed us.
The unit’s 20GB hard drive accom-
modates a boatload of files. At one point,
we had more than 11 hours of video,
2,500 songs, and 3,000 pictures on the
device, and we still had room to spare.
The battery life is fairly impressive and
competitive with Archos’ AV400; our first
few charges netted us a little less than six
hours of life. In theory, you can use the
Zen’s AV-out port to watch your movies
and music on a regular-size TV, but we
experienced mixed results. On our high-
end HDTV, the images were badly blown-
out and heavily pixilated. On lower-end
displays, the degradation isn’t as bad.
Based on the embedded version of
Windows XP—which allows for instant
on and off—the Portable Media Center is
an extension of Microsoft’s Media Center
PC effort (think Tivo plus a DVD player).
The theory goes something like this:
You plug the Zen PMC into your PC via
WinXP Media Center Edition, Beyond TV,
or the recently released Windows Media
Player 10, and it automatically downloads
any TV shows and movies you’ve record-
ed, as well as music and photos you’ve
recently copied to your hard drive.
Reality, unfortu-
nately, is a different
matter. As an exam-
ple, when Windows
Media Player 10 first
synched up with our
PC, it mistakenly
snagged thousands
of images and song
snippets from our
vast collection of PC
games. This made finding real music and
photos a pain.
We also discovered that transfer-
ring our batch of test videos—a random
assortment of The Simpsons, music videos,
downloaded AVI snippets, and more—to
the player took a long time. On the Lab’s
fastest rig, it took 23 minutes to convert
and then transfer a 30 minute video file.
Users of Media Center PCs will have it
easier; the new version of the Windows
XP Media Center Edition OS can auto-
matically convert television programs
when it finishes recording them.
Unfortunately, this synergy comes at
a price. Because the Zen Portable Media
Center lacks the Archos AV400’s ability to
directly record TV, if you don’t have a PC
with Media Center or Beyond TV, you’re
not going to be watching any recorded
television programs—unless you down-
load them illegally. This is a massive flaw.
An even graver concern is that after
purchasing several classic videos of historic
baseball games from MLB.com —a feature
Microsoft touted in previews of the Portable
Media Center—our
attempts to transfer the
games were soundly
rejected by the unit’s built-
in digital rights manage-
ment. That’s inexcusable,
and raises a gigantic red
flag regarding the imple-
mentation of DRM at the
hardware level.
—GEORGE JONESZen Portable Media Center
Innovative new media player leaves much to be desired
Video, music, photos, and more—in the palm of
your hand. Audio quality is good.TV TO GOTV TO GO
Overly dependent on Media Center PCs; issues
around DRM.MA XIMUMPC VERDICT 6
$500, http://www.creative.comSee that green button in the
top left corner? That’s the mark
of Microsoft’s Portable Media
Center. While the OS remains
fixed, companies like Creative can
customize the exterior to their
heart’s content.5.7“3.2”