BIOS: Technology Means Business

The market for MP3 players is set to double up to 2009, amid strong demand from consumers and hundreds of vendors striving to follow the success of Apple’s iPod. By 2009, analysts expect the total market to surpass 100 million units. The single biggest reason for growth to date has been the success of the iPod, which has become a must-have item for many consumers. The iPod has inspired dozens of clones and there are now more than 500 vendors either designing or making MP3 players that are trying to cash in on the surging demand.

The combination of the user-friendly features of both the iPod device and the iTunes Music Store download service differentiate Apple from its competitors, and this combination enables the company to maintain its dominant position in both the device and the music download market. Portable digital audio players (incorrectly termed MP3 players, as they play lots of different formats) can be divided into two categories; those that store songs and other data on hard disks and those that use flash memory chips, which retain memory when the current is switched off. Generally speaking, flash-based players store hundreds of songs, while players such as Creative’s ZEN Vision: M have HDDs to store thousands of songs. Flash-based players are currently outselling disk-based players by a ratio of about 3-to-2.

While the portable digital audio player market continues to climb, PMPs (personal media players), which can also play video, are struggling to take off. There are currently 12 major vendors, including Samsung and iRiver, trying to market PMPs as high-end alternatives to MP3 players, but the PMP market is still stumbling along at a few hundreds of thousands of units a year. Consumers are prepared to pay £70 for basic flash-based MP3 players and three to four times that for high-capacity and feature disk-based versions because they are easy to use. By contrast, PMP players typically cost £200 to £400 and, because they play video encoded in MPEG-4 format, content can’t be taken straight from the TV.

If you want to watch video on the ZEN Vision: M, you can’t pull it off your Sky box. You have to download it from your PC and then plug in the USB port - and that's a hassle. You can buy a portable DVD player for £100, load up on your DVDs, which don’t take any space at all in your briefcase, and get what you want, where you want it. If you've read this far and are still deadset on a PMP, Creative’s ZEN Vision: M will get you excited. Sitting towards the top of the company’s range, it sports a crisp 2.5-inch (320x240 pixels) colour LCD screen (262,144 colours - four times the colours of the 30GB iPod video) capable of displaying rich, vibrant digital video and photos, full-colour menus and album art.

The ZEN Vision: M carries up to 15,000 songs (60GB model, £199 ex. VAT), and supports music subscription services including Yahoo! Music Unlimited, Napster To Go and Rhapsody To Go. The ZEN Vision: M also supports downloads from online music stores like Yahoo! Music, Napster, MSN Music and AOL Music Now. The rechargeable battery provides up to 14 hours of music playback, which is impressive for this type of device and more than enough to get you over the Atlantic.

It delivers just 4 hours of video playback, which is a bit of a bummer, but does provide extensive video format support, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, and MJPEG. The ZEN Vision: M also supports TiVoToGo for free viewing of TV shows recorded on a TiVo personal video recorder, digitised home movies transferred from a PC, and video blogs from companies such as RocketBoom. And thanks to the optional composite video-out connector, you can watch slideshows set to music and select individual digital photos as display backgrounders.

The ZEN Vision: M sets itself apart from the crowd with a host of neat features, including an intuitive Vertical Touch Pad and Tactile Buttons on the face of the player - including the new ‘My Shortcut’ Button for quick access to favourite DJ functions - FM radio and recording (a useful signal strength indicator shows you how strong the FM signal is) and content password protection (protects any content stored on the player). There’s even a built-in microphone (shows volume levels on screen for optimum voice recording quality), Organiser (calendar, tasks and contact lists - syncs with Outlook), and clock with wake-to-any-music alarm. Selectable themes, including Marine Blue, Sable Black, Ice Blue, Forest Green, Candy Pink and Pearl White let you match the colour scheme of the player menus to any mood, while different languages allow for further customisation.

There are a couple of software applications supplied that help you transfer media to the Vision: M. Unfortunately, the player doesn’t support the easiest and best method to transfer music, drag-and-drop, because it doesn’t support UMS (Universal Mass Storage). However, you can partition a section of the HDD in order to use it for universal mass storage. Creative Media Source is the company’s answer to a jukebox media player. It rips, burns, and organises, but most importantly it allows you to transfer music to the device. Unfortunately the software is a little lacklustre, so you may as well stick with Windows Media Player 11. Creative’s Media Explorer also allows you transfer media, browse media, rip CDs, convert video, create playlists, manage data, and sync with Outlook. The utility is straight forward and easy to use, and has a familiar look and feel to Windows Explorer.

The player is well built, well designed, easy to use and has a host of useful features. But it’s not without its shortcomings. Most noticeably for audiophiles is that it only supports MP3, WMA, and WAV. Granted they cover the majority of codecs and most consumers will be happy, but there are quite a few hardcore users that would appreciate FLAC, OGG, AAC, gapless and lossless. Despite the lack of codec support the audio playback does not disappoint, especially when using higher quality headphones. It plays loud and clear even at high volumes, and only distorts when you really boost the low end and turn on the bass boost. Creative also keeps the audio setting to the essentials and does not confuse with extraneous and unnatural sounding audio tweaks like WoW SRS, 3DSound or any of the other synthetic audio enhancements. Quality of video playback is superb in all the formats. The frame rates are smooth and the video has no artifacts. The video also scales down nicely if the video is larger then the screen real estate of 320x240 pixels.

More annoying is the necessity of a proprietary dock connection (clips on bottom of player and provides USB, DC-In, and A/V out ports), and the fact that that the battery is non-removable. While you can live with this (probably), the fact that you can’t simply plug the player into your computer without drivers and drop music onto it is a real pain - we hate being forced to install software and being restricted to Windows XP. If this isn’t an issue, the Vision: M is a definite iPod alternative and should appeal to lots of people. But we have a feeling it’s still not going to sway the iPod-loving masses. [8]

[Best MP3 Player Pricing UK]
[Best MP3 Player Pricing US]