Death of an o2

[BruceBanner]

Here Lies O2

Beloved Father to D2

Taken Before it's Full Potential Realised

R.I.P.

Dec 25th '08 - Jan 16th '09

[Affainyi]

I'm wondering how you can still call it a father to the D2 after all that has been discussed about that very point........

In fact, I'm not even going to bother.....pfft

[dooood]

how can the O2 be the father of the D2? he's younger, if anything he'd be D2's bastard son, which in turn makes no sense, because he's bigger than D2.

[PriyanPhoenix]

Adopted "newer" bigger brother? :P

[Mr. Black]

More like distant inbred cousin of the D2...

[Nujabez]

so what exactly happened to your O2? or did you sell it?

[tpilk]

...he's been talking about destroying it for a while now. HULK SMASH?

I guess this means he won't be paying people to write programs off the SDK anymore.
What happened there, Hulk? It looked like you were pretty motivated to keep your O2.

[BruceBanner]

HULK SMASH PUNY O2!

Just kidding, it actually just died whilst connected to the pc. All i heard was the usb disconnected noise coming from my pc, i walk over and the o2 looks like it just decided to switch itself off, unfortunately permanently. It's a brick now lol.

That was the last straw for me, i phoned the seller up and explained (very calmly I might add) all the disatisfaction I had with the o2 and it's false marketing. The seller couldn't argue back, he himself admitted the product was "deeply defeatured". So i am now getting a full refund back. All in all it cost me $11 in posting the o2 back so I feel pretty good about only being stung $11 to trial the device out, but at the sametime so sad to see it go. So much potential gone to waste! But i feel a huge relief to be getting my money back so i know i made the right choice.

In summary,

Deal Breakers (Very Bad)
-having to convert VARIOUS files (not just mkv h.264 but mp4, wmv and even just plain ol' xvid avi files).
- shittiest sound ever on video! wtf! this player is ALL about the video?! doesn't make sense at all

Just Plain Bad
-Yukky terrible UI (small icons for tapping on such a large screen, just plain dumb)
-No id3 tag support for browsing
-No playlists (though my amok program helped to get around that)
-System instability. Crashes quite often randomly (so hardware not playing ball together as well as firmware and hardware not playing ball togoether)
-Can't change menu font colour (rendering user wallpapers useless or difficult)
-Still relying on dumb LDB for Lyric support and not supporting proper .lrc compatability
-Not good for mulit tasking
-No physical play/pause button for 'on the go in pocker use'.
-Scroll bar needs to be more responsive
-TOO glossy reflective screen (i found daytime viewing almost impossible)
-Favourites is seperate i.e. SD card files could not be added to onboard files e.g. i have music on my player that i add to Favourites, i then whack a SD card in and wish some files from there to be added to the favourites I had just created onboard, can't be done, instead it makes a new isolated favourites for the sd card only keeping the two seperate.

I sincerely doubt cowon did one field test with this device. Is there even an audiophile working in the company? If there is, fire him now.

The Good
-Sound for audio was very good indeed
-10 EQ Band is welcomed
-Quick load up time (due to lack of id3 tagging probably)
-I liked the look and weight of the device. It did need a few more physical buttons but on a whole it does look very sexc!
-Addition of Recent Files feature

Hmmm.... what now? What will be my o2 successor?

[keal]

If something happens to my O2, I will use my D2 for music and videos and wait for another Cowon. I play with other people's portables, so from personal experience I don't care for Creative, Apple and iRiver's stuff.

If I didn't have a player, I would buy an S9. Other than that, I would wait for the next generation players.

A flash-memory touchscreen AMOLED player with great sound for audio and video with AVI/SRT/FLAC support, drag-and-drop file management, an SD card slot and a no-nonsense, finger-friendly UI. Oops, did I describe the imaginary D3?

Silly, silly Cowon! And good luck finding a new player, Green Guy!

[BruceBanner]

Thanx keal,

I'm looking into UMPC's as a possible replacement, this would perhaps solve the problems with playing trickier video codecs allowing you to dl them yerself etc. I'm not sure I can ever trust a PMP again for playing any video file thrown at it. IT was my SOLE reason for buying the o2 (instead of s9 for example) that video conversions wouldn't be necessary or at least very rare, in reality this wasn't the case and i'm not sure it ever will be with any future player. Surely new codecs and ways for containing files will be released, with the pmp ever be able to catch up? I'm not so sure.

So it's either a UMPC or perhaps a netbook (like the asus eeepc 1000h model). The OQO e2 looks FANTASTIC but costs $4500AUS (about $4000 more than the o2 lol!).

Oh well...

[tpilk]

It sounds like your O2 was plain cursed, Hulk. Sorry you had to go through all of that to spend another $11 just to ship it home.

"Deeply defeatured," hahaha. I suppose that's a pretty accurate way to describe it to someone who's angry about functionality, though not everybody would think that.

All I know is, if my O2 takes a dirt nap, all I can do is get a replacement from newegg, no cash back!

[keal]

While reading this thread, I somehow went searching for netbooks myself. I have a feeling that in the next couple of years, touchscreen computers will have a real impact. Today's graphic tablets are a little too pricey to compete with a PMP like the O2, but what happens when you can buy a $400.00 graphics tablet running linux or windows vista, and it sports a virtual keyboard? It'll basically be a HUGE PMP, which, for most people, will not be very convenient, but I could definitely go for a 15-inch touchscreen tablet just for audio and video files!

I'll probably stick with Cowon players until then... but it won't be much longer.

Bruce, if and when you do find a new device, let us know what you got in this thread! I'm curious what you might end up getting [yes]

[Insta]

Yeah im diggin the tablet pc idea too. I've been tryin to get a fujitsu stylistic for a while now lol. the one i want is only $250/300 on ebay [laugh]
im definitely gettin one before i go off to college tho...

[keal]

ok here's the deal. my keyboard just died and i'm using my mouse with xp's on-screen keyboard until morning. if the monitor was a touchscreen, i could live without a physical mouse and keyboard.

maybe i'll look into touchscreen monitors and tablets this year, for sure...

[BruceBanner]

So far I'm seriously looking at these three devices. (Wibrain, Everun amd Amtek U560)

http://www.umpcportal.com/2008/02/1254 (lol i saw a you tube video and someone playing quake 2 on it)

and

http://www.umpcportal.com/2007/07/757

and

http://www.umpcportal.com/2008/01/1212

I should point out my o2 cost $554AUS (wth leather case and av cable) here in oz, these devices above range from $999-$1500AUS (so double to triple the price of an o2). At this point im doing some heavy investigating into they're video playing capabilities. I have a question, how do i find the mb/sec size for the various video files i have? I use GOM player primarily but I couldn't find an obvious answer? Anyone?

By the way, i'm not saying i will buy any of these devices just that they intrigue me. I like the idea of a UMPC that could connect to an external keyboard, mouse and monitor (for when doing real typing office and email stuff) elsewhere in the house but portable for commutes and sofa/bed surfing. The wayi see it the o2 was too chunky to really use when exercising (i use the d2 for that) so it's a walk around only device, so the devices above fit that same category (be it a large pocket) but hey i wear cargo pants. But a netbook is too large for pockets so is too far removed from my original purchase of 02.

EDIT: Some files, if i right click then and go properties>summary i can see a 'data rate' (often 500-900 kbps) is this it (just that these files fall short of being 1mbps)? Other files (those pesky mkv h.264 files) don't display anything in the Summary. Can anyone recommend a program for giving indepth specs and details of video files?

[nivlacbot]

GSpot available at gspot.headbands.com.
The bitrate would be shown as kbps in the Video group, third box from top-right

[Affainyi]

I beleive GOM encoder shows you that stuff if you drag a video file into it.......prior to conversion.
Unfortunately my budget, pocket size and lifestyle rule out UMPC's or any thing even slightly more expensive or any bit larger than an O2, as it is I need something with a similar screen size and functionality but without being any bigger so it fits in my pocket.....no such thing exists........

[nintendude7cubed]

i don't know why you all are suddenly giving up on the o2.. You should probably realize that they are still updating stuff from the a3 and that came out way longer ago than the o2. Despite the firmware issues that don't seem to be tended to quite yet, there is still absolutely nothing physically wrong with the o2. I still haven't charged my o2 and it has 2 bars of battery life left. This is after listening for an hour a day approximately for a whole week (in flac) and then having it sit around for a whole nother week because of exam week (well mostly, 2 of those days got cancelled cuz of -25F degree weather. Usually players get drained from siting around for so long.

[BruceBanner]

there is still absolutely nothing physically wrong with the o2.

I would like a play/pause button as well :P

[BruceBanner]

GSpot available at gspot.headbands.com.
The bitrate would be shown as kbps in the Video group, third box from top-right

Thanx for that nivlacbot, except it doesn't work for the mkv h.264 files that i REALLY want to know about [wacko]

The gspot website its self says it's not yet fully completed .mov and wmv support.

Has anyone else got an idea of how to find out the bit rate/data rate for mkv files h.264?

[Affainyi]

I repeat.....GOM encoder....I said so in my first post......

[dfkt]

Has anyone else got an idea of how to find out the bit rate/data rate for mkv files h.264?

http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/

[BruceBanner]

Thanx dfkt (i'm yer biggest fan, yer so [cool] )

Affanny, sorry for not replying back, gom encoder didn't show up the info that i wanted but nice try.

[blackriders]

So far I'm seriously looking at these three devices. (Wibrain, Everun amd Amtek U560)

http://www.umpcportal.com/2008/02/1254 (lol i saw a you tube video and someone playing quake 2 on it)

and

http://www.umpcportal.com/2007/07/757

and

http://www.umpcportal.com/2008/01/1212

I should point out my o2 cost $554AUS (wth leather case and av cable) here in oz, these devices above range from $999-$1500AUS (so double to triple the price of an o2). At this point im doing some heavy investigating into they're video playing capabilities. I have a question, how do i find the mb/sec size for the various video files i have? I use GOM player primarily but I couldn't find an obvious answer? Anyone?

By the way, i'm not saying i will buy any of these devices just that they intrigue me. I like the idea of a UMPC that could connect to an external keyboard, mouse and monitor (for when doing real typing office and email stuff) elsewhere in the house but portable for commutes and sofa/bed surfing. The wayi see it the o2 was too chunky to really use when exercising (i use the d2 for that) so it's a walk around only device, so the devices above fit that same category (be it a large pocket) but hey i wear cargo pants. But a netbook is too large for pockets so is too far removed from my original purchase of 02.

EDIT: Some files, if i right click then and go properties>summary i can see a 'data rate' (often 500-900 kbps) is this it (just that these files fall short of being 1mbps)? Other files (those pesky mkv h.264 files) don't display anything in the Summary. Can anyone recommend a program for giving indepth specs and details of video files?


I was actually hoping that cowon would come out with some sort of mid product that's not the q5w or p5 at ces.

But nothing happened. I don't think I saw anything really spectacular that blew me away at CES.

BTW have you thought of these?
http://www.pocketables.net/2009/01/oqo-model-2-benchmarked-benq-s6-unboxed-for-mid-moves.html

[kasrhp]

just on the pic alone, the Benq screen looks so washed out. Really bad. Might just be the pic though.

[blackriders]

How about this one, http://www.myviliv.com/ces/main_x70atom.html

at 7 inches it's prob to big for my taste.

looks really really sweet. If it could do 720p i'm all in

[Dalmane98]

Well lets not forget the Eee PC (http://eeepc.asus.com/global/products.html).

I just brought a 1002HA and a XNTM-3 (http://www.caselogic.com/case_logic/e_sling_medium/product_detail/index.cfm?modelid=125395) Case by Case Logic.

You can't stick it in your pocket, but the case holds it and other electronic toys (D2, GPS, Blackberry and FiiO E5) as well...Will free up some space in my briefcase...

Battery time would be most likely the only sticking point for most of you...

But if I watched Video's all day at work, I would get fired...My boss does not worry about music and audio books...

Just my 2¢ worth...

[BruceBanner]

I'm liking what i hear about the wibrain. The newer model is claiming to support 6hrs+ batter (2 cell) pretty amazing stuff.