For the last two months I have been using the Samsung YH-999 Portable Media Center, rather than posting something up here instantly I wanted to get some post first impressions about it. For those who have never encountered one of these before, A Portable Media Center (PMC) is basically a small Windows Mobile powered device (customised version of Windows CE) with a 20 or 40 gigabyte hard disk built in. It doesn’t feature live TV viewing and recording but it does enable you to take your photo’s, music, videos on the go with you on the go. If you have a Media Center PC you can also copy over shows you’ve recorded, but Media Center isn’t a requirement to use a PMC.
At the moment there are 3 models of PMC’s available, the Creative Zen Portable Media Center, the iriver PMC-120 and the Samsung YH-999. In the UK these devices do not appear frequently on the high street. Amazon.co.uk do stock them though at £299 for this Samsung and £309.99 for the Creative.
The Samsung features a 3.5 inch (320x240) LCD colour screen, a 20 GB hard disk, a 10 hour battery life for music (3 for video); it supports TV out for both NTSC and PAL and weighs 220g. Against the Creative PMC, the Samsung trades battery life for size (3.82(W) x 4.21(H) x .83(D)) and a bit more style.
Some people say you should never buy a Microsoft based product before the 3rd revision, which in some cases has been very true, but here although it is not perfect, it does work quite well at the points it set out to achieve. I had a few preconceptions of what to expect based on my previous experiences with Windows CE devices (Pocket PC/Smartphone/Media Center Extender). And luckily the major worry I had which was boot time (to get to a usable state) wasn’t really an issue. From a cold boot you are at the main menu in about 10 seconds which is comparable to similar devices. When you press the power button again the device goes into a sleep mode, on pressing the power button you are back in a usable state in about half a second. That is consistent until you properly turn it off with the power switch hidden behind the flip out stand.
The UI while consistent in overall look and feel is very different than its desktop counterpart. On something this size however I think it’s actually more appropriate than a clone of the desktop Media Center would have been (especially My Music with the size constraints). The way things have been laid out allows a good number of features, on actually very few keys. The operating system itself feels well customised for the Portable Media Center and does not suffer from a problem I’ve seen on other Windows CE based Media Players where errors from the underlying operating system pop up and you are not able to switch tasks back into the media interface.
Windows Media Player 10 is the best way to manage the transfer of content to the Portable Media Center. When it synchronises content it will do its best to convert your TV, videos and pictures to work best on a 320x240 pixel screen. Music doesn’t generally follow the same rules unless you define a quality setting in the synchronisation options (a setting also exists to set the video bit rate). Most of the time however you can just leave it alone, unless you want to cram as much as you can on for a long trip. The device is happy to play lowly 64kbit MP3 files right up to WMA9 Professional files, DRM protected files (such as those from MSN Music) are supported and normally the experience to get these onto the device is as seamless as any other.
Windows Media Player 10 is integral to the overall experience; this does however mean that the Portable Media Center’s will only work as they were intended to on Windows XP, Windows XP x64 Professional and Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1. You are not limited to just using Media Player to synchronise, Media Center includes its own 10 foot interface for copying media from your library over. When doing this there are two modes that can be used manual and automatic. In the manual mode you just go through adding the items you would like to put onto the device into a 'Sync List'. The automatic setting uses selectable options such as 'Music Played in the last month' to work out what should be going onto the device when it is connected.
There is no search feature on the portable Media Center (which is something I could see becoming an issue if you were to fill the drive completely with music, even more so on the 40 GB PMC models), everything is based on alphabetical, artist or date listings. An input method I have seen elsewhere on the PC is where you select a letter, then move your mouse up and down to select another, the machine only reveals letters which exist in the dictionary which will go on to form a word. Something like this could be nicely implemented using a device media library and the volume control dial.
My Music Video Demo: http://salloway.org.uk/mediacenter/pmc/Manual%20Recording__09_05_2005_19_42_55-1.wmv
The native audio and video formats supported are somewhat limiting if you regularly venture beyond MPEG and Microsoft’s supported codec’s. If you use codec’s such as Quicktime, Real Video, M4A, AVI files encoded with MPEG4 video codec’s (DIVX/XVID) you will not always have the seamless sync experience with Media Player 10. Some formats can be handled if you can obtain a direct show compatible decoder, for others such as Real (using Real Alternative) the results will often not be terribly watchable and will require 3rd party applications. A lot comes down to how the codec you are using behaves, for example the official DIVX 5.2.1 codec will allow the conversion of DIVX movies to WMV. However Koepi's XVID codec will cause WMP10 to create 0KB WMV outputs. For obvious legal reasons you cannot sync a DVD, but as with everything it is possible to do if you know how to get the video out into a standard MPEG file. You could then synchronise it to the device through Media Player.
The device itself has native support to play the following the following types of media:
Microsoft Windows Media Video and Microsoft Photo Story files (.wmv and .asf) at a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and at a bit rate that is less than 800 kilobytes per second (Kbps)
Microsoft Windows Media Audio files (.wma)
MP3 audio files (.mp3)
JPEG image files (.jpg, .jpg, .jpe, .jfif)
With the aid of Windows Media Player 10’s synchronise feature you can also use the following media types once they have been converted, either to a lower resolution, wma or wmv.
Image formats supported by Windows (larger the 320x240)
Microsoft Recorded TV Show file (.dvr-ms)
MPEG movie files (.mpeg, .mpg, mpe, .m1v, .mp2v, and .mpeg2)*
Microsoft Windows Video file (.avi)*
Microsoft Windows Audio file (.wav)
* Requires 3rd party video codecs which will work correctly with Media Player
TV was the one side of the PMC which disappointed me out of the box, and if I am honest still does (though the issues surrounding this only exist because I am in the UK). Windows Media Player 10 has an issue converting TV content recorded in the 16:9 aspect ratio. That issue being it tries to compress everything into 4:3 and the end result isn’t that nice to look at.
Since I first got the device Microsoft released KB895572 which is an update for Media Player 10 to handle widescreen content correctly on PMCs. This hotfix does correct the horrible issue I first encountered, but it still has its issues with the UK. 4:3 content recorded Freeview (DVB-T) is now stretched to 16:9 on the device. Europe is a pretty small market for the Portable Media Centers right now, but this defiantly does require more attention.
What difference does a hotfix make?
(Top: Media Player 10 Release Version, Lower Left: Media Player 10 v3909 effects on converting 16:9 Freeview content, Lower Right: converted 4:3 content becomes 16:9)
The My Pictures on the device only supports viewing of images (there are no touch up options as found on the full Media Center) and slideshows (with or without music). The slide shows are pretty cool when you have them going on a TV, and certainly if you don’t have an Extender or print your digital photo’s this is a really good way to share them. The main view for photos was slightly disappointing; the thumbnails are just far too small when used on the devices internal display.
You can also use a PMC as an external hard disk, when you plug the device in it appears as a ‘Audio Device’ in my computer rather than as a drive letter. As it is a hosted drive it means you must keep its window open to be able to read/write. It also makes its presence know as a MTP device to allow Media Player 10 to communicate with it to synchronise your content. The combination of a hard disk and USB 2.0 makes transferring data pretty swift, a 12 track album at 192kbit MP3 took ~14 seconds to synchronise.
The Samsung isn’t a huge device (roughly it is the same thickness as a Nokia 33x0, and twice the width) but if you were to put it in your trouser pocket it is quite clear to see you are carrying something – which is perhaps more a concern if you walk everywhere. In a situation when you can have it out in the open (car/plane/bus) the Samsung is a great player, the screen clarity isn’t as good as a Sony PSP (especially under strong natural light) but the interface is far better. The integration with Media Player 10 and Media Center really makes it very easy to get content onto the device providing you can get hold of well behaved codec’s for the formats you use.
For a first generation product I’m really impressed by both the software, and what Samsung has done on the hardware side compared to Creative and iRiver. What lets it down is not really a fault with the software on the actual device, my main complaint at the moment is the TV synchronise capabilities of Windows Media Player 10.
From the sounds of upcoming Portable Media Centers like LG’s PM70, they are taking steps in the right direction. It is described as having a ‘4.3-inch, 470x272 pixel LCD Screen (16:9 widescreen), 262,000 color, 20GB or 30GB of storage, a built-in FM tuner, and support for playback of MPEG2, MPEG4, XviD,and DivX 3.x, 4.x, and 5.x video files and MP3, OGG, ASF, and AC3 audio files.’. Unfortunately there were no specifics on the device dimensions.
If you are interested in a Portable Media Center, right now I’d recommend waiting it out for the newer models such as the LG coming out towards the end of the year if you want to use Divx/Xvid a lot. As with the Windows Smartphones there is uncertainty if existing devices would ever get software upgrades beyond bug fixes. I won't blindly recommend this to everyone over audio only players like the iPod, but if you want something that’s video capable, is very reliable and has a great interface then the Samsung YH-999 and PMC’s in general are defiantly worth considering.
Source for PM70: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000090036250/