i got my Onda VX747 today, and since there's no real review of it but quick "reviews" only to show the player and accessories for the web stores.
for starter, for a second i thought i got ripped off because the actual box was INSIDE a strange no-name PMP, but i checked inside and i sighed in relief
ok i unpacked everything, took out the stylus, the lanyard, the silicon case, the player itself, the USB cable...i tried the earphones, but i think i'll use my recently-bought Sennheiser CX400 instead.
i took off the small white round stick on the side that says "pass" (surely for QC Pass, QC for Quality Check or Quality Control), i installed the silicon case and the lanyard on the holes made for it. I also took off the small screen protector because if you try to touch with the stylus, it feel a bit sticky, kinda soft, not really made to be used as a screen protector (i guess it was applied on the screen for shipping purpose only).
when you hold it in your hand, you can feel it's built very well.
one thing that made me freaked out is the FM radio option, you can't listen to radio from the internal speaker, you have to put on earphones!
the musics plays fine, when it detects the lyrics (if you've put them in the player), it displays them right. i thought the VX747 had OGG audio files support, but i was wrong then...
for the videos, yes you can play them without converting them, but if you use videos made for PC viewing (640x480 and more) you will find the video stream is lagging either because of the streaming size, fast actions on-screen or because it have a hard time decoding.
i tried to play a video of Candy Pop (a videoclip of a song by Japanese bands Soul'd Out & Heartsdale) without converting it, and the video was lagging badly...by converting it and putting it on the player, it played fine until the very end.
i RECOMMEND to use the converter...surely provided on the drivers disc, or by downloading it on the Onda website (called "Videotranfer", surely a typo of "VideoTransfer". I was unable to read some MP4 videos (probably because the codecs needed are not built-in the VX747), so just by using that tool and it will play fine. the video converting always depend on your CPU, RAM, and the size and length of the video. by the way use the option that will convert the video in AVI format, and be sure to create a folder for the converted videos.
You can figure out which option do what in the software (it's in Chinese) with the icons, like:
-plus sign: add files to convert
-arrow in a full circle: convert
-pause button: must be for pausing the convertion, didn't tried it yet
-the down arrow icon: where the converted videos will go
-the half-circle arrow: open the folder where the converted videos are
-"A" letter: About
downside: the converter can't convert MKV files (maybe because of the complexity of that file being able to have multiple audio streams and subtitles, kinda like a DVD can do)
upside: the converter can do batch-converting (for example 10 videos to convert in AVI format)
for the video resizing options in the player (while watching):
-the "normal" option mean it'll fill the screen while keeping the size ratio of the video (probably you will see black areas if the video is not 16:10 natively).
-the "fillbox" option mean it'll fill the entire screen while keeping the size ratio, so that mean the video will "bleed" out of the screen, meaning you'll lose some parts of the video being viewed.
-the "F-screen" (or full screen) mean it'll stretch the video to fill the entire screen (for example fitting a 4:3 video to the 16:10 screen), yes it can look stretched and ugly, so use it mostly if you have a 16:9 video and you want to see it on the whole screen)
the best game (3 included in the player) that can be played best with the stylus is Erros (Tetris). the 2 others games are Brick and Snakes. i noticed the games can also be played with the "+" "-" and "M" button
When you will receive your VX747, you'll probably want to change the theme, i took the Theme 3, since it have dark colors and look nice (2 themes look too crappy and too bright, and the Theme 1 well, it's Jay Chou's promotional theme).
in the Picture option, there's "FLASH Play" (for .swf files) and pictures (for jpg, bmp and GIF files).
you CAN play .flv (FLash Video) files on the VX747, but you have to go thru the browser and get inside your folder with the FLV files inside them, and you'll maybe notice some of them won't work (maybe because some used a different kind of codec for the file, or they come from a different website than Youtube)
E-book supports TXT files, nothing elde to say.
in System Set, you might like to calibrate the screen ("Touch-screen ... tion") and set the "Blight Time" (for Backlight time) to 30 seconds, so it turns off after 30 seconds of inactivity, and sets Auto-off to 10 minutes if you want to. the About choice shows you the built-in flash memory size and the remaining memory available (it should also say the MicroSD size and remaining memory avaiable too when inserted) and the Firmware version (in my case, it seem like the v1.10 is already installed).
i still have to figure out how to save radio stations on the player, those who are not detected by the player when it scans for stations, if we can "install" an external list, then how can we do it? where do we put the txt file?)
the Record option is also good enough, it records well, you can choose from 3 recording quality (low, medium, high) and you can also record the FM radio you're listening to.
the player is quite nice, but i hope there will be more firmware updates to maybe fix the "lagginess" of the unconverted videos being played. If you wish to convert videos to play on it, i would recommend you to use another computer to do it and use your main one to do something else while it converts.
the plus:
-big 16:10 ratio, 3 inches screen, QVGA
-can play more video and audio formats than other players released on the market
-available in 4gb and 8gb, with MicroSD slot supporting up to 32gb!
-long-lasting rechargeable 1000mAh Li-Ion battery
-plays FLV files, found on Youtube, Dailymotion and other websites like it (thru the browser menu)
-screen can be locked (with the power ON button, there's a small lock icon where you can slide the button there) in case you accidentally touch it and stops the music from playing, etc...
the minus:
-262k colors for the screen, would have been good to have 16 millions (32bits) colors, but 262k is still nice, so it's a small minus.
-some big, unconverted videos will gets laggy with fast actions, will not play (codec not present on player) or will be super slow (video stream is too big probably).
-how can we add custom themes in the player?
-no carrying pouch with this player? it would have been good to have when carrying around in the subway, bus or anywhere on-the-go for extra protection.
advices for VX747 buyers/users:
-get a 3 inches screen protection film for it made for touch-screens, as i said, the one provided is not good, it's only for protecting the screen during shipping
-a USB charger may be good too (but is it safe to use that on this player? i wonder...)
-a MicroSD might be interesting, the biggest right now (at the time i wrote this review) is 8gb. For now they are very hard find in stores (and if they do carry them, they will be way too expensive), so check on Ebay for now, you might pay around 55-65$US for a Sandisk-brand Micro SD with the SD Card adapter.
don't get me wrong though, this is a fine player, but it still need some adjustments. For now you might like to use the videos converter to play videos fine.
here's a link to the converter, on the official website (download link might be slow, so have some patience):
http://www.onda.cn/pro/download/driveexp.jsp?ITEM_ID=12139&ID=819247
update: here is a link to my topic on HOW to make your radio stations list for the Onda VX747
http://www.allpmp.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=343&extra=page%3D1
update2: here's a picture of my VX747:
[IMG]http://img5.glowfoto.com/images/2008/02/16-2325404109T.jpg[/IMG]
thanks for reading!
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Last edited by RaptorZX3 at 2008-2-17 07:40 ]
