::A Geek in Korea::

The quest to find the perfect video player was literally months in the making. I got this "itch" to investigate players in December around Christmas. I’ve finally made my choice, and I am now the owner of a lime green Cowon D2 flash based mini-PMP DMB player. (PMP, Portable Media Player) I already have a large capacity mp3 player I like, the iRiver H120. Taking a flash based video player with me on the way to work, or while walking the dog would be better on my hardware. The jostling and bouncing that sometimes damages hard drives doesn’t affect flash players. That way I can carry a few dozen videos, some converted Youtube clips, and some music files with me to watch between classes or when I need to go out to eat by myself.

At first I was leaning towards the Cowon A2 due to great reviews. When I brought it up with my wife, we traveled to the store. It turned out that the Cowon A2, while a good player, was filling a niche I didn’t have. It could do DMB broadcasting with an adapter, but it’s hard drive and form factor were more suited to air travel or cars than carrying around in a pocket from day to day. It was also a tad expensive, and lacked a touch screen.

The geek in me appreciated the i-Station V43. It runs Linux, it has a touch screen, robust homebrew support, and was all around a very cool player. Another model of the same line even did DMB, but with an ugly antenna! Again, it was really expensive, and it also was hard drive based, meaning that it would be a cool toy, basically a low end tablet machine with video capabilities, but not something good for a walk or to toss in a bag.

With one of my friends online, we scoured for hours to find players to met my rough set of criteria. The player needed to be operating system neutral, couldn’t lock me in with forced digital rights management, had good hardware reviews, had a good screen, good interface, and was hopefully made in Korea. Since Korea is a leader in digital audio products, I only needed to wait long enough for something meeting that long list to come along.

There were two players in the front running. The iRiver Clix (U10) and the Cowon D2. I ultimately decided to get the D2 due to the SD storage ability which would would expand it’s capacity, and some of the extra features included like DMB and TV out (I still need those cables. Not for sale yet.). The delay in getting the iRiver Clix2, the newest model, to the store due to manufacturing process was the final nail in the coffin. Cowon had my money.

For a while we had difficultly finding the player in stores, but my wife finally tracked down the model today. She even got the guy to throw in a free case and screen protector. I’ve been converting some videos and playing with my new toy today and I’m impressed with all the features packed into such a tiny little player. Right now my main hurdle is the Korean software interface that would help me sync and manage files. Since I can view files and transfer things without needing to use the bundled software (one of my requirements), I’ve been able to find English language programs that work just as well.

My player arrived just in time too. Tomorrow I have to go in extra early and choose books at work. My entire lunch is shot, so I’ll need to wait around at work instead of going home. Now I can watch some videos at work instead of sitting around bored or playing around with the computer all day. The screen is big enough for my tastes, and I’ve got some new content to watch now that I’ve converted some files. Since the player gets long battery life, and seems to do what I want at the moment, I’m very happy with my purchase. After I’ve given it a more complete run through, I’ll post a detailed review.

My current conversion and or tools at the moment to convert and manage video files:
iRiverter
gSpot
Super