Portable MP3/VCD/CD PLAYER for 120 dollars???
Written: Nov 15 '00 (Updated Jan 08 '01)
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Pros: great price, plays many formats, remote control, great improvements over old model
Cons: doesn't play svcd,no id3 tag support,takes a few seconds to change mp3 tracks..
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| Cyberllama's Full Review: A-MAX DAV309 Personal CD Player |
First thing, I want to let you know all right off that I'm reviewing the Napa DAV310, not the Napa DAV309. The DV310 is essentially the bug-fixed version of the DAV309. They took a player with some noticeable flaws in an otherwise great idea at a great price, and fixed it. The result is magic.
The DAV309 is a CD player that plays not just cds but cds with mp3s burned on them as well as VCDs. However many reviewers complained of 3 major shortcomings:
First of all, it had weak battery life.
Secondly, it didn't support many brands of cd-r and very few cd-rw brands
And lastly, it had a few skipping problems.
Well, Problem solved. The DAV310 comes with a more powerful battery, a tweaked laser which higher compatibility, and increased anti-skip (with a very cool buffering technique which I'll talk about later).
Ok, on with the meat of the review. First of all, if you don't know what MP3 is, then you've been apparently living under some sort of rock. For your benefit, MP3s are compressed audio files with a high compression ratio (12:1 or so) that have become the audio medium of choice for most computer users. In plain english, you can fit easily 150 songs on one cd . And Secondly, if you don't know what vcd is, thats understandable. Hollywood refuses to throw any weight behind it because they want something more secure (hence dvd and it's "secure" <snicker> encryption). VCD movies feature all the benefits of having a movie on cd (no rewinding/multiple tracks for multiple videos/etc) with the qaulity of vhs (not quite dvd, sorry) for a price thats generally less than vhs. Brand new movies generally cost only 10.99 when they come out on vhs (and yes you can get new movies on vcd they just don't release them in the US). The downside, however, is that they only hold 74 minutes (sometimes 80) of video so most movies will require two cds and thus switching.
The DAV310 is a small portable player in the tradition of a sony discman (it looks like the DAV309, but its white and orange instead of blue and black, personally It looks rather iMACish to me. . .) which features a video out jack and an audio out jack. PLug head phones into the audio out jack and listen to normal audio cds or mp3 cds, or you can plug cables into the audio out jacks and the video out jack and hook it up to your tv (standard rca cables, the audio cable is a stero mini to stand rca y cable, and the video is a mono mini to standard video rca cable) or reciever and watch vcd movies.
Other neat Features
Additionally, the player features it's own built in battery (lithium ion) and a tiny credit-card sized remote control. Also, the way it plays mp3 cd's is rather unique. When you have a mp3 cd in the player it will spin the cd for around 10 seconds, start playing the song, then stop spinning the cd. After about 45 seconds, the cd will spin for a bit again then stop. The advantage here is that since the cd isn't moving during most of hte playing, the player is relatively impervious to skips giving it a semi-solid state design.
Small Flaws
The player, being a great improvement over its sister the DAV309, is a very strong entry into the market. It does however have a few small flaws. For starters, there is a noticable delay of perhaps 5-10 seconds when switching tracks while playing mp3s. This is becuase of the aforementioned nifty mp3-buffering trick it uses. Since the cd has to start spinning fresh when it skips to another track. Also, id3 tags aren't read by the player so each track is simply a number that you must remember if you want to hear a particular song. You can make this less troublesome by limiting yourself to 50-75 songs (and perhaps putting them on the little tiny 8cm mini-cdrs like the new sony mavica digital camera uses, if you don't know what I'm talking about, open up your cd-rom drive, notice two indentations for a cd..a big one, and a small one, now you get it right?). And my biggest gripe, although an unreasonable one, It doesn't play svcd. Now I know i shouldn't expect it to play svcd since svcd is mpeg-2 and the decoder inside it is mpeg-1 for vcd, but this player would own so much if it did svcd too.
A final note
Currently, if one want one of these badboys, they're a tad hard to find. I've only seen two places selling them on the internet, one for 175 dollars, and one for 120 dollars (where I bought it). You can locate the place I found it by heading over to pricewatch.com and searching for DAV310.
*Update* 11/26/2000
One other thing I should mention. For the first time, I tried it out with an audio cd. For me, I'll probably never use this to play anything but vcds and mp3 cds, but strangely enough it had some real skipping problems playing audio cds. Perhaps the advertised anti-skip is not enabled by default? I'll play around a bit more to see if I can turn on it. Mp3s still don't skip becuase 95% of the time the cd isn't spinning anyways. Also, as a matter of record, the bass-boost sounds like carp (and if you've never heard carp, well just take my word for it, they don't sound good), don't bother with it. Even with the addition of these minor flaws I stand by my "4" rating. Before, I would have given it a 4.5 if possible, now it'll just stand on it's 4.
*Update* 1/08/2001
For the record, I did find out how the enable the anti-skip. It is disabled by default and player reverts to defaults every single time you shut it off. Its a bit annoying to have to turn it on every single time, but it works great once its on. Audio and mp3 cds play skip-free.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 120
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Epinions.com ID:
Cyberllama
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Member: Ryan
Location: Indianapolis, IN
Reviews written: 35
Trusted by: 11 members
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