Sansa Fuze (MP3/Video Player (1.9" screen, 220x176 res)

[GrayStrickland]

Has anyone tried a Sansa Fuze? I'm not sure whether they're shipping yet. There was a short write-up in the NY Times today. It has a 1.9 inch screen and 220x176 resolution. The Sansa website says it supports
MP3, WMA, secure WMA, WAV, Audible and MPEG4, but doesn't give any information on the video bitrate or framerate it can handle. The MSRP on a 2gb model with MicroSD slot is $79.

I'm thinking that this could be a good player for a kid. I could burn the kids' movies to various microsd cards and keep them quiet on the airplane when traveling.

[Bjs]

They come with a piece of crap software for conversion of video

Support drag and drop to device
Windows media player sync function

Other than this, the pdf manual is unorganized, lacking detailed information

[greg donovan]

you should look into the Creative Zen player. amazon has the 4GB version for $89 right now and it has a 2.5" screen and supports up to 16.5 million colors. and it has a SD card slot.

i think a younger kid would do better with the simple D-pad style buttons over the wheel type buttons that are on the other ones.

here is the link to the 4GB at amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UV4EU6/ref=pd_cp_e_1?pf_rd_p=250314601&pf_rd_s=ce...A4AWAWAWYADSQA

[GrayStrickland]

Creative's website says about the Zen:

MJPEG, WMV9 and (with transcoding - MPEG1 and 2, MPEG4-SP, DivX 4 and 5 and XviD)

I would guess that this means that any MPEG1 and 2, MPEG4-SP, DivX 4 and 5 or XviD video you want to play has to be transcoded (presumeably on the pc syncing to the Zen) into either MJPEG (who uses this, anyway?) or WMV9 format first. That sounds like a helluva lotta overhead -- at least on a single core P4 1.4ghz pc. Are my assumptions incorrect? Is there an improved firmware for the Zen which would let it play any of that natively?

[greg donovan]

i dont know. but i have a few XviD video files in AVI containers that i was able to send to my Zen using windows explorer. they were originally .flv files that i converted to avi/xvid files.

i had to do some trial and error to get the a/v to synch up right.

head on over to http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=121 learn more.

[aedipuss]

i have a sansa e200 series. about the same screen, plays a custom type of mov video. gets old pretty quick on the small screen. i switched it over to rockbox firmware and use it just for music all the time. rockbox and a custom theme makes it much nicer, boots up and turns off in a tenth of the time of the sansa firmware.