Kindle 2.0 Unboxing

My Kindle 2.0 shipped on the 23rd of february via US Postal Service. It arrived well packaged and in great shape on the 26th of February. Thin is in! At just 1/3" thick, Kindle 2 is uniformly thin and much more portable than Kindle 1. It slips easily into a briefcase and won't wedge your stack. Is your brief case full of documents, weighing enough to strain your arm when carrying? Imagine every single page now living in your Kindle, and only needing the Kindle with you on a business trip. Sixteen is four times better than four. While the 4 gray shades of the 1st Kindle could show you crude photos and passable artwork if it was limited to linework, the 16 shades of gray supported on the Kindle 2 make photos reasonable, and permit artwork at least some range.

Details: The Kindle comes with a USB cable and an AC USB charger. A very nice touch as it allows charging from a wall socket or via USB from your PC.

New to Kindle 2 is a 5-way toggle. It simplifies getting around in menus and on the screen. Push it up or down or left or right, then push down to select whatever the cursor is on. Page buttons have been simplified and re-engineered to eliminate accidental page turns when picking up or holding the Kindle. The Volume control will be used more on this Kindle as it can now read your book to you via built in text-to-speech. You get a male or female voice to choose from. Along the top edge you'll find a headphone jack and the power slider. The bottom edge houses the proprietary USB jack. The Kindle is not as big as it appears in most online photos. I can slip this one in the chest pocket of my coat. It is 5.25" x 8", and only a hair over 1/3" thick. It weighs 10.2 ounces or 289 grams. For comparison my iPod Touch weighs 4.2 ounces or 120 grams. With the $30 Amazon Kindle leather case it is 9/10th of an ounce heavier than Kindle 1.0 is with the case it came with. Not a tremendous amount, but noticable. I'm guessing there is a larger battery inside. What, me read? I'm not an avid book reader, but do read several blogs, news articles, and magazines. I'm hoping the ones I prefer are available for automatic delivery to my Kindle. I also write some, and may see how well I do at self publishing to the Kindle store.

Where thou goest memory slot? Kindle 1.0 has an SD card slot (limited to 2gb) which although hidden beneath the removeable battery cover gave you the option of changing out the content you kept on your Kindle. Kindle 2.0 has more internal memory (2gb), and as such can natively hold more books, but now there is no potential for increased or variable content without re-syncing Kindle with your PC.

Instant books! Whispernet is the name Amazon has given to the Kindle's ability to download content directly without needing to be hooked up to a PC.

Experimental? The Kindle has more potential than obvious from a first look. With ubiquitous internet connectivity it is natural to think it should come with a web browser. Amazon was gracious to put one there, although since the screen only supports 16 shades of grey at 800x600 pixels your web experience can at best be called "experimental". Only a fraction of the web will render perfectly on the Kindle, but it's there to use when nothing else is available. Audio playback capability is also included, and so MP3 playing is supported. The text-to-speech feature is also considered experimental. I'll chock it up to mean Amazon is still working on these features and we can expect them to improve over time. If I remember right, there should be a game and possible calculator hidden in the software. Hopefully there will be a few more suprises as well.

Should you get a Kindle? $359 and shipping is expensive. I noticed Amazon has some 1st generation Kindles for sale at a much lower price ($220) now. Kindle 2 is a significant improvement over Kindle 1. If you're an avid reader or technology addict (like me) then getting a Kindle 2 is a no-brainer.

I had to buy one. Be careful, or you'll have to buy one too.

4D

Noreve Case for the iRiver SPINN

Noreve comes through again with a well crafted leather case that fits and protects perfectly my iRiver SPINN. All controls and the USB port are accessible with the case closed. There is even a small hole for access to reset. The leather is high quality and the stitching is excellent. It comes with Noreve's standard but well engineered belt clip and a screwdriver to install it with.

Noreve's cases are pricey, but you won't find a better quality case out there. You can get yours in a wide range of colors, although you might have to wait a few weeks if they don't have the color you want in stock. I recommend them and have several within my collection of devices. You won't go wrong with Noreve's Tradition leather Case for the iRiver SPINN.

4D

Pinnacle Video Transfer Review

The Pinnacle Video Transfer (PVT) device makes it simple to convert videos from DVD, VHS, and cable or satellite box to digital files you can play on your portable media players or PC. I bought mine from Newegg.com for around $80 after rebates. The PVT has a USB port on the bottom end which you can plug a USB thumb drive or portable hard drive into. There are red/white/yellow RCA and an Svideo jack on the top end. Plug an output cable from your player in here and you're almost set to go. Add the include AC charger cable to power up the PVT and you are treated to a nice display of red and blue LEDs while the system checks itself up. You'll get a row of blue lights when the PVT detects a video and audio source. The other end will give you one blue LED when a satisfactory USB storage device is ready for recording. The front face has a single round icon which can be pressed at the bottom to toggle through recording modes an pressed at the top to begin or stop recording.
One thing to do when first receiving the PVT is to update it's firmware. You can download new firmware HERE. Pinnaclesys.com/pvtsupport. Simply copy the downloaded file to an empty USB thumbdrive then plug it into the PVT. Full instructions can be found at the link.

The three recording modes are there so you can choose the best video format for the device you intend to put it on. There are Good, Better, and Best modes with Best being 720x480 interlaced (DVD quality), and Good and Better modes supporting devices with smaller screens.

I found the PVT easy to set up. It came with it's own A/V patch cable, but you may want to get an A/V switch box or multi-output receiver to allow monitoring the video you are recording.

Results depend on the quality of your source. VHS tapes won't have the resolution of a DVD. Cable and Satellite boxes vary in the quality of their composite or Svideo output. Garbage in, Garbage out. Work with the best source you can. Svideo should be better than that yellow RCA composite signal.

Conclusions: I used an old VHS tape of Lost In Space to test the "better" mode, and ended up with a 640 x 480 .MP4 video file. The file played fine in iTunes, although with a bit of scrabbled scan line along the bottom edge which I'm sure was due to the VHS format not actually supporting 480 lines. My VCR had shut off and ejected the tape when it was done, and the PVT stopped recording automatically when the video signal was lost.

I haven't tried the Good or Best modes yet, but will update this blog post when I have. iTunes had no trouble syncing the digital copy over to my iPod Touch. It took a few minutes, but when finished I had a MP4 version of a VHS movie playing on my iPod, and it was nearly as simple as just waiting. You'll have to wait for the source movie to play in real time, then wait a few minutes to copy that movie from the thumb drive over to your iPod on your PC. This was far less painful than the process of ripping a movie from a DVD onto the computer and converting it to play on the iPod. I highly recommend the Pinnacle Video Transfer.

A Good price HERE. Newegg.com.

Some more photos HERE. Newegg.com.

4D

Latte iVu Review. 8gb MP3 Player with FM Transmitter and Camera

A great player to take in your car. With it's own 12DC car charger and FM broadcast ability, the Latte iVu is optimized to take along with you.

First of all, the iVu from Latte is NOT a touchscreen player. Although I like touchscreen players for their simpler interfaces (in most cases) the iVu uses buttons on the top edge for control of it's functions, and once you figure out their uses the interface is a refreshing diversion as the screen stays free from fingerprints.From left to right the controls along the top edge include ESC/HOLD, Vol trigger, Menu, Back and Forward, and on the right end there is a Power/Play/Pause button.The front face reveals a 3" TFT screen with 400 x 240 pixel resolution (WQVGA), and left/right speakers on the ends. While not quite the 480 x 272 screens that are common on many players now, the iVu's screen looks great and will play videos in wide screen format up to 800 x 400 AVI.Although they are not great for anything with bass tracks, the little speakers do make it convenient to check out the features that include audio. The iVu will play music, videos, and FM radio. It will display photos and text. It has a stopwatch and calendar. The features that stand out though are rare on pocket media players. The iVu has a built-in camera that will take 2 megapixel photos, will record video with sound, and can output it's audio wirelessly to any nearby FM radio. I'm a big fan of bluetooth audio, but there is always an additional investment required to take advantage of bluetooth. Chances are great your car already has an FM radio, and any other portable media player you own that has it's own FM radio in it can receive and play the audio from the iVu. The left end of the iVu is where you'll find the 3.5mm headphone jack and standard mini USB port. No proprietary cable required. Included with the iVu is a 12DC to USB car adapter which will keep your iVu charged in your car, as well as a USB charging/data cable and typical earbud headphones. Music. You can play MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, ACC, and APE files with the iVu. Included was a FLAC file and an MP3 file to demonstrate binaural 3D sound. I'm not sure where you'll find any other examples to listen to, but the 3D demo shows off an amazing potential. Music sounded decent through the included earbuds, better through a better headset, and decent using FM to my desktop FM radio. Music will continue to play outside the music app, but a press of the play/pause button will take you instantly back into it. You can listen while viewing photos or text. There doesn't seem to be any cover art support, but you have a few display options within the music app. I'll give Music an A for the broad range of formats supported and output options.

Video. Supported video formats include AVI, RM, RMVB, and FLV. Maximum frame rate is 30fps. I dropped a couple 480x272 AVI videos on it that played fine on my Samsung P2 and although the video looked great the sound was out of sync with the image. The documentation suggest the videos up to 800x400AVI and 720x480RMVB will play, but until I can verify I'm reserving my judgement over the iVu's video ability. Radio. The radio includes manual search as well as auto preset search. You can add or delete channels from the presets. You can switch between stereo and mono output. You can pick from China, Japan, USA, Euro, and Campus Radio areas. Lastly you can record from the radio channel you are tuned to. With the headphones plugged in to serve as an antenna, the iVu found all my local stations reliably. When I tried to record from the radio the iVu locked up on me and would not respond to any inputs. Fortunately there is a on/off slide switch that serves as a hard OFF or reset and got the iVu working again. The Radio is satisfactory, but it'll take a firmware update to get the record feature working. Photos. The iVu wouldn't display any variable bitrate JPGs I put on it, but did display all other photos I tried. JPG, BMP, and GIFs are supported. There is a slide show feature which can be set to 2, 5, or 8 second between images. You can rotate images right or left in 90 degree steps. Zooming will work with photos that start out larger than the screen's native resolution. Images look crisp with the iVu's 155.5 dots_per_inch resolution. With all features working I have to give the photo app an A. eBook: Simple .TXT files are supported. You can set bookmarks, load a bookmark, and delete bookmarks associated with any file. There are Small, Mid, and Big font sizes to choose from. You can also choose from White, Green, or Black text color. There is even a Browse mode that will automatically page through your ebook at a chosen rate. It's not as graphically pleasing as the text viewer on the Samsung P2, but enough features are there to make it a reasonable application for perusing text when needed. I'll give the ebook reader a B+. Digital Camera: The iVu's lens is tiny and doesn't let in much light. With good light (outdoors in sunlight) it will take decent images although they don't match up to those I took with my original 2mp digital camera. You can set the captured resolution from 320 x 240 to 1600 x 1200. There are three backlight levels to choose from. You get Normal, Mono, Sepia, Negative, Solar1 and Solar2 effects to choose from. You can also switch between Auto and Night BW(?) settings. If they had put a better lens on the iVu the camera option might have been of value. I couldn't get a sharp picture no matter the setting. Digital Camera gets a D. Don't buy the iVu for this feature.

Digital Video: Video suffers the same fate. The tiny lens restricts the light coming into the iVu and results in grainy images. Action helps a little to hide the blur, but the iVu is no replacement for a standalone video camera. Even the assorted Flip Video cameras are better with significantly better lenses. Video gets a C, but only because the defects are less noticable in video than in still photos.

Voice Recorder: I have no idea where the microphone is on the iVu, but it must have one since it did record my voice when prompted to. You can choose between 32 kbps and 64 kbps WAV files for recording format. You can pause and resume within a single record session. The mic doesn't pick up very well, so keep the iVu close and don't expect to use it for lecture recording. Nothing more to say as it's a common feature and works. C for average. Other players have better mics, better formats, and better interfaces for their recording apps.

User Interface: It's not a touchscreen, but for a button controlled device the iVu is fairly straightforward. The fwd/back toggle does most of the work. ESC steps you out of sub menus. Menu and Play/Pause buttons often work the same for a selection option. You tap Vol then have a second or two to use the fwd/back buttons to raise or lower volume. I've played with more efficient UIs and some less efficient ones. The iVu's controls serve their purpose and feel as though they'll last.

Conclusion: I picked this 8gb iVu up at Target.com for $130 plus shipping and tax. With it's FM transmitter and camera it stands alone at that price point. Yet compared to other 8gb players with 3" screens seems a fair value. The 8gb Samsung P2 is $149 when on sale for comparison. If you're looking for a player to keep in your car, this is the one you should get.

4D