Creative Zen 20 GB Portable Media Center

 (40 customer reviews)

I've had a few days to play with a Zen Portable Media Center because a friend of mine, who's the owner, had trouble getting content loaded. The Creative support folks were friendly, but clueless on this very newly released product. Since I'm his technology guru, he asked me to show him how to get it working.

The Zen is about the size of a paperback novel. It's small but is too large to carry in your pocket. It comes in a nice case the folds nicely into a simple stand. This let's you set the Zen on a table or airline tray-table while using it.

My first impression when I turn it on is that UI is a clone from XP Media Center Edition (which is Microsoft's Media Center PC OS). I own a couple of XP Media Center PC's so found the UI very familiar and intuitive. However, my first reaction was the navigation and play back controls were reversed. I've had a couple of other folks who played with the Zen make the same comment. Perhaps the UI control layout was designed by a...Read more

I recently bought an Archos, but had to take it back because it failed within a week. The replacement went the same way, so being sold on the concept, I went for the Creative Zen as a replacement.

Although it lacks all the recording feature of the Archos, I think its a better machine. So far, its tough enough to stand the kids use in the car without any signs of fatigue.

For content, I find it better to skip Media Player 10 altogether, and I bought a program for $ 25 called the Pocket DVD Wizard, which lets me put my DVD's on the Zen, and the quality is good.

A good tip is not to use Media Player to load the file at all, just let the Wizard do its work, then plug in the Zen, go to Windows Explorer, and drag the movie or mp3 from wherever you saved it straight into the video folder on the zen.

Its much faster that using media player, and the results seem to be better (one less conversion!)

Overall, im very pleased...Read more

I had been waiting patiently for PVP (Personal Video Players) to arrive. Saw Archos, wasn't impressed. Creative Zen looked really good at the store, so I bought it. Have been playing with it. The video and audio play features are pretty reasonable. The speakers could be made a bit louder. The major flaw with this device is the limited ways in which u can load up the video files into it. You will need a Windows Media Center PC OR a PC with a TV tuner/capture device to get video in acceptable formats accepted by Zen. Annoyingly it does not have video/audio inputs for capture. It has video/audio outputs to connect it to a TV. The Windows Media Player 10, converts all files to wmv (very slowly) before syncing it with Zen. The Zen, irritatingly needs to be connected to the PC while the Windows Media Player converts the mpeg files to wmv. I am sure that there are lots of third party tools that can handle the capture/conversion rapidly, but I don't feel like investing more into this...Read more