Sylvania Video MP3 Player with 2.8-Inch Color Touch Screen (Black)

Comment: I was very satisfied with this. Videos play well and the battery lasts quite a while.

Comment: This MP3 is easy to use and works great! The price is right for this MP3! I have gotten many conplements from people & how much they like it. The Videos play is really good. Love it...just buy for this price; you cannot go wrong.

Comment: Look, if you want an ipod buy an ipod. If you want an ipod but don't want to pay for one buy a used ipod. This is not an alternative to an ipod touch. No way no how.

I bought this item used and when I got it and tried to use it I though "ahha!" now I know why it was being sold. I was wrong but only because this is such a poorly planned and executed device. sylvania is a NAME BRAND item right? Well forget that. Go to your favorite ebayish site and buy one of those $30 16G hong kong players and you'll get the same or better.

To power on this unit you have to push the slide button up and HOLD it for 5+ seconds. I guess this is to prevent you from bumping the unit on or off. This is a feature on many electronics but it's usually only for a second or two. Powering down is worse. The time seems more like 10 seconds and there is no indicator showing that it's responding; only when you let go of the button do you get a shutdown graphic. If you hold the button 9 seconds and let go nothing happens. There should be a countdown when you hold the power button indicating it's getting ready to shut down. Heck my $10 mp3 player does this.

The main screen looks pretty good and is arranged nicely with icons for each of the players function as well as setup etc. The icons are big and encourage you to think the unit is make to use with your fingertip. Wrong again.

Once you get past the main screen things get tiny. Children might not have a problem but grown men and even women (those without nails at least) can easily have problems as everything becomes list-like and crowded.

Honestly, after using this unit I'd rather it NOT be touch and have buttons. The biggest issue really is in timing. It's not in the manual (which since I bought it used I had to download) but once you get past the main menu item selection and activation seem to work on selection time. I mean that if you select the movie icon you are moved to a list of folders and movies. To select a folder or file you tap it but a quick tap doesn't work it has to be a slightly lingering tap. Then if you want to open the movie file you have to tap and hold a bit longer. If you tap and hold to long the file doesn't open if you don't hold long enough it doesn't open. It's a timing issue and it's not hard to learn but since it's NOT the way you expect the item to work it creates frustration especially since it's not documented in the manual.

Audio plays nicely and sound good. Video displays nicely but the 20fps (frames per second) can make some videos look choppy or make blurs or ghost images in high speed scenes. The biggest problem is that this video player seems very picky about the conversion settings you use. You can't just copy any old video over to it.

Now this is just MY experience and since there's no documentation that I can find either way this is what I found - videos need to be in 320x240 resolution. You need to use the converter provided.

I've tried the lower resolutions that the provided converter is capable of but I get a "file format wrong" message if I try to open them on the player.

I've tried using other converters to make 320x240 avi files but I get the same message. It's a matter of finding which codec and setting to use. In know some people have said they use such and such an encoder but when I download and use them it doesn't work for ME. So, I'm just saying that unless this is just an issue with my player you'll have to convert and file you have to no larger than 320x240. I can't definitively say you'll have to use the Sylvania converter.

Music playing is a snap. Just touch the music icon and music start playing and the music app is displayed. You are not offered a selection of music to play, the player just starts playing what it wants. The music app really is just a screen that displays information like bitrate, title, artist and a progress bar for song duration. You can fast foward, fast reverse, raise & lower volume, skip to the next or previous song, set an A-B repeat, or change EQ settings. You can't see a list of your music. Nope. At least not intuitively. What you have to do is press the RETURN button (the left facing arrow in the upper right corner) wich brings up a directory list of the drive, then you can select a specific file or folder. Getting the music to STOP is frustratingly hard. If you click the RETURN icon or the DESKTOP/MAIN MENU (looks like a little computer) icon the music does not stop playing and there is no STOP button. I guess the music keeps plying so you have music while you're doing something else on the device like maybe browsing photos. I've heard people complain about other devices that don't let you listen to music while doing something else so I guess this is a good thing. But!, how do you just exit the music app and have your music stop! Turn the device off? Yeah, that work the first time lol. First you have to PAUSE the music (just press the play button for a second) then you can leave the music app.

I haven't played much with the photo display but the little bit that I did was problematical. Photos displayed ok but I don't know if there's a resolution limit. My photos were larger than 320x240 (the screen resolution) but not something you'd get directly of say a 10 MP camera. So you might have to resize your phots. That's not a bad idea anyway since the screen is ONLY 320x240 and larger photos take up more storage on the device. The one time I viewed photos i couldn't get OUT of the slideshow.

I read. A Lot. I've become addicted to reading on my PDA. I thought an ebook option on this device was just icing on the cake. First you have to have your book in txt (text) format. That means you have to learn about e-book format conversion etc. Not really something lots of people would probably do. I won't go into it but you'll have to just do some research. Supposedly the book will autoplay (scroll automatically) but it didn't do that for me, nor was it very responsive to clicking the up/down arrows. I didn't play with it much.

I think the biggest use of this feature would be for notes or list not books. You could put telephone numbers in your text file, directions, shopping list etc.

In the end I will say that I was very frustrated with this device when I first got it. After learning it's quirks I wouldn't say I'm happy with it but once I got used to it returning it would be more trouble than dealing with it. I wouldn't buy it again but from experience all these cheap lower end knock-off type devices are quirky, don't work like you'd expect, have limitations, and are horrendously documented. Ipods/Zunes have their own limitations so it's a question of price.

I got my unit for under $30 shipped. I paid a few dollars more for the Sylvania name thinking a large brand name would make a difference but it didn't. I wanted a unit I would get upset over loosing or breaking (well not much $30 is still $30) and not be out hundreds of dollars. I really was in the market for an mp3 player for yard work etc. Video, photo, and ebook were all a bonus for me. This unit is probably on par with similar devices in the price range but don't pay retail.

Hope this helped some .

Danno

Comment: This product is a piece of garbage for the money. Don't waste your time. I bought it for my niece, and my very technically-savvy son loaded music on it - not easy, had to be converted to load it - he indicated that the player likely wasn't worth the money I paid. Not easy to get the buttons to respond, the user manual is (literally!) 2x3 - that is 2 inches by 3 inches, and even with a magnifying glass, is not easily read. The music cannot be easily played by selection - all in all, it is a waste of money and time - don't waste either on this!

Comment: I brought this for my 10 year old for her birthday. This is a good inexpensive product with features that are easy to use.