Creative Zen Vision 30 GB Multimedia Player Black

by Creative Labs

Product Details

• Item Weight: 8 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000A3N6O4
• Item model number: ZENV30GBBK
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)

Product Description

Color: Black

From the Manufacturer

Zen Vision's 30 GB multimedia center is bound to impress anyone who wants to carry all their digital entertainment files -- tens of thousands of photos, up to 120 hours of videos, and 15,000 songs -- everywhere. This premier MP3 player with 3.7" SharpPix™ high resolution 262,144 color screen with transflective technology makes photos look almost as good as -- or even better than -- the real thing, even in bright sunlight! Zen Vision is not only lightweight and slim, beneath its classy magnesium casing are features that will fulfill all your digital entertainment needs.

Capture life's memories
A must for all amateur and professional digital photographers, Zen Vision features a Plug&View™ CompactFlash card slot¹ that lets you quickly transfer and view photos from your digital cameras in crisp thumbnail galleries. Free up precious memory space in your CompactFlash during long photo shoots by archiving tens of thousands of photos in the Zen Vision's spacious 30 GB hard disk drive.

Enjoy the complete portable photo viewing experience when you are entertaining a few friends. Share your collections of baby photos by adding a backdrop of your favorite music to the slideshow directly from your Zen Vision. Instantly turn your slideshows into attention-grabbing multimedia extravaganzas!

Enjoy stunning videos
Zen Vision's large LCD guarantees that you'll always be entertained. Plus, you have the option of connecting your Zen Vision to a television set via the TV-out jack to thrill larger audiences. When you're on-the-go, enjoy up to an incredible 120 hours of your favorite movies, homemade videos, or movie clips of your baby's first step taken with your digital camera.

Listen to your music
With 15,000 songs, you can store your whole music collection on this player. Listen to over 1000 hours of music, that's 41 days of never hearing the same song twice! Even share your favorite songs with your friends through the built-in speaker.

Add zest to your songs
Zen Vision features a host of cool features that will bring the best out of any music. Adjust the customizable 5-band EQ to suit your tastes. Activate Bass Boost for truly earthshaking bass. Or turn Smart Volume on to eliminate sudden changes in volume.

Built-in FM radio and Recorder
Keep yourself up to date with the latest and greatest on the music charts or with recent developments in world news by tuning in to your favorite radio stations using the built-in FM tuner. You can even record your favorite radio shows for later playback.

Notes:
1) Compatible only with 128 MB and above CompactFlash cards. Optional 5-in 1 Memory Adapter is available separately, supported memory types include SD, MMC, XD, Memory Stick and Transflash (With SD Adapter)

When your device and music are compatible with each other, all you have to do is choose the music and video that's right for you. To learn more visit the PlaysForSure website.

Product Description

Zen Vision takes portable digital-media another step into the future with this very compact multimedia player. Featuring a transflective screen that provides excellent image and video quality even in bright sunlit conditions, the 30GB Zen Vision carries up to 15,000 songs, tens of thousands of photos, or up to 120 hours of video. With a convenient size 4.9 by 2.9 by .8 inches at only 8.4 ounces, this compact digital-media player offers MP3 audio storage and play, digital photo storage and display, plus MP4 digital video storage and play. Plug&View slot on the side of the player supports both Compact Flash Type I and Type II media. An optional Compact Flash Adapter plugs directly into the Compact Flash slot to accept the most popular memory card types including SmartMedia, MultiMedia Card and Secure Digital, 17 variations in all Supports a wide selection of video formats for enjoyment of movies downloaded from the Internet, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Simple Profile formats such as DivX and Xvid, WMV, and MJPEG. The Zen Vision also supports TiVoToGo, for viewing of TV content recorded on a TiVo personal video recorder, and digitized home movies transferred from the PC USB 2.0 connectivity Built-in microphone - shows volume levels on screen for optimum voice recording quality Organizer - Provides calendar, tasks and contact lists, and syncs with Microsoft Outlook Enables setting of Date & Time, plus allocation of Removable Disk space for dedicated storage Clock with wake-to-any-music alarm Color - BLACK

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Treat this review as your bible to MP3 / multimedia shopping, July 2, 2006

By 

LS "LS" (NJ) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Creative Zen Vision 30 GB Multimedia Player Black (Electronics)

OK, I did too much research on these devices ... so I am here to share :
I will break down Pros / Cons / General Advice / Why Creative over an IPOD.

OK ... giving this 5 stars, not because it is perfect ... only because *all things being equal*** it is best in its class.
Pros
- SMART drag / drop (which is HUGE if you were an 'old time original napster dude, where you downloaded everyone song you ever wanted, and still have the collection). SMART means this ... if you drag / drop music, pictures and video in one folder, it will ask you if you want Creative to put the files into the appropriate folders. And it does this well. Nice feature, if you have digital pics, and digital movie footage (from the same camera, in the same folder) ... you don't have to do the sorting yourself ... as it handles it for you.
- long battery life
- nice little speaker for 'preview' without having to block out the rest of the world with your headphones (useful if you

are sharing family pics w/ your kids and don't want to depend on the headset)
- nice HD screen BIG screen
- nice wow factor
- beautiful design
- HUGE format replay support (like AVI, which none of the other players support, even the Vision M). AVI for me is huge, because I take a lot of digital camera movie clips, which are in AVI format. I wanted to be able to play these back, without having to convert, and this unit handles it.
- removable battery
- option for EXTENDED 28 hour battery life
- fm, voice recorder
- tv outputs
- Can manage with what ever software you so desire ... (see cons on IPOD below).

Cons
- had to reset unit (remove battery, put battery back in) as the unit froze on me within 72 hour period (however, it is

possible that I had a corrupt MP3 that caused this ... and I did fill it up to 30% capacity and did a lot of moving of files

around. Like any hard drive file system, this can cause some confusion to the underlying OS, so I am less concerned about

the freeze problem ... but will be keeping an eye on it)
- headset does not make sense ... should have come with a right angle plug (minor, and a $20 fix ... just buy a pair of nice

headphones). The plug and its location is prone to become damaged (as it is right by the finger controls, and sticks

straight out ... very annoying). I replaced with a nice pair of Philips right angle plug headphones, which comes with a wind

case, for easy travel (without the tangle).
- like everyone said about the screen ... it is tough to view with 2 eyes ... let me explain ... (which by the way ... if

you change the underlying skin to SILVER, versus the standard DARK BLUE, you will be in much better shape). Now, for the

explaination ...
If you look with your left eye only ... you will notice a sweet spot when viewing. At that sweet spot, the picture will look

like a picture ... when out of that sweet spot, the black becomes 'shiny'. Now, when you are infocus with your left eye,

close it, and open your right eye ... you will notice that your right eye sees the pic a bit shiny. If you adjust the view

angle with your right eye, your left eye will see that bit of shinyness ... and so, on. I am NOT sure what the folks of

creative were smoking when they designed this screen, but it is tough on the eyes. NOT NOT NOT designed to watch a move, but

definately has the WOW factor, because when you look at it, at a glance, the screen is NICE, almost HD.
- If you use polarized lenses, when you are driving, don't even think of looking at the screen, because you wont see

ANYTHING. Somehow, the polarization cancels out the view ENTIRELY. Not sure why, but it does. (Despite the screen flaws,
- expensive (but only $80 more then the Vision M, which is a nice alternative, but does not have the replay speaker, the bigger screen or the extensive format repaly support.



General Advice
Don't rely on MP3 tagging, because your songs will always be out of order. Create Playlists ... this way you can go to your

group of songs and can pinpoint any song you want in SECONDS, versus having to sort through incorrect Genre, mislabeled album

titles, etc. It comes down to this ... label your songs yourself, don't depend on these unreliable MP3 tagging services,

which will completely destroy the existing tags on you songset. I have a huge collection of howard stern comedy clips, and

mp3 autotagging had these songs in ballet, soul, etc. And the funny thing is that these services claimed to have completed

100% accurate tagging to my songs. B*&&S%$!. Stick to your own labeleing, and use playlists. I had over 1300 songs

organized in about 1 hour.

Why Creative over an IPOD :
OK, here is why. IN MY LIFE, I purchased 5 songs through IPOD. Notice the workd PURCHASED, meaning I OWN THEM. Would you

believe that when I went to play those songs on another computer, I WAS REQUIRED TO LOG INTO ITUNES, to ACTIVATE THE APPROVAL

OF THOSE SONGS BEING PLAYED!!!!! Is that insane? Talk about big brother keeping tabs on the S&#! I purchased. I hate to

say this, but APPLE is for people that don't have brains. They are for people that don't want to think, and don't care to

ask questions, and don't care to understand. For those ... there is apple. For everyone else, CREATIVE understands your

personal needs, and also has a talented bunch of engineers that understand what an enthusiast REALLY wants. The CON however

to buying the Creative is that you will have to use 5% of your brain. If that is OK with you, then this is the device for

you. If you don't want to use your brain, and want APPLE to do all of the thinking for you, buy an IPOD ...but beware when

you 'upgrade your computer', and APPLE says there is a limit on how many computers you can play your 'PURCHASED' songs on.

ALSO, why this over an IPOD :
- built in speaker
- nice HD screen, especially if you are a PROUD parent, and want to keep every digital picture of your kids in your shirt

pocket, as well as your full MP3 list.
- TV output, to share slideshows with your family
- EXCELLENT support : Creative picked up the phone BEFORE I purchased the product, as well as after I purchased the product.

BOTH times, I was treated fairly, respectfully, and was helped. STELLAR.
- bad replay support on the IPOD, as it isn't a generic multimedia device.
- IPOD doesn't have FM tuner, doesn't have voice recorder (which is awesome by the way), doesn't have TV output, doesn't have removable battery
- With IPOD, you better love ITUNES, because you have no choice but to be married to it. Not very American, is it?? Kind of like a fixed marriage. With the Creative unit, you can use what ever you desire (its own software, drag / drop within windows, Mozilla firefox, Windows Media Player, etc.)

Got to go folks, there are probably more items, but my fingers hurt from too much typing.

143 of 151 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars nearly there, November 5, 2005

By 

Cheryl Carruth (Boise, ID USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Creative Zen Vision 30 GB Multimedia Player Black (Electronics)

Creative nearly hit bullseye with this device. It's perfectly sized, easy to use, and has plenty of capacity. Images are crisp and colors rich, but the unit falls just short with a narrow viewing angle and sluggish navigation.

First, the bad. The screen is uncomfortable to watch head on. The left tilt helps but it's still not satisfactory. In addition, my unit has several tiny starlike specs that distract me from my movie. Compared to my HP iPaq, the unit takes time to boot and navigation is much slower. Finally, I don't understand their claim to support a variety of formats. For some of my movie clips, like from my digital camera, I can play them right away on my PC on Windows Media Player 10 but have to go through a conversion process to play them on the Creative. And the conversion lowers the quality of the file.

Now for the good. 30GB holds a lot of portable movies. Navigation is a breeze. The sound is wonderful and the screen displays color beautifully, with sharp clean images. The file management software is straightforward. The unit is well constructed and feels good in the hand.

Now for a word about getting content onto your portable video player.
There's always CinemaNow. But if you want to watch the DVDs you own, you've got to rip. Creative includes Video Vault demo software to help get your movies portable, and it's pretty good. I prefer it to the software called "DVD to Pocket PC" because it's more stable. The downside is it creates much larger files (an average movie is 600MB rather than 300MB).

To get DVDs onto the Creative using the demo software, you have to
(1) rip the DVD into a file format the demo software will accept (I use DVD Shrink freeware)
(2) use the demo software to convert that ripped file (2-5GB) into a portable movie file (400-800MB) to put onto the Creative. This step takes 1-3 hours per movie, so I run it overnight.

To get TV onto the Creative, it's helpful to have a Media Center PC with a DVR. This way you can move recorded TV shows to the Creative and watch them on the go.

Yes, this is all very time consuming work, but no different than ripping your CDs to create an mp3 music library. Using this process, one snag I haven't figured out yet is how to get my 16x9 (and wider) movies to play in the correct aspect ratio on the Creative Zen Vision. It ends up being slightly stretched top to bottom. Thankfully, the stretch isn't so bad.

For me the results of all this digital transfer are worth the effort. It's a blast to have this on a trip. The Creative Zen Vision is a pioneer product and a fun toy for the electronics enthusiast.

update: I solved my 16x9 problem. The full version of Video Vault software (whose demo is included with the Zen Vision) has an option for 4:3 or 16:9. This is the best program I've found for converting movies into portable-sized files.

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great product - read the manual, December 26, 2005

By 

William A. Nolan "freeholder" (Willcox, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Creative Zen Vision 30 GB Multimedia Player Black (Electronics)

I started looking at items like this one because I wanted a device I could use to store my photos while traveling without lugging a notebook computer around. When I picked this one, I think I made a great choice.

Mainly, in this review, I want to address some misconceptions found in other reviews. First, the screen: The viewing angle is not an issue at all. I was amazed to see what is said in some of the reviews. It is a one-person device, but I can move my head several inches in any direction without problems. The screen is amazingly sharp and clear, and easily visible even in bright sunlight.

Second, you CAN use this as a removable drive. You simple set that up under the extras menu, make sure you have navigated to the removable drive screen on the Vision, and then plug it into a computer. It will come up as a removable drive under My Computer. It works fine. All I had to do to find out about this was read the manual.

It also works fine to store my photos. It's easy, fast, and SMALL, being about the size of a deck of cards. The 30 gigs is enough space for even a pretty long trip, and I take a LOT of photos with a 7 MP camera.

I had no trouble transferring my movies to this, either. I have a very large collection of DVDs, and I wanted to be able to watch them while traveling. I am using a program called Magic DVD Ripper to convert them, and it is easy. It does take about an hour for my computer to do the conversion.

The battery is removable, so you can, if you like, carry a second one. Try that with an Ipod.

All in all, I haven't found much of anything to complain about.

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