So I got the new Creative Zen … yeah

Brian LeGros | September 30th, 2007 | useless  

So I bought the new Creative Zen 4Gb last Wednesday on Amazon for $129.99 (free shipping and no tax). I’ve really been excited about this player since I haven’t had a portal video player before. Supposedly it can play AAC encoded files that don’t have iTunes DRM as well as the usual mp3, wav, wma, and Audible. It can also play DivX, WMV, XVid, AVI, and mpeg videos. It really seemed like a great player to replace my battery eating Creative Zen Micro 512Mb. With all the format support, how can you go wrong …

Well I got it in on Saturday and the results aren’t too great. I wasn’t able to get the MTP protocol that Windows has built in for PMP’s to work with my USB 1.1 drivers and crappy old motherboard. I tried a registry hack and ran a help application that actually messed with my Windows system files, which I haven’t figured out how to undo, with no results. So admitting I probably need to get rid of my 8 year old PC, I tried the player with my wife’s laptop and it connected w/o issue.

Creative recommends that you install their sync software at a minimum to put things on the player, but I use Juiced for my podcasts and I’m not too proud to copy over music files, so I installed the suite but decided to use the device as a storage drive first. I do this currently with my Zen Micro. So first off, I tried to play the DivX encoded season premiere episode of Smallville, Season 7. I copied it into the TV folder on the Zen, disconnected it and hit play. It came back saying the resolution was too big, which made sense, so I ran the video through a converter that came with the player. Doh, DivX 6, couldn’t reduce the resolution or convert it to 5 which can be read by player. After an hour of searching and testing, I was able to figure out the converter just wasn’t working with any of the DivX/XVid files I had on my PC. I was disappointed but I figured I could find another converter so I moved onto music, at least I know that should work right?

I tried copying over an m4a file to the Music folder, disconnected, and hit play. No music found … huh? Tried updating the firmware and couple other things with no luck. Couldn’t play m4a or mp3 or wav files. So I figured ok, maybe I have to use the sync program. Well it turns out I do, the sync program builds these .alb files which are used to store metadata for songs that makes the music player work. I could have used WMP 11 as well, but for some reason I couldn’t get AAC encoded files to show up. Yeah, that sucks, this meant I probably couldn’t even push my podcasts to my player with Juiced. I was about the try it out and then I realized I spent 4 hours trying to get everything to work to no avail.

So after a good night’s sleep I’ve decided to go back to eating batteries and listening to podcasts on my Zen Micro. I’ll be returning my 4Gb Zen to Amazon this week and resuming my disappointment in non-iPod players. Bucky, you can say I told you so.

NOTE : I have to commend Amazon on their return policy. I had a return label printed, placed on the box, and off to the post office in one day with no cost to me. I have yet to get my return, but so far everything has worked seamlessly.



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Discussion

  1. Maxim Porges Says:
    October 1st, 2007 at 9:59 pm

    Bah. Typical non-Apple experience if you ask me, but I’m a smug virus-free Mac using bastard.

  2. Brian LeGros Says:
    October 2nd, 2007 at 12:02 am

    @Max - Haha, nice. With Dan’s recent post about Amazon Unbox Music (http://danielroop.com/blog/2007/10/01/amazon-mp3/), who knows, maybe I can actually grow my library with files I can play on my non-iPods.

  3. Lorne Says:
    March 17th, 2008 at 12:15 am

    I just picked up a Zen 4Gb this past weekend from my local Walmart store. Creative’s Zen Explorer worked fine to drop MP3 files from my library onto the Zen, and they play just fine. And I’ve been using MediaCoder (http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/) to convert and re-size video files to play on the Zen. Took me a bit of experimenting to find the right settings on MediaCoder to make an Xvid AVI file that plays on the Zen without Creative’s program having to re-convert it, but now that I’ve got those settings conversion is a breeze and the files load onto the Zen as fast as they can be copied over the USB port. So far I’m pretty happy with it all!

  4. Brian LeGros Says:
    March 17th, 2008 at 3:42 pm

    @Lorne - Thanks for stopping by. As I do more research I realize that I would prefer an MSC device that acts more like a flash drive, rather than an MTP device which is what the Zen is. To transfer AAC encoded files though, you can’t use the built-in MTP support in Windows, you have to use the Zen Explorer; I don’t like that. Looks like the Zen Stone Plus w/Speaker and the new Sansa players are MSC devices that support AAC encoding, so I may have more luck with them. Thanks for the tip on MediaCoder!

  5. Josh Says:
    June 18th, 2008 at 6:12 pm

    i bought a Creative Zen the 8gig one, i use windows Xp64, so as you imagine i get enouth problems as it is. i recently formated leaving music on my Mp3 player, and dammit i cant figure out how to put it back on, through the Mp3 player, any advice ?

  6. Brian LeGros Says:
    June 18th, 2008 at 8:22 pm

    @Josh - Not really sure I can help much. If you used the creative software to transfer the files to the player, then maybe trying reinstalling this software to get it back onto your PC. Another try may be using WMP to pull the music off. I didn’t have much luck with the player, so I’m afraid I can’t be much help. Thanks for stopping by.

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