PC Mag on iRiver's PMC-120 Portable Media Center
By Peter Rojas 
posted September 3rd 2004 9:16AM
posted September 3rd 2004 9:16AM
Everyone (including us) has mainly been
focusing on Creative's first foray into the category, but PC Mag has a review of one of the other new Portable Media
Centers introduced yesterday, iRiver's PMC-120. Just like with Creative's Zen personal video player iRiver couldn't
manage to fit more than 20GB of storage in there, but at least they were able to attach a kickstand to the back so you
can prop the PMC-120 up when you're watching a movie rather than having to hold it in your hand for two hours.
P.S. - Why has Finding Nemo become the default demonstration video for these things?
I think it is a jab at Steve Jobs. They are showing "his" movie (via Pixar) on their equipment when an iPod can't do that.
Animation will always look better than real-world shots, especially with regard to faces. Various research has shown that the human mind can perceive faces and, especially important here, when faces just don't look right. There are fewer possible errors for the mind to perceive when animation is involved because everyone already expects animation to be flat and featureless.
Because the video transfer to DVD is exceptional. One has to wonder however whether it is a genuine screenshot rather than a Photoshopped image...
Same reason you are most likely to see a digitally animated film on display in showrooms with digital televisions; the are in pure digital format. A film like Nemo doesn't go through an analog to digital conversion as happens with most films put on DVD since it's created digitally in the first place and thus is in a pure form when run of a DVD. Well, as pure as you can get with MPEG-2 compression. And the bright colors in these films are more eye pleasing for a demonstration. Also kind of like showroom television models that have their brightness jacked way up.
Totally agree with the poster who said it's a dig at Steve Jobs. Here's a quote from Bill G regarding the PMC vs the iPod:
"Ask kids in the back of a car on a two-hour trip, 'Hey, would you like to have your videos there?' My kids would," Gates said. "I guess Steve's kids just listen to Bach and Mozart. But mine, they want to watch 'Finding Nemo.' I don't know who made that, but it's really a neat movie."
Zing!
This is less strong, but it is possible that their screen shows some colors better than others. "nemo" spent all its formative life on computer screens and may look unusually good on that format because it was effectively designed for it. It specialises in bight saturated colors with very little subtlty of tone. As you get less color information in a picture the colors tend to get "hotter" and more saturated. It might be interesting to try say, some iraqi news footage where everything is shades of tan and see how the screen holds up then. Not so well I suspect.
It probably compresess well too, I could see somebody in the coloring department going "we can use any colors we want, lets make our lives simpler go with the standard 16 bit palette'