PC Mag reviews MSI Mega View 566
By Marc Perton 
posted April 20th 2005 2:02AM
posted April 20th 2005 2:02AM
We first checked out the MSI Mega View 566 (previously known as the Apex MP-2000) at CES earlier this year, and liked the fact that MSI had upped the specs a bit from the Apex version, including the addition of an SD slot. Now that the unit is actually out, PC Mag took a look at it, and liked the overall package, but subtracted points for a low-quality display and poor UI. Decent specs on the $399 player, however, including good direct audio recording, DivX support and 6-hour battery life.
This form factor is getting out of hand. I can go to the local high-street retailer and see a dozen identical boxes like this on display. Worse still, they all seem just a tad overpriced. I like the idea of playing movies on the road, but not at the 300+ pricepoint.
I own the MegaView 566 and have just sold it to someone on eBay after 2 months.
While I do like the unit and being able to play videos in my hand there are some setbacks to the unit.
1 - Battery life sucks when watching videos. I took it on my vacation to Hawaii and through the 13-14 hour flight time I went through all 4 batteries that had been fully charged.
2 - Screen is horrible. Just as the review says. Being able to see every pixel with a visible line between them sucks.
3 - User interface needs some tweaking. For instance, I catagorized music into 'rap' and 'rock' folders. When you exit out of the rap folder it should put you back into your 'music' folder, but instead it takes you to the main menu. Would be nice to be able to randomize music from multiple folders. This way when I want to listen to rap I can. When I listen to rock I can. When I want to mix them both randomly I can.
4 - Sound quality is horrible. At first I figured it was the crappy earbuds they gave with the unit, but when I purchased a decent $30 pair of Sony headphones the sound was still bad. Listening to rap music with bass puts out a lot of distortion. The equalizer settings are useless and I only found one I liked out of about 5. The speaker built into the unit distorts a lot, so you have to keep the volume lower. While you're not using the speaker all that much, it's nice to have the 'wow factor' when showing the unit off to friends.
5 - My last gripe about the unit would be it's firmware updater. I was fooling around in settings and accidentally hit firmware update when there was no firmware on the unit to be updated. It got stuck and wouldn't get out of that! So finally after a few minutes of the unit just sitting there I powered it off. It wouldn't boot up anymore. I received an RMA and sent it back to MSI explaining the situation. All they had to do was restore the drive to factory fresh. It was taking them forever and after a few contacts they finally decided to ship me a new unit. While the new unit's little joystick didn't work well (sometimes you press down and it moves up, sometimes you press left like 10 times and it does nothing), I didn't complain because they had gave me 2 extra batteries, extra carry case, extra tv cable, extra everything that originally came with the unit because the only thing I shipped back to them was the unit.
If you want my old Mega View 566 box it'll be for sale on eBay to some sucker for $299 labeled as "megaview 566 like new box". JUST KIDDING!
I ordered the MSI Mega View 566 expecting to return it quickly. I won't be returning it and here's why...
Audio: (Note, I am in the commercial audio production industry so I have gear that might be a bit better than most home users) To check the reviewers remarks about the Mega View 566 ("MV") audio not sounding good compared to other portables I ripped a wide variety of audio files from fat stadium rock to articulate steel string acoustics, classicals to hip hop using Media Player 10 to make MP3 and WMAs. I played the files out of my workstation through my well maintained mixer and out my flat Yamaha reference monitors and compared the audio directly to the exact same files copied to the MV and played out through the headphone and line out jacks through the same mixer and the same monitors. With the MV's EQ set to "Normal" and volume set to right in the middle I honesty heard no significant difference. A standard untweaked rip of MP3s sound just as shimmery in the highs from both devices and switching the Mega View EQ to "Jazz" rolls off that format's typical annoyance and adds a nice slight lower midrange punch. Untweaked WMA doesn't have that same shimmer and A/B-ing the MV at Normal EQ against the computer playback was also a pretty direct match. Maybe it's just my trained ears that aren't ever very pleased with MP3/WMA or the fact that I never use silly earbuds or cheap headphones but I don't understand the reviewers who found a problem with the music output of this unit as compared to the various iPods I've patched in over the months.
Video: For years I've been using iPaqs for mobile movies, holding the mpeg1 and wmv files on a 5GB pcmcia hard drive in an iPaq sleeve and using media player for the WMVs and PocketTV for the mpeg1s. After a little bit of experimentation on the compression I could get the movies to run at a jumpy 15fps on a 3800 and 3900. The MV beats this hands-down in many ways for hundreds of dollars less.
When pocket media devices started getting bigger drives I started looking very closely at them and was about to make the flip of the coin for the Archos or the Zen and then I noticed the X2/Apex/MSI MegaView 566. I read the reviews here on amazon and when the current 50 dollar rebate came up to make the 566 about the same price as a audio-only iPod I figured I'd give it a try and really bang on it to see if the reviewers had direct experience, were just fans of other companies, just got bad individual units, that they didn't have time to read the manual or that they didn't have much experience using compression tools to match devices.
As soon as it arrived I popped in one of the batteries and plugged the included AV cable directly to the output of my Tivo box. Because one reviewer said that all he got when he did this was image rolling I really didn't expect it to work. I expected that what would be needed was the same old technique that's required when you plug a DVCamera Analog input to the output of the Hughes Tivo: video rolling. Some Tivo units output signal that's too much for the device input and so the trick is to soften the signal by plugging the Tivo output to the input of a VCR, setting the VCR to AV mode (analog passthrough) and then plugging the DVCam's Analog input into the VCR's outputs. This attenuates the video signal and the DVCam will then record nicely. Thing was that when I plugged the Mega View directly to the Tivo and also to a regular RCA DirectTV box I instead got a perfect signal and error-free 320x240 MPEG4 recording. So that reviewer either got a bad individual unit or maybe they should look around for tricks and tips on real world analog to digital recording.
Next, I tried to see a reviewer's issue of the Mega View's record timer not working. Still plugged into the Tivo I tried all of the different standard duration settings all the way up to 180 minutes and each recording worked to the second. So that reviewer may have had a bad unit.
Playing back these MEG4 recordings to a TV didn't give an amazing experience ... this is to be expected since the recordings are 320x240 and for TV output the player will resize them up to 512 and logically make the artifacting more obvious. However, while they look pretty darned good on the Mega View's screen and also in Media Player at 200% resizing (when the Mega View is USBed to a computer and used as a removable hard drive).
If you are thinking that the unit might be good for bypassing DVD copy protection, you're wrong. Plugging the AV cable directly to your DVD player outputs and attempting to record a copy protected DVD will result in a popup that says "Video Protect". This is of course not a negative on the Mega View since you will not be able to record that same DVD through the Analog input of most newer DVCams, directly to VHS or even to a computer through a hishpeed A/D converter either. Two things about this:
1) Unprotected dvd record perfectly fine. Because I have a youngster I have the full Baby Einstien collection. The early editions are not copy protected (presumably because the maker understands that the discs will often find their way into the hands of toddlers and end up destroyed so the let you make your own VHS or even DVD Backup copies (very nice of them by the way).
2) If you bought the DVD with your own money for your own family's viewing then copy protection can be legally gotten around under the "Fair Use" condition of copyright law. When you "buy" a DVD that has a movie on it, you are only "buying" the plastic dvd disc. The content itself is licensed to you for viewing and unless clearly stated on the packaging and obvious the the buyer prior to purchase that license does not mean that the only way you are legally allowed to watch the content is by using the original plastic dvd disc that holds the content. In other words, if you have a VCR in your bedroom and a DVD in the living room and you buy a DVD movie then you have a legal license to view that content in your bedroom on your VCR (or on your Mega View). "Fair Use" does not give you the legal right to copy a DVD or VHS tape that you rented from a video store or borrowed from a friend.
The trick is that most all devices, DVCams, computer A/D converter boxes, VCRs, and the Mega View all err on the side of caution and restrict you from making your legal Fair Use copies. To exersize your legal right you have to pay more money and invest in a video stablizer. I use the Sima GoDVD model CT-200 that I picked up at CompUSA. This is a little powered box that goes between the DVD player video out and whatever device you want to record with. Right on the box is the statement "Use of this product for unauthorized duplication of copyrighted material from DVD, VHS or other media is prohibited under federal copyright laws unless the copy qualifies as a Fair Use under the Copyright Laws". This unit, by the way, also has options to let you convert between PAL and NTSC, two settings for boosting the brightness and contast, one setting for darkening a too-bright source and even color bars for adjusting your device monitor prior to a dubbing session.
Once you have one of these you can easily record your legally licensed DVD content to the Mega View directly using the unit's AV input jack.
DivX: My unit came with several pre-recorded DivX videos in various resolutions. The World of Warcraft trailer and various Motocross videos were recorded at standard 512x368 TV resolution and the MV played them out to my 30inch TVs with amazing quality, great colors and smooth playback. The unit comes with a trial version of the DivX codec, I own the Pro DivX package so I didn't and won't have to try this freebie. Being a DivX owner already however I can tell you that once you take the time to undertand how to use DivX options (or options for any AVI codec) you can be very happy with the results both on the MV screen TV output. But you have
Hey , I got me a Mv about 3 weeks ago i love it to bits !
Only gripe i gots with it , is there is no EQ , everything is preset ..
I mainly use it as an incar Media player running the whole system off it and i works great !
Best of all its removable!!