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Old 27th Feb 2007, 5:34 pm
ctmp3 ctmp3 is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 3
Default Re: Rhodium - 2 inch TFT LCD MP4 Player w/ Speaker 256MB - B

I have one of these Rhodium players.

- The audio quality is pretty good and it can drive my headphones pretty well. Some cheaper (less-sensitive) headphones may not work as well, though. (I can't stand ear buds, so I haven't tried it with the ones that were supplied.)
- It does, in fact, have a 3.5mm audio jack, which is my preference.
- The SD card does go completely inside the player: You have to push on it with your fingernail or a pen to release it - much like some SD-card cameras that I have.
- I am using a 2 gig SD card: I haven't filled it up even to 1 gig, but it reports the proper amount of memory for a 2 gig card.
- It treats the SD and internal memory seperately: There are two different directories - one for each memory and, as far as I can tell, now way to move files between the two using the player.
- The internal memory and SD card show up as separate USB drives.
- It does a reasonable job of recording from the internal microphone. There's a slight whine, and it records only in .WAV format at up to 16k - and only to the internal memory. (OK for voice, but not suitable for music, really.) When you go to record, it will get stuck at "preparing to record" until you hit a button (the "B" button, I think.)
- There are some minor bugs in the menu system. In a few instances, the "ESC" key won't work until you scroll to the top menu item.
- The "user" settings for the graphic equalizer asks you to select "yes/no" in order to save them - and no-where else does it as you to do this.
- The screen is good, but it has a fairly narrow viewing angle: Only one person can how to see it at a time.
- The built-in FM receiver is decent - about average for a small portable.
- You can play the game (Tetris) or view text or pictures while listening to the music files.
- It does *not* play Ogg files.
- The "auto off" is goofy: If you set it to 20 minutes, the player shuts off after 20 minutes, even if you are playing something. (On another player, it would shut off automatically only if it went completely through the playlist and no buttons were pressed.)
- I haven't played it continuously to check it, but I do know that the battery will run it for at least 4 hours at a fairly high volume - and at that time, the battery icon showed "half" - for what that's worth...
- The video playback looks pretty good, although the converter program that you run on the PC is a bit picky on properly handling video being input to it - I'll have to experiment more.
- The internal speaker is really very quiet - usable only if held close to the ear if you are in a place with any background noise at all.
- The player is *really* light and the buttons are quite "clicky" and somewhat stiff, but I've had no problems at all so far.

One thing that I haven't figured out: The description on the UXCell site implies that it can accept a line-in audio, but I haven't figured how how this would be done unless its via the microphone jack and is selectable - but I have not seen any way to do this on the firmware version that I have...

Do I like it? Yes.

CTMP3
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