M4008, IPG5-4R, MPX-2820X: 4G MP4 with camera, 2.8" touch screen

vladhed · #1 (**permalink**) 20th Aug 2009, 11:14 am

FNG alert!

My daughter wants her own digital camera (with video) and iPod so she can watch movies/videos and show her friends pictures.

On a whim I just bought one of these:

4GB DV Camera+MP4 MP3 Player+Mini SD Slot +Pen IPG5-4P [MP4] - $35.55 : TinyDeal Direct Online Store, MP4/MP3 Player, Mobile Phone, Memory Card, Accessories

It's cheap enough that it one of the kids destroys it I won't care.

I was trying to find out really what it was - it looks like it's made by these guys:

Touch Panel MP4 Player with FM, Camera, TF Slot - Shenzhen Goolan Digital Technology Co., Ltd

What's funny is tinydeals says "Built-in 1.3 Megapixel Camera,support DVD function " (what's DVD function?) where as the Goolan site says "Built-in 300,000 pixels camera, upgraded to 1,300,000 pixel by software" - hahaha at least the manufacturer seems honest :-)

Anyone know which Rockchip it has? If it works as advertised I probably won't try to mod it. I'm okay with occationally having to covert utube videos or DVD rips in order to get it to play.

Is this thing worth posting a review/firmware once I get it?

cheers!

vladhed · #2 (**permalink**) 28th Aug 2009, 8:17 am

Okay, got the thing today - works as advertise - totally what I was expecting:
- manual is for a totally different firmware - but same H/W by the looks of it
- is a great, LOUD, MP3/WMA player - no complaints except that changing the volume is a little tricky
- playing videos is great - I dumped a whole bunch of pinky and the brain episodes using the conversion tool - I started it and came back 15 minutes later to find it was done - great batch tool
- batch tool does not support .FLV - phooie - got to convert to AVI first.
- multi-tasks - play music on random while displaying slide show
- the camera is awful - actually it's pretty good for the price - photos look like they came from a 15$ digital camera - the sensor is essentially a cheap video camera CCD 640x480 - blows out skin (for us honkies) when trying to take a picture even when it's overcast - the controls don't affect the sensor but the post-processing of the raw data into a JPG, so you can't flatten and darken the image to save highlights
- video looks like it came from a cell phone - the mic seems to be facing the wrong way as you can never hear the person it's pointed at.
- if you are snaping pictures or taking video to playback on the unit, the quality is fine. But on a computer, they suck (see the 2 samples I uploaded to the gallery),
- the game didn't appear to work - it seem to hang
- apparently I should try to find some SuperNES ROMs and DL those to the folder?! I think control will be an issue

Software: TV568 MLC V3.0.4.0
Hardware: TV1F568_V2.0

knob · #3 (**permalink**) 28th Aug 2009, 9:22 am

This player doesn't look like a Rockchip at all.
All new Rockchips should play most but not all youtube .flv videos, but as you say the player is probably ok for the price. You would need to pay about $10 more for a new 8GB Rockchip from Tinydeal.

vladhed · #4 (**permalink**) 28th Aug 2009, 4:42 pm

I'm guessing a faily old Rockchip or tinydeal is lying :-) maybe one day I'll get board and take it apart and find out which exactly.

vladhed · #5 (**permalink**) 29th Aug 2009, 10:47 am

Well the rockchip_usb driver doesn't work for the update mode - the device reports VID_0471 PID_0666. Tinydeal actually have a firmware package for this unit (IPG5) using ProductTools_ND but it's not of much use if you can install the USB driver for the maintenance mode.

Any tools to edit playlists for this thing? I can make up a m3u playlist with winamp, then use vi to change it into the format the player wants, but it's a bit of a pain: delete everything but the filenames, prefix each filename with C:/, change the newlines to ";" and insert hex 0x00 between each and every character

knob · #6 (**permalink**) 29th Aug 2009, 11:14 am

Well I think your player is an Ankaya chip player, they do look a lot like Rockchip.
I guess it's like the one in the video:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw_NwBaGdHw

vladhed · #7 (**permalink**) 31st Aug 2009, 7:18 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by knob

Well I think your player is an Ankaya chip player, they do look a lot like Rockchip.
I guess it's like the one in the video:- YouTube - DK iClone V.2 Touch Screen Media Player

You are probably correct. When I put it in webcam mode and plugged it into my computer (and fails to install a driver :-) it shows up as an Anyka USB Web Camera - which is close in spelling :-)

It is this one YouTube - 8GB 2.8 CAMERA LCD TOUCH SCREEN MP3 MP4 MP5 DV CAM VIDEO PLAYER iPhone like - the colour of the unit is a bit different but the firmware is identical (i.e. somewhat annoying)

Apparently there is no point in trying to upgrade this thing: MP4 Nation Forums • View topic - DO NOT UPDATE YOUR VX858 ONDA CLONE PLAYER, which is fine - it works well as a video player in the car - using viDrop an entire movie only takes 256MB.

I've figured out how to create playlists on my computer, then hack it with vi to save as a UTF-16 file.

cheers!

vladhed · #8 (**permalink**) 15th Sep 2009, 10:33 am

On a lark, I downloaded a couple of Nintendo NES ROM from there:
http://www.theoldcomputer.com/Libarary's/Emulation/NES/ROMs/NES_roms_summary%200-L.htm

Not sure how legal that is - but oh well, I downloaded them to the GAMES folder on this puppy and the games work!!!! I got both Danny Sullivan Indy and Donky Kong Classic to run...well, sort of - there is the problem of NO CONTROLLER!!! The "+" and "-" buttons work as left and right on the game pad but there's no way to input A, B, up, down, start or select button actions so it's pretty much useless feature.

One of their designers must of snagged the source code to one of the many NES emulators off the internet and ported one night and they included because it was sort of cool.

Oh, and the game, which is tetris, does work - most of the time.

vladhed · #9 (**permalink**) 17th Sep 2009, 11:09 am

Found some more information on a Spanish forum - including links to the 3.0.3.7, 8 and 9 versions of the firmware
FIRMWARE MP4 ANYKA | REGGNETWORK

mskoch · #10 (**permalink**) 22nd Sep 2009, 3:05 pm

I got this exact same player off ebay but it's a Super Talent Vidego 28 (4GB) and has the Super Talent welcome and goodbye screen. I searched on the web and I can only find reference to the Vidego28 being a Rockchip player, but when I plug it in using PC Cam mode, it shows a Anyka usb webcam as well, so there's no question that this is no rockchip. This firmware is also exactly like that of the Optimus players at MP4 Nation, and the Optimus use Anyka chips. Not that I'm complaining, because I like the UI and the touch screen a lot and it has good sound, but I was hoping to get a Rockchip player for the sound quality. Better luck next time!