Review: 8GB Nano "Venom"
 

They say that 'first impression' is everything. And it is true, as i've discovered, when it comes to PushPlay Digitals sexy new 8GB Nano "Venom" MP4 Player.

My first impression:

"Got the look"
Damn sexy! All black. Jet black is very sexy. Stealth black even. This arrived a few days ago and i've kept it quiet because as we all know 8GB players based around the Actions chipset are as rare as hens teeth. And I
wanted to fully put this thing to the test.

Sound:

Surprisingly, pretty damn good. Even the supplied headphones are decent quality. Although it's downfall here is it's 2.5mm heaphone socket. This puzzled me slightly considering it's 7mm thick which should be enough to accomodate a 3.5mm socket. Packed inside the unit as a slightly more advanced graphic equalizer that has the usual Jazz, Pop, Rock, Soft, Normal, DBB, Classical settings with the nice little added extra feature of SRS Wow. (makes a hell of a difference to the sound) The music menu is the classic display with the large 'dancing bars' that we've grown so fond of in our chipods. That isn't real by the way it's just a few animated pics(duh). Those of you who like to theme your firmware will no doubt be aware of this. Now a chipod with a realtime visualization would be awesome.

Navigation:

Skipping from song to song was dissapointing. Slow and sometimes
painfully bloody slow. Very similar to the 1.5 Full Metal Platinum. There is a work around though, by entering the players file browser and selecting the song you want.. it's alot quicker and saves you your sanity. Same goes for AMV viewing. The 'button' wasn't the best though. Sometimes while skipping a song it either wouldn't do anything at all or do something
you didn't want it to do. Thats characteristic of most chipods though and
you get used to it after a while, believe it or not. It worked best when i pressed on the outermost edges.

Video:

Impressive to say the least. 1.8"... i like that and unlike it's close cousin the Full Metal Platinum, video is clear and smooth with virtually zero ghosting. I recommend using the modified AMV Converter v4.0 in the download section to make your videos. What else can i say.. very nice indeed.

Firmware:

Wierd.. it comes loaded with version 9.1.51. Anyone wanna try extracting that?.. not me. But thats ok, it comes with a copy of it's firmware on the included mini disc. Don't bother trying to run it through s1res though as it won't recognise it. The interface has 2 themes you can choose from. The original is identical to the 1.8" FMP. The other is a new flashy, all dancing, glittery circus that should please those who like something different. It's trippy. I'll dig up pics a bit later.

Overall:

I will say that this was a bitch to get up and running as in charging/formatting hack checking etc etc. But once i had it charging and was satisfied that it wasn't oozing with hacked memory i'm quite impressed. Thats right readers... it aint hacked! (or at least as far as i can tell) I got a version of Mp3 Disk Tools that actually low level formatted it encrypt/unencrypt. Although i don't know that much about chip configurations, the mp3 disk tool gave me the impression that this thing has 2x4GB chips under the hood. Maybe it does but where would it all fit? The mp3 format utility displays 4GB capacity on the "Format" tab but shows 8GB on the "Partition and Encrypt" tab. Both remained that way after the low level formats. I tried copying a stack of 350mb tv shows to it until it was full but gave up after it got to about 6.5 GB. Then started to copy them back.. i started by copying the last file i added and worked my way back.. i did about 4 and they all worked once they were back on my hard drive. A little later i came back to it and tried to copy more off but for some reason they all went corrupt. This could be taken as a sign it's hacked but the next day i discovered that half of my computers RAM had gone bad and files had been corrupting all over the hard drive. Today files are happily going onto the player and staying there. Formatting went smoothly as well.

The button, which is also the same Jet Black colour as the rest of the unit with white words and symbols, could be better. The bottom part of the button has the "Play/pause" symbol on it and the middle button doesn't do much except activate the volume control while playing music or getting ready to set the same for AMV.
Charging was a pain as it wouldn't take much of a charge from the computers USB.. no matter which one i used from the choice of 8 ports, even leaving it overnight. The included charger didn't come with an adapter for Aussie wall sockets so i grabbed the one from my FMP. After several hours of sitting on the charger not much was happening, until i read a post on this forum about going to the radio and charging while there. It worked.. it was fully charged in 2 hours. Wierd or what? I'd estimate about 5-6 hours music and 3-4 hours movie playing time on a single charge.

I like it, not a bad little player for the price and 8GB is nice too. I give it about a 8.5 out of 10. 7 for the player and an extra 1.5 because it's black. Did i mention black is sexy?
This one is going to a female friend when i've got all her cd's on it.. hmph... that might be next weekend by the number of discs she's got stacked on my desk. I'm too scared to count them.
She wont let me take it apart to check the chip numbers. But it's seems genuine.

I'm seriously considering getting one for myself shortly.


Cheers all.

Here are some pics that came out ok-ish ... excuse the blurry pics and wierd hues.. terrible Nokia phone camera... these are pics of the alternative theme

http://www.odysseyfx.com/Images/004a.jpg http://www.odysseyfx.com/Images/005a.jpg http://www.odysseyfx.com/Images/006a.jpg http://www.odysseyfx.com/Images/007a.jpg

Re: Review: 8GB Nano "Venom"
 

UPDATE:

I recieved a request for this players firmware from a member who's player had died and used the same fw 9.1.51.
I mentioned in the review that this came with a copy of it's fimware on the included disc but never really checked out the files until now. The thought that the reason they wouldn't load into s1res to be themed, modified or otherwise "fiddled with" was because they were raw dumps and not been repaired. So i ran them through s1fwx repair tool. There are 2 files named "UPDATE_NO-HY512M.fw" and "updateHY_512M.fw". During the repair process i discovered that the manufacturer either has a twisted sense of humour or the department responsible for making the cd for this player are a bunch of puddings.

S1fwx successfully repaired the dumps and reported both files were version

SC85024B
2005/12/08
ACT_V3.2.16

for a 1.5" screen

My apologies to all and to that member with the dead player.
It's the manufacturers short sightedness thats at fault here and don't hold PushPlay Digital responsible.
I've been informed that this players real firmware has been updated to deal with the navigation speed issues so if you can afford it and have enough music and vids to fill 8GB, get one.

faster? themable? 8 gigabyte? this would be the PERFECT player for me!
i can't afford it though, i just spent the money that i've been working my ass off for, for 2 months (50 bucks) on a Full Metal Platinum 2gb 1.8 from my friend.

I looked at the venom in all colors and memory, and i took a look at the buttons. they are the same as the iPod nano, even with the play at the bottom. how do you change volume? i know it can't be a click/scroll interface wheel because i don't think that the processor could handle that.
and if that is what the buttons really look like, then what does the middle button do?

I mentioned that here >

Getting used to the different button config doesn't take long as it's not too different from the FMP. The only real difference is the Play/Pause and Volume buttons have been swapped. You still have to press "Menu" to activate functions and use Play/Pause to cancel/exit and turn on/off

The units firmware isn't themeable. It's version 9.1.51.
The version on the disc is wrong. v3.2.16 Still a top little player.

Did you notice the new VenomFX has a speaker on the back?.. cool or what?

I have a FMP with a speaker on the back. The speaker is ok, but if you set it to loud, it will make some strange noices you know ^^ my FMP is very fast, a lot faster than other nano clones I have tried, and even filebrowsing is okay :)

Hi

Where can we buy this item ???