My thoughts on VX858LE Clone from TinyDeal - pics
 

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2605/mp41uy3.jpg

So, I got my Onda VX858 LE Clone (8GB) from TINYDEAL.com today, pretty fast
considering it came from Hong Kong to the US east coast in 8 days.

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/4006/mp46sj2.jpg

Firmware version is 00.00.0012
Date 2007-12-13

It was very hard to get this info since the "about" window pops up and is blank and only shows the info right before the box disappears.

I ordered the 8GB model of the player. It came in a manilla packet in a plain brown box.

I played an included movie trailer (Final Destination 3) and it looked good.

Touchscreen was very responsive w/ finger, no stylus included.

So I hook up the player to my PC to check it out, and after a few error messages which seem to stem from the fact that no miniSD card is in the slot, I am able to see two new drives (built-in flash and miniSD slot)

I went to open up the player and am greeted by the beeping of my antivirus program AntiVir Classic. Keep in mind I did a full system scan 2 days ago and am no tech idiot, this was definitely from the player and
not pre-existing on my computer.

antivir report says Virus or unwanted program 'TR/Crypt.NSPM.Gen [TR/Crypt.NSPM.Gen]' detected in file 'G:\pefbutr.exe.
Action performed: Delete file (which it did)

virus info: http://www.avira.ro/en/threats/secti....nspm.gen.html

(note: G is the drive of the player's flash memory on my PC)

My antivirus deleted the file when I told it to, and I noticed I wasn't able to get into the G:\ drive to look through the files, it was prompting me to select a program to open it with (it should just open in Windows) This resolved upon restarting my PC.

autorun.inf file contents in player root (g:\)

[AutoRun]
open=pefbutr.exe
shell\open=´ò¿ª(&O)
shell\open\Command=pefbutr.exe
shell\open\Default=1
shell\explore=×ÊÔ´¹ÜÀíÆ÷(&X)
shell\explore\Command=pefbutr.exe

--

So I take note of this and delete the file (which was flagged as "hidden"). Run a full antivirus scan on my PC and everything comes up clean, apparently AntiVir caught it before I got infected (not bad for freeware)

I loaded up the player with over 7 gigs of stuff, everything played back great and sounded excellent on my KOSS Plug headphones (people swear by these and they only cost around $10 on the web)

External speaker was quite loud on music and the videos (which I normalized to .65)

I messed with the *.LRC function:

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2302/mp42ft5.jpg

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/4605/mp43py5.jpg

Every video file I converted with viDrop before the player even arrived played without a hitch, including one 90+ minute one except for one which wasn't the right resolution until I fixed it. Fast forward + lipsynch works great.

Video player:

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/7315/mp44xa5.jpg

Settings menu:

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/9540/mp45ix1.jpg

[Good:
-great touchscreen, great sound, 8 gigs of space that seems legit (RockChip apparently not hackable)
better firmware than the pictures I've seen (not the plain ugly white background)
-Arrived on east coast of USA within 8 days of being shipped from Hong Kong
-easy to figure out UI, already figured out how to use the screen power save feature
-$99.99 shipped is the cheapest I could find this player ANYWHERE, other sites cost at least $10 more with shipping

Bad:
-I can't figure out how to start Tetris, it starts but says PAUSED and I don't know how to unpause to start, if it's even possible
-Can't play FLV files natively (video player won't even see them)
-Preloaded with a trojan horse virus (wasn't a problem for me but I could see this causing some headaches)
-Gives me an error popup when plugging in to PC (pretty sure it's because there's no miniSD card inside, still works fine)
-No firmware included on driver disc (ConsumerUpdate was, however)
-Getting the bubbly, scratched protective film off of the player's screen was a BITCH and a half, it was partially underneath the front cover, finally a sewing needle did the trick.
-At one point, the player started acting extremely erratic and glitching all over the place (weird colors, freezing, unrecognized by PC), I determined the cause of this was that there were too many files on the player
I deleted around 100 and everything running smoothly again. I suspect I filled it too close to the limit, perhaps blocking it's ability to use flash as RAM??? Not sure but working fine now after a hairy few minutes. It seems like 1,000 mp3s could be a bit too many, even the filecount display wouldn't go that high without glitching out
-ID3 tags seem to work somewhat erratically (some won't show the artist and just say the filename even though ID3 info is present in v1 and v2)

Does anyone know how to unpause Tetris or is this just a glitch in the firmware?

Has anyone seen this firmware in a VX858 or VX858LE original or clone? The music player looks different from what I've seen.

Eagerly awaiting dancemammal's firmware extractor so I can mod this bad boy, but in the interim it looks good enough.

I would recommend TinyDeal based on my experience. I would not recommend the player to someone who doesn't have a little bit of computer knowledge or unwilling to accept the quirks of such a device. If you have a bit of a clue of what you're doing and aren't scared by troubleshooting and tweaking a bit, this is a great deal.

Thanks for sharing this with us BigTymer.

Looks like a very nice player.
The interface to me doesn't seem as 'pretty' as the iPod ones are but this one looks good.

Would you mind uploading the software that came with your player to this site as well?

Does videos need to be converted? Have you tried to convert some yourself using the software?

Re: The virus and autorun feature
- I would highly recommend DISABLING autorun for your CD-ROM to avoid this from happening. Have a look here: http://features.engadget.com/2004/06...un-on-windows/.

Once again, thanks for sharing this with us all.

Re: My thoughts on VX858LE Clone from TinyDeal - pics
 

I think there is a limit on the number of files you can have in the root on most devices anyway, what I do on my rockchip is create folders to organise my files a bit like a playlist, you are allowed to store a lot more files in a folder, not sure what the limit is though.

Nice player BTW, interesting review.

hmmm. i saw that people werent sure about tiny store because of the prices were so low and they thought it had hacked memory but i guess they just load it with a virus instead :P but its cool not a big deal to actually think what you paid for.

Hi, the only software that came with the player was ConsumerUpdate and just a few different versions of AVI Converter. It was on a mini driver CD-R. I think all of this stuff is readily available on the site, I don't think the player had anything new or proprietary with it.

As for videos, I just used viDrop which I found on this forum, I've found it it is the simplest and most straightforward way to convert to xViD. I actually converted a bunch of stuff the past week while waiting for the player to arrive. I used the default settings except I changed FPS to 24 and normalize volume to 0.65. Everything worked on the first try except a file that wasn't the right resolution (had to run it through Windows Movie Maker to fix) The only problem is that viDrop seems to not get along with *.wmv files so I needed to preconvert them to MPEG2 or something along those lines before using viDrop.

Unfortunately I discovered that it seems that only this type of AVI (320x240 xViD) can be handled by the player... I put a .*FLV file on the player and the video file explorer didn't even see it in the list of files.

One more thing, someone mentioned about using folders to avoid the file limit and I was already doing that. I have at least 4-5 folders in root and then some more broken down by Artist and then by Album. Despite this, the player still shows each file as being a certain number out of the current number of files (ie 57/975) I believe that breaking the 1,000 barrier messed with the player's ability to catalog the music files. It constantly froze, the screen got pixelated and grainy, had trouble powering on, needed to be RESET multiple times with the reset button, and at times it wasn't recognized by my PC. However, I was able to play a video during all of this so I figured the problem must rest with the MP3s. I deleted about a hundred and the problem has been gone since.

I don't know how the player allocates it's memory but maybe some of it is needed for normal operation (kind of like reserved memory on a hard disk as a page file)... Just speculation, who knows?

Re: My thoughts on VX858LE Clone from TinyDeal - pics
 

Good Write up there.

I am toying with the idea of getting this player or maybe the 4 gig player. Chinavasion sell the 4gb for a similar price but there delivery is 7+ pounds at lowest rate! So TinyDeal is now an option.

Chinavasion say on there website that this player is capable of 30fps 320x240! I would be interested if you could try out these settings with Vidrop. Is this just an OTT estimation of the players capability or is this really possible? Maybe different firmware but surely not a different display!

I am also eager to know if you had to rotate the videos whilst converting to get them working on this player. This is almost a dealbreaker for me as i have had real trouble in the past with this rotation business.

looking forward to some info.

P.s .. not too sure if the theme on the 8GB is nicer than the others we have seen. The more plain theme had a wmp11 feel to it on xvid playback.

best regards to all here

Alex

The virus part of this story is interesting. When I upgraded my firmware (se my post on Customer Service - Chinese Style) it also loaded a virus that my same program (Avira AntiVir) caught immediately. I struggled to point this out to my non-english speaking friend and when he understood the problem, he erased everything from my player and reloaded the new firmware, eliminating the problem.

But it was interesting how the virus just sort of hoped over to my player. Like other enjoyable activities in life, you can't be too safe!

Re: My thoughts on VX858LE Clone from TinyDeal - pics
 

A small note, I was able to get Tetris working after watching MP4nation's video review of THEIR version of this player, all that is needed is to briefly push the player's power button to the on/off switch and then Tetris will unpause.

Everything still going good with the player, only complaint I have is the screen smudges all the time, but that can't be avoided.

Re: My thoughts on VX858LE Clone from TinyDeal - pics
 

I recieved the player today too.When I first opened it,I was like "wtf.the screen is f*cked up" but then I understood it was the protective thingy.I removed it,but I wont use it unless I get a good screen protection(which I ordered today).

Everytihng seemed fine but mine didnt had a trojan,or any kind of virus.
Also It arrived in 8 days as well,pretty fast.

Re: My thoughts on VX858LE Clone from TinyDeal - pics
 

I currently looking at the same player:

http://www.tinydeal.com/catalog/prod...roducts_id=262

TD say the battery life is up to 5 Hours Video & 12 hours Audio Playback. I was wondering if people are getting those times?

Also, does it have an intuitive GUI? Is it easy to set up playlists and scroll through music while playing?

Thanks.

EDIT: Does it it have txt reader functions? If so, how are they? I have a couple of ebooks I wouldn't mind reading.

mine busted. first it wouldn't turn on, then it would for a brief moment then dead.

not even a reset or charger seems to be waking it up from it's coma :(