RoverTv Widescreen Personal Media Player
posted Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 by Andy Gore
When I first heard about Doghouse Electronics Inc.’s personal media player (PMP), I couldn’t believe it. Not because I thought it was impossible to build a lightweight, full-featured audio/video player that’s literally all screen; but because I couldn’t believe a company no one had ever heard of would be the first to do it.
For years now I’ve had this picture in my mind of the perfect PMP: thin, light, with a beautiful LCD screen that spreads its vibrant pixels across the entire front of the device. My PMP plays video files, MP3 files, works as a photo album, makes recordings, connects to the TV, can even turn into an FM radio. It also had an alpha-wave receiver that, once trained, would instantly do as I command with a single thought.
Except for that last bit, I knew what I wanted was possible and expected Apple, with its long tradition of innovation and it’s massive PMP market share, would build it for me. Or maybe it would be Archos, who has been trying for years to design something like my ideal PMP, without ever quite succeeding.
Then, one day, I’m scanning through Engadget.com (the journal of record for gadget freaks) and – oh my God – there it is! My ideal PMP. Or at least something that looks an awful lot like my ideal PMP.
So, I contacted the folks at Doghouse and asked to test one of their RoverTvs. And after using the widescreen edition for a month, I’m here to tell you they did it – they built my ideal PMP – or came as close as can be reasonably expected for a first product. Yes, there are a few problems: a persnickety video player and a somewhat less than stellar interface among them. But on the whole the RoverTv is an excellent PMP and will amaze and satisfy gadget freaks and mainstream users alike.
Design. The first thing you notice when you pick up a RoverTv is that the entire front of the device is one big, bright LCD screen. The version we tested had a 16:9 aspect ratio display, perfect for viewing TV shows and movies without having to compress the image. The RoverTv controls and inputs run along the sides, making it the first PMP to utilize almost every inch of surface area for the display.
The second thing you notice is how light it is – only 5.5 ounces for the widescreen version (the big screen edition, which offers a 4:3 aspect ratio display, weighs only 4.5 ounces.) Unlike most video-enabled PMPs, RoverTv utilizes a replaceable SD card to store data instead of a hard drive, cutting weight significantly. It’s true you can store a lot more content of a 30GB hard drive than a 4GB SD card. But you can’t swap hard drives like you can memory cards and a hard drive would have likely driven up the price of the RoverTv.
Both the widescreen RoverTv, which retails for $349, and big screen version, which runs $299, come with a 2GB SD card, power supply, carrying case, headphones, USB cable and video connector cable. The RoverTv is one of the very few PMPs that can play sound over both headphones and an integrated speaker. This PMP can also plug directly into a TV, VCR, Cable Box or DVD player to both record content and play it back at resolutions up to 480 x 272 pixels (the same resolution as the built-in screen.)
The quality of video playback is surprisingly sharp on a standard TV (it’s a bit fuzzy on an HDTV resolution screen, which is not particularly surprising.) However, the RoverTv’s built-in player was very sensitive to file size, resolution and exactly how a file was encoded (see below.) The net result being that when playing a video file not encoded on the RoverTv itself to a television, sound sometimes compressed, repeated, skipped or was just out of sync with the video. This happened on more than half the video files we tested. Interestingly enough, this did not happen nearly as often when watching the video on the built-in screen, which led me to believe that there may be something wrong with the DAC (Digital/Analong Converter) on the RoverTv.
You can, of course, avoid this problem by using the RoverTv to record video. However, this is something you will need to do manually as, at present, there is no time record feature on the PMP.
Moving content onto the RoverTv worked seamlessly on both Macs and PCs: Just plug it into a USB port and the RoverTv’s storage card will appear on the desktop or in your My Computer directory. Open it up and copy your movies, music, etc. to the storage card and you’re ready to go. It would be nice if the RoverTv worked with a media manager, like iTunes, to move content on and off the device. iTunes would also make it easy to update podcasts on your RoverTv.
A couple of other things we’ll look to see refined in the next version of the device: The button-based controls were not particularly intuitive and had us constantly looking to see what button did what. A jog wheel of some sort would be a lot more intuitive, not to mention faster for moving around the icon-based interface. A touch screen would be even better. The headphone socket on the RoverTv only works with a microjack rather than a minijack, which is required by the vast majority of headphones. This will make finding replacement earbuds a challenge unless you’re willing to live with a converter plug that will stick out an inch from the side of the unit.
Functionality. The RoverTv interface is simple, if not particularly inspired. There are about a dozen things you can do: play a movie, listen to music, look at photos, make a recording, listen to FM radio, or read an eBook. This last one frankly had me a bit baffled. I tried several different eBook file formats but was unable to get any to display. This might have concerned me more but for the fact that everything else worked more or less without a hitch. Also, I’m not entirely sure that I want to read a book on a 4-inch screen, no matter how nice.
The video player can play avi, asf and wmv files and gives you full control over playback and display (you can even switch display options on the fly). The recorder worked seamlessly and produced good quality results. As mentioned above, the only major issue I ran into was the player was sensitive to exactly how a file was encoded. In one case I encoded the same video file using the same codec but through two different applications. In one case fast forward and rewind worked, but in the other when I tried to jog the video the player crashed and dumped me back into the main interface.
The music player handles MP3, AAC and WMA files and, if you have the knack, you can load an LRC (lyric) file and have the words to the song scroll by in time with the music. If you don’t happen to have the appropriate LRC file handy, you can watch the graphic equalizer percolate to the music. You can also fine-tune the equalizer or just go with one of the music profiles to adjust the sound. You can even display the ID3 tags of the file you’re playing in case you need reminding about who wrote the song you’re listening to.
The FM radio offered surprisingly good reception and allowed me to record shows, which was handy. There’s even a pinhole microphone for making voice recordings (that’s me singing karaoke to Prince’s When Doves Cry; drives my son crazy!)
The photo album also worked well letting me adjust orientation, zoom in, and set a photo as my wallpaper.
The RoverTv comes travel-ready for foreign ports of call. The power supply has European-standard prongs (you have to use an included adapter in the U.S.); and the PMP can be set to output its video signal in both PAL and NTSC formats.
Geek-o-Meter: I’m going to give the RoverTv an “8″ for effort. In my book, you get bonus points for innovation, and this is a very innovative little device that by and large exceeded my expectations. Yes, it has it’s problems, the biggest among these an overly sensitive player that made outputting video to a TV screen a challenge. But, with a little practice, you can address this problem by re-encoding video through an application that RoverTv plays nicely with, like FFMPEG. Speaking of nice, it would be nice if, in the next revision, Doghouse added a jog wheel or touchscreen to control the device. And – dare I dream – a plug-in for iTunes that will allow you to use Apple’s media manager to manage content directly on the RoverTv.
Despite these problems, the RoverTv is my now my favorite PMP for video playback. It’s especially fun to download video podcasts meant for the iPod and play them on the RoverTv. Mmmm! That’s good video!
The Specs
- Screen: 4 inch TFT digital display (Wide Screen); 3.5 inch ( Big Screen)
- Video output: Compatible with NTSC/PAL, output signal to TV
- Record: Encode video signal from TV/DVD/VCD/DV to MPEG-4 files; encode the audio signal form CD/FM/MIC to MPEG-3 files
- Audio: Show lyric when playing MP3 and WMA files, 8 kinds of EQ
- Audio Output: Signal to headphone/TV/speaker
- Card Slot: Secure Digital (SD) memory cards
- Photo: Support JPEG/BMP/GIF, can display photos while playing background music
- USB: USB 2.0 compatible
- Power: Li-polymer battery built-in
- Battery Life: 6 hours video; 12 hours audio
For More Information
