It was an impulse buy, though not without some premeditation...
After work on Friday, I walked into the Discovery Channel shop near my work, and I bought a Zvue video player. I'd seen articles about this nifty-sounding gadget for months, starting with a mention on Slashdot. At that time, it only worked with proprietary cards and content, which hardly seemed worth it. Now, though, they've added DIVX support (and bumped up the price), and I could no longer resist. Plus, we're going on vacation soon, I rationalized, and could use some method of bringing music and movies along.
I've now been using it for a couple of days, and so far, mostly so good (apart from accidentally hosing my desktop Mac when I tried installing a video encoder — oops). The sound quality is good, the picture quality is surprisingly good, and it definitely has personality (there's a scrolling credits list you can get to from the main menu, and after a long list of names with witty titles, there's a long break, and then up scrolls the line, "OK folks, the show's over!")
It's far from perfect, of course, which I expected at that price and from what I'd read about it. The protective screen that partially blocks your movie view with its embossed logo, the rewind button that unexpectedly jumps all the way back to the beginning of your movie (come on guys, can't you fix it already?), the lack of any way to bookmark your place, absence of playlist management, etc.
But on the other hand? We're talking Sex and the City in the palm of your hand. Pretty darn cool.
The Zvue is in danger, though, along with the iPod and a score of other innovations. The INDUCE act would criminalize manufacturers of technologies which "induce" users to break copyrights. You can read more about it here and here. Infuriating... after all, since the introduction of EMusic and the Itunes Music store, I've probably spent more on music than ever before. It should be easy to buy content, and it shouldn't be illegal to take stuff off a DVD I own and transfer it to a cute little blue player I can bring on vacation.
Edited to add: If you want to learn more, or you already have one and are trying to figure it out, check out this discussion board.
