David M Williams
Sunday, 23 November 2008 04:42
Page 2 of 3
As well as an A/V input, the projector has 1GB memory built in and can function as a USB hard drive when connected to a computer. It also contains an SD memory stick slot which supports up to an 8GB SDHC card.
The supported media formats include JPG for still images (and, by the way, if you do want to store Power Point presentations, the recommendation is you convert each slide to a JPG and run through it that way!) and MPEG-4 and H.264 video as .AVI, .ASF or .MP4 files. DivX is not supported. MP3 audio is supported.
This is a fairly limited set of video formats. The inclusion of H.264 is a pleasant surprise although the exclusion of DivX (and Xvid) was also a surprise, albeit not a pleasant one.
Fortunately, a software CD accompanies the product, containing ArcSoft MediaConverter. This program can be used to convert media into a suitable format. Or so you'd expect. In practice, it did nothing but chew up the CPU and waste my time.
From the onset ArcSoft annoyed me because once I installed their program a series of unrelated pop up messages began appearing at the system tray. It turns out the software also installs ArcSoft Connect which runs on startup and sends you “helpful” messages. It does perform one useful function, allowing you to check for software updates – of which there wasn't one, I had the latest version (2.5.7.53) – although this could have been a feature within the MediaConverter program itself and not required a separate tool adding to the bevy of system tray icons and computer start up sequence.
To be fair, the software is easy to use. You have three steps. First, pick conversion settings to use. The default is to create an MPEG-4 file within an .ASF container, in 640x480 resolution, 512Kbps, 25.00fps and PCM audio at 11000Hz. Another conversion setting is provided, which creates MJPEG AVI files and besides these two presets you can make your own custom settings if needed.
I went with the default which seemed reasonable; I knew the projector had 640x480 output and I knew it supported MPEG-4 and ASF. Step two is to merely select the file, or files, you wish to convert.
Step three is to click Start and kick off the conversion process. By default, converted files are saved to an “ArcSoft MediaConverter” directory under your Documents folder but you can choose to save them anywhere else.
Half an hour later I had encoded a TV show which was originally in DivX format. I copied it to the projector's internal memory and fired it up against the wall. I set it playing and .... watched as a horrendous display of jagged lines rippled about.
I could hear everything fine, but the picture was unviewable.
Wanting the projector to be a success, I made several more attempts. Here's what I did.
CONTINUED
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