One of the better MP4 players from China

In the process of looking for WTF! show material, I am always looking for gadgets to play with and recently stumbled upon this little cool video player.

The brand is called Orient, but I am sure it is called something else in other countries. It is one of the many cheap MP3 video players mass-produced from China (the most famous ones are the fake iPod Nanos). This puppy does MP4-encoded avi video, MP3, FM radio (can record FM too), and has 2GB flash memory, 2.4-inch TFT screen (very good and bright screen, supposedly a Samsung TFT) and a mini-SD slot.

Note that it DOES NOT play MP4 files like the iPod, so don’t be fooled by the MP4 name. All these players from China are called MP4 players though they play other video formats. Converting video files to its special avi format can be a pain, and the included CD had a version 1 converter that created videos with audio sync issues but a newer version of the converter solved that.

But once the files are in there, mp3 and videos play very nicely. Just be prepared to deal with video encoding issues. I suppose you can queue up the videos you want to watch on your PC, and batch-process the whole lot overnight, then copy them all over when done the next day. A little kludgy but it works.

Oh, it does not seem to work properly on Macs, but no problems on a PC running Windows XP. Too bad, the white colour looks very iPod.

It also comes in black and silver, something like this black model from Chinavasion. Singaporeans have no need to buy from online stores, of course, we just get it from our Temple of Tech, SLS.

The interface is teh sux but functional. Battery life seems quite good (I am testing the video battery life at the moment). The construction seems a lot better than some of the crap mp4 players from China that’s out there and so far, I think the 2GB memory is really 2GB (some of these knock-off players have fake memory listed, like it says 1GB but there is only 256MB in it, so beware).

USB cable and (average) headphones are included. I picked up $32 Kingston 2GB mini-SD card to make the total memory 4GB (mini-SD prices have plunged lately). I think the wife will be pleased with this $155 player.

Small and compact, but all screen. Sweet. It could all fall apart tomorrow, who knows, but so far I’m quite loving it.

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