• CES 2005 Triple Play

Hey folks, Valkor here with three hot exclusives that you will only find on TOV. After three days perusing through miles and miles of new technology, off in the far corners I find diamonds in the rough. I don’t know about the other sites but I find that Lasonic, Apex, and PQI have got great products in their mitts and will definitely be contenders in the DVD and portable media department. But you don’t have to take my word for it… oh wait, you do. On with the review!!

PQI

They say less is more and with PQI that is certainly the case. They had such a small booth but what they had showing packed a HUGE punch with the mPack p600 media player. It’s a small handheld device, pretty heavy when it comes to weight but not uncomfortable to hold, and it plays everything: Mp3, Divx, Xvid, jpegs, Mpegs, WMV, ASF, and much much more. It can record video straight from your TV or DVD and play it back in high quality sound. The demo’d what High Def would look like on another model (though I was told that the model shown could do the same, except they differ in looks) and then he took it up a notch by showing that the player can also do 5.1 dolby surround sound. And it did sound amazing. Sound was crisp and clear in all directions. Video is played back in 800x600, which is the only player I have seen thus far that can do that. And the video displayed, showed little to no grain what so ever, even in Hi-def. Again however, we did not see the Mpack p800 at work, but once we do, I will definitely be putting it through the wringer once I have a demo version to test out in the Valcave. To a peek at the future below and tell me what you think?






Lasonic

Hold the phone, who are these guys and where did they come from? With this TOV exclusive, we bring you the next contender in the DVD/ HDD field. Introducing the HV-670 multi-format DVD player with detachable hard drive. So not only can you play all flavors of CD and DVD content, not only can you play MP3, mpeg 4 video, Divx and Xvid formats, not only can view your Jpeg pics on your television screen, but with the add hard drive you won’t have to waste a disc copying data from your computer. This baby comes packed with a 250 gig hard drive. That is not a type people, that’s what I am telling, that’s what I was told and I am sticking to it until I hear otherwise, it comes packed with a 250 GIG hard drive. That means endless movies, music, and pics can be transferred from your PC to this HDD, through USB cable and then viewed on the player. You have a wide variety of formats that you can view, plus you don’t have to dumb down the quality because with 250 GIGS you have more than enough space to store a WHOLE lot of high quality movies. At the time the player wasn’t running as I was told it was a prototype model, plus it won’t hit the market until a month or so, but TOV will be checking in with Lasonic to get the full scoop and to test drive this baby and see how she handles. As it stands, I’m impressed. But only until I can see it in action will I give it the TOV stamp of approval. Not to end to end things their, Lasonic had a host of portable DVD players on display, but nothing too impressive though the PDL-070 shows some promise with its widescreen, differing from its brothers, plus multi-formats make it optimal to cover all DVD flavors, plus it plays MP3’s. Another impressive product was the portable TV. It looked good, it played good, it is really good, it’s a TV you can take just about anywhere. Keep your eyes on TOV for the future in Lasonic products.






Apex

Apex and PQI are the reason why my love for the Creative Zen media player fell through the floor. (More on the Zen media player, in another review). Their E2go MP 6500 was astounding!! Simply put it blows the Zen and the Iriver out of the water. This is the player you will want to get because it covers all media formats including Divx and Mpeg-4. The images were of high quality really showing off the power of the device. Ease of use was quite simple, with just a turn of the wheel you will be cruising through the main menu and off to your favorite format. The size was a lot bigger than the Zen or the IRiver and even the p600, but I can still see myself owning this device. Resolution also blows away the Zen and Iriver because it shows divx video in 720x480 (not unlike the mpack p600, which does video in 800x600) and quicktime in 640x480. The picture you see below was from a running prototype and look how good it looks! It has a 20 gig hard drive which can store up to 80 hours of video (depending on the format) and loads of MP3s than you can shake a stick at. As it stands there was no headphones attached so I can’t measure sound, but if it sounds as good as it looks, then it will be a true contender in the media player field. But is it ultimately worth the cost of 600 bucks retail? Keep your eyes glued to TOV as we get the scoop of this mega-media player.

Overall these were the best of the bunch that I saw, I am sure the big guys were running players equally impressive, but I couldn’t tell. It’s rare to find small companies such as these investing in high quality products, and we the consumers benefit because it can only get better from here. Until then soak up these picks, because there will be much more to come.