Thursday May 5, 2005
Review - Samsung YH-820 MP3 player
- Posted by Rob (#1) on May 5, 2005 21:38 CEST
This morning I walked into the MediaMarkt and noticed a nice gadget: the Samsung YH-820 Digital Audio Player. Executive summary: I'm returning it tomorrow.
The sleek and compact 5GB digital music player holds up to 1200 songs. Plus you can transfer and store digital pictures and view them on the vivid color display.
For €200, that sounds like a lot of fun. I don't really need more capacity than 100 albums and JPEG support is a big bonus as I like carrying my photo album around. There's more to like about this model:
- The YH-820 uses USB 2.0 which provides excellent transfer speeds.
- Navigation is simple, smooth and sufficient: no complaints here.
- Samsung has looked at Apple it seems: the design is stylish and reminiscent of the iPod.
A seemingly clever device? Well, not really:
- The JPEG image viewer is virtually worthless. A resolution of 128x96 is simply insufficient these days: even cheap camera phones do better than that these days. The support for 65k colours didn't really show either with the pictures I tested. Pre-scaled pictures work best: the internal scaling is far from optimal (and non-scaled pictures obviously take up more disk space).
- Although photo transfers work out of the box, the YH-820 seems to require custom software for its music collection, just like the iPod. You'd think transferring a MP3 file to the Music folder would be sufficient, but alas: users cannot update their playlist from any computer without the software installed, which is slightly inconvenient for a mobile device. Users of Linux and FreeBSD (myself includeD) are completely out of luck. Even manually editing the PLP playlist files does not work.
- Because of the playlist drama, I have not been able to verify battery life. But it is not advertised on the box for a good reason: Samsung claims 8 hours and those claims seem to be somewhat correct. That's a shame, for 8 hours is simply not enough.
- The USB transfer cable and power cable for recharging are a single, non-seperable item. Probably designed this way so it is possible to transfer without draining the battery, but in practice it's just annoying.
Audio quality seems okay, but I will not keep the YH-820 around long enough to review those qualities. Samsung should get credit for making a product nearly as stylish as the iPod, but even moreso they should also be deeply ashamed for making it such a hassle to update playlists. I refused to get an iPod because it requires custom software and I will return the YH-820 for the same reason.
I'm probably going to trade it in for the YP-MT6Z and some cashback: I'll have to do with 1GB (that's still almost 20 punk rock albums), but the single-AA playing time of 42 hours sounds excellent for trips.
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PSV Eindhoven 3 - AC Milan 1
- Posted by Rob (#1) on May 5, 2005 21:49 CEST
I'll keep this short because I'm still aggrevated: like last week, PSV played an excellent game, trashing AC Milan. PSV did not score in Milanand sadly had to accept two goals against from counters, but last night Milan scored just once (another counter) while PSV had three goals from attacking football, clinching an exciting and wonderful 3-1 win with goals from Park and Cocu (twice)!
So was I happy? No, because in all its wisdom the UEFA decided long ago that a 2-0 away loss and a 3-1 home win do not add up to a 3-3 draw on aggregate. AC Milan is through to the final because of their "away goal". Whatever. I don't even blame AC Milan for playing counter football. That's a valid strategy, albeit boring. But they deserved the 3-3 draw. I blame the UEFA for turning it into 3-4 on aggregate. It's just silly: we should have gone into over-time and based on PSV's excellent performance it would definitely have taken us to Istanbul to play the final against Liverpool. Even the press in Singapore agrees:
PSV Eindhoven won 3-1 and yet crashed out on the away goals rule (aggregate 3-3). So, did the best team lose?
For sure, the best team lost. It was totally heart-breaking for PSV. When the final whistle went, you could see rain inside the stadium. I think even the heavens were crying for Guus Hiddink and his men.The Dutch side gave everything. They dominated the game from the first minute to the last. They showed what attacking football is about. And they totally deserved to go to Istanbul to face Liverpool.
Last night, PSV didn't lose to AC Milan, it lost to the UEFA's incomprehensible rules.
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