Creative Zen Portable Media Center Review (Finally!)

HOW-TO: BroadSnatching to a Portable Media Center - Engadget - www.engadget.com

I haven't had much use for the Creative Zen Portable Media Center device that has been hanging around my office as of late. I was quite excited to try it out, but I quickly realized that it was quite useless without a Media Center PC (not even DVD ripping under fair-use laws are supported!). Sigh! So sadly, the neat little video brick took a back seat to all of the other gadgets populating my office.

Until today. After reading Engadget's "Broadsnatching" how-to, I was inspired to try. So try I did...iPodder didn't quite work as advertised (it kept downloading only the first enclosure in the RSS feed so yet another sigh). I searched around and found Nimiq which quite simply works.

I followed the rest of the instructions and pretty soon my harddrive was filling up with all sorts of random content. My favorites (of course) being Channel 9 vids.

I've gotten all sorts of random stuff from blogdigger so far and am hoping someone aggregates categories of good video content like tv show and movie clips among other things.

So far the experience has been pretty neat. it's great to finally use the little Creative Zen, but getting the content to the device takes a LONG time due to a conversion process that Windows Media Player does to "convert" files to something the PMC can understand.

After I waited and waited for a while, the files finally arrived (at which point I discovered I can set the files to convert when my PC is not doing other things so I will leave my laptop on tonight and see what I can grab).

Regardless, this alone is making the Creative Zen Portable Media Center a joy to play with. Now if only I can rip a DVD onto the thing...no matter, I'm already investigating various pieces of software to aid me ripping DVDs that I rightfully own onto this thing so I can watch them.

The catch:

Final exam in Psychology tomorrow...need to finish test specs and other work goodness before Thursday...why?

Because Friday I will be running around doing last minute shopping and packing...why?

Because Saturday at 8:30am, I'll be on my way to China with my wife for a 3 week vacation.

Note: when the vacation begins, I will mostly be out of contact as my ability connect to the Internet in China may not be as regular as the near-Internet-umbilical cord status that I enjoy here. I will do my best to check-in on the FAQs and comments once in a whiile, but no guarantees on a quick (or any) replies. Then again, I don't guarantee replies even if I'm here, but I do generally get back to most of you fairly quickly (most of you that have asked questions in the FAQ and that have emailed me can vouch for me).