I have been the proud owner of a Cowon A2 for a month and a half, and I recommend it to anyone looking for an under-$300, Linux-friendly multimedia device. The thing plays/records music and voice, acts as a 30GB USB HDD, displays photos, displays plain text files, plays/records FM radio, copies files from other USB devices, performs scheduled recordings, acts as a musical alarm clock, and outputs/records to/from an arbitrary composite video source. All on a 9cm x 5.5cm LCD screen with a sleek interface and killer battery life.
I stumbled across the A2 after pouring over the PortablePlayers wiki article provided by the Xiph.Org Foundation. Originally I had in mind an iPod nano-esque device capable of playing open-format podcasts, but was soon wooed over to the iPhone-sized device.
I am going to skip reporting on every available feature, as Cowon manual-writers have already provided a comprehensive write-up. But I am going to give a few pointers to help *nix users get started quickly. (Yes, that category includes Mac users.)
General comments:
-The built-in stereo speakers are crisp but only effective in a quiet room at full volume.
The stubby joystick is robust but requires a delicate touch for proper navigation. I suggest using a plastic screen protector such as this fine product. As with most electronics, dropping the product will likely break it.
-The A2 is based on a heavily-modified Linux kernel and the sources are available per the GNU General Public License. Unfortunately, a critical portion of the kernel source is deemed proprietary and thus, as far as I am aware, the A2 only boots a Cowon-provided OS. Upgrading to the most recent firmware is A Good Thing. I am admittedly jealous of the fast-paced iPhone toolchain development given that Cowon is now in 'mostly just bugfixes' mode.
-Audio recording (via radio, built-in mic, external mic, or external source) is in mono/stereo 64/128/192 kbps MP3 only. Video recording is in a proprietary Microsoft format. Both formats may be transcoded via mencoder.
-UTF-8 text display is unsupported and will result in funky character substitution.
-The input/output jacks are strangely cable-dependent (i.e., signal transmission only works with use of provided cables). As a workaround, invest in A/V cable couplers such as this fine product. While on the topic of cables, FM radio reception is somewhat weak. The wire leading to the earbuds is the antenna and must be attached for any radio reception.
Encoding Tips:
The following encoding command is useful for creating a A2-compatible movie from a DVD. Higher bitrates and resolutions may be possible but are generally excessive. I have not yet tried including subtitles. Note that mencoder needs to be compiled with Xvid and MP3 encoder support. Be sure that you have legal permissions for any copyright-protected content. Also note that use of an MP3 encoder without royalty payment is for academic purposes only.
$ mencoder dvd://1 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=1 -alang en -vf scale -zoom -xy 480 -oac copy -ofps 24000/1001 -o /dev/null && mencoder dvd://1 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=2:bitrate=1000 -alang en -vf scale -zoom -xy 480 -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -ofps 24000/1001 -o your_movie_a2play.avi
A few skipped frames is nothing to worry about. And as anyone who has encoded highly-compressed video can tell you, the process is ssllooooowwww...
If you are interested in ripping an audio CD for the purpose of personal data backup, Grip is a very neat program.
Located under Config --> Encode --> Encoder:
Encoder executable: /usr/bin/oggenc
Encoder command-line: -o %m -a %a -l %d -t %n %w -N %t -G %g -d %y --quality=10
Encode file extension: ogg
I would think that the A2 comes with some helpful Windows-based features, but that would be another review. In closing, I like it. :-)
-George
[Original posting 15-October-2007. Corrected LCD dimensions on 16-October-2007.]
Leave a comment