discount mp3 player

Recently (a month ago) I ordered interest for the sake of a Chinese player on Ebay. The seller guaranteed 8GB memory, support for audio, video, pictures, radio, voice recorder and even phone book games. This player cost me only $ 15 . Naturally, I understand that you won’t get anything normal for that kind of money, but I still wanted to know what was inside.
Yesterday came to me. As the proverb says, “Gika do not feed bread, let me dig a new piece of iron,” I began to study this player far and wide.
In this topic I want to show the main advantages and disadvantages of this player.

First about the packaging. An ordinary bag came, with a speckled polyethylene on the inside of the bag. From a complete set:the player itself, charging, 2.5mm headphones, USB <-> miniUSB wire, English manual and disk . As a gift, there was also an adapter from 2.5mm to 3.5mm and a silicone case that perfectly matches the design of the player. The player came discharged, so it takes some time to charge.
The USB cable broke the next day. Headphones are also of a dull quality. The adapter is a little off. But this is not the point, because the main thing: the player.

Appearance

Dimensions of the player 72mm x 40mm x 9mm. Made of plastic. The assembly is normal, without backlashes and gaps. If it falls, the blow will withstand. On the front of the 1.8 "display with support for 65k colors and 5 buttons: Menu, Play / Stop, Vol, Prev and Next . Resolution: 128x160 . The display quality is like the first color phones. On the left side there is a miniUSB connector, and on the right side - headphone jack for 2.5mm. On the back cover are openings for the microphone and Reset buttons (more than once saved), and a shiny sticker with the inscription 8Gb. The film on the screen, although it is better without it.

Interface

The interface can hardly be called intuitive. I spent some time until I realized how to listen to music. It turns out that to go to the right menu you need to press not the Play / Stop button, but the Menu, and still not just press, but hold it for half a second. And if you hold it for longer - you can go to the global menu. But now I'm used to it.
PS Photos of the display are made on the camera. In reality, the display looks a little better.

Music

Supports MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG . If Russian is selected (as the system language), displays ID3 tags encoded in CP1251. Utf8 tags do not understand. Also does not understand the Cyrillic alphabet in the file names. There is an equalizer in the preset settings. It has different playback modes. Playlists can not play.

Video

The video reads in its own AMV format . For linux, there is a patch for ffmpeg that allows you to encode. I didn’t succeed in using it (it turned out on some source video files. Cursed at an unknown sound track, although there is standard ac3). The standard encoder for Windows does not work correctly. As a result of video with distortion, the sound is not synchronized with the video.
There is another add-on for ffmpeg. It is called MPxConverter . Although the linux version did not work, in Windows the video was transcoded normally.
This video format has a low compression ratio, so one movie will occupy somewhere between 100-200 megabytes. Watching videos goes smoothly, scrolling videos is also smooth. You can watch.

Other functions

Supports Jpg, Gif, Bmp formats . Supports large resolutions (I tried 1600x1200) the image scales. Image slide does not support. Png does not support.

Records in Wav (32kbps) and Act (8kbps) formats. Sensitivity, as for a player of this type, is good. It is possible to listen to the recordings in the player itself.

Reads txt files. If Russian is chosen as the system language, understands the Cyrillic alphabet in CP1251 encoding. He does not understand the Cyrillic alphabet in the file names. I don’t know how convenient it is to read, but you can see small txt files.



Also, for solidity, we added three games (tetris, sokoban and a snake) and a phone book.

The battery there is Li-ion 3.7 at 250mAh. Enough for 5-6 hours of listening to music or 3-4 hours from movies.

Mismatch with seller description

• The first and most offensive: memory. As a rule, the declared amount of memory exceeds the actual 4 times. Instead of 8gb, I got 2gb as a result. This method is called hacked memory. Writing to such memory is carried out without problems, but when reading it turns out gibberish. In this regard, many reading problems. Therefore, it is better to fix immediately using this guide ;
• The second trick is USB2.0 mode. Actually there USB2.0 Full-speed, but not Hi-speed. As I understand it, this is USB1.1 mode, but with compatibility with version 2.0. The maximum speed of writing and reading - 12Mbit / s;
• AVI and WMV formats, as stated, are not supported;
• There is no multitasking either; you cannot listen to music and read files.

And what's inside?

Here is the fun part. All fake players are based on Actions chipsets . Such players are called S1MP3 . The microprocessor is 8-bit, the frequency depends on the particular player. Mine, judging by the datasheet, has 48 MHz. These chips have a set of instructions that is compatible with the Z80 (remember the ZX Spectrum?).
And this means that you can program for it. On some players it is already possible to run actually written programs. There are several fanatics who even want to write their own OS for these players, naturally with blackjack and you know who. More details can be found here .
On my player, alas, I have not been able to try anything like this yet.

conclusions

Given the cost of the player, we can forgive several of its shortcomings. He can play music, supports common formats, and even watch videos (though I did have some discomfort after watching a movie on such an eerie display). Also, if you're lucky (if you have a suitable SoC), it can become a programming platform. Well, and what kind of geek would be against digging into an mp3 player for $ 15? Good luck

PS If you set Chinese as the system language, then the player will miraculously begin to understand the Cyrillic alphabet in the file names. Only the font is terrible.