GigaView HDD Multimedia Player August 22, 2006

the problem is that you have to format your drive to fat32 or it won't see the files which means that your hard drive has to be partitioned into 32GB partitions, I've a 120GB hard drive and winxp won't let me format it as a single drive as FAT32. argh

It IS possible to format 120GB as FAT32 in one partition. See here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table
and here
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm

No, the biggest problem is that the navigation of the files is shockingly appallingly awfully useless.

Suppose you do what any normal person would and bang a few files and folders onto the drive. Suppose you put all the Cafe Del Mar albums on:
Cafe Del Mar 1
Cafe Del Mar 2
Cafe Del Mar 3
...
Cafe Del Mar 10

Now suppose we go to the MUSIC view mode, because that's logical. It simply scans the device for all mp3 files and presents them in one long scrolling list. Our Cafe Del Mar albums have turned into one long list of:
01 - artist - track.mp3
02 - artist - track.mp3
...
10 - artsit - track.mp3
01 - artist - track.mp3

It seems to go album by album, listing all the files in order, so at least all the files in one album will be found in a particular place in the list, but there's no indication of what album it came from. The list seems to allow up to 32 characters wide, so to make it useful, rename your mp3s so that are like:
album - track - artist - title.mp3
And somehow fit it into 32 characters.

My device has 10,000 mp3 on. One long list of 10,000 mp3 and no search function is useless.

Summary? Music browse mode is rubbish

-

So let's try the more promising File Browse Mode instead - in this mode we see a more familiar view a bit like Windows Explorer, folders and files, go into a folder and you see more files. Great!
Except, the number of characters you can see has been chopped to just 12. As a result, our ten Cafe Del Mar albums now look like this in the listing:

Cafe Del Mar
Cafe Del Mar
Cafe Del Mar
Cafe Del Mar
Cafe Del Mar
Cafe Del Mar
Cafe Del Mar

Pick the 4th one down in the list - maybe it's Cafe Del Mar 4? You never get to find out because its not like there is a panel of the screen that ever shows the full name of what you selected.
Upon entering the folder, you see all the tracks you so carefully named in
album - track - artist - title.mp3
form to make them work with the mega-list, now just look like:

Cafe Del Mar
Cafe Del Mar
Cafe Del Mar
Cafe Del Mar
Cafe Del Mar
Cafe Del Mar

too!

Result? Awful. Pointless. Waste of time. Shocking I'm trying very hard to be polite!

I dont know why a company would put all the effort into developing the hardware if it is going to be made accessible through software that can only be described in 4 letter words.

I now resolve to just using the box for showing videos. I will name them in folders like this:
star trek\ng\ng s1\s1e1 - encounter.avi
and the interface is just about usable.

I have a few other gripes:

The unit doesnt pick suitable modes based on the connected video. Plug in your pc monitor and it will likely say "Cannot diaply this signal" - the manual doesnt tell you to repeatedly press the VIDEO button on the remote till it switches mode. Same for plugging into the TV - connect up the AV lead and shove it in the composite. Wonder why no picture. Press VIDEO a few times. Aha!
Why cant it just send a suitable signal down the appropriate port?

Next gripe - the card reader cannot be accessed from the PC. Nowhere in the advertising is this stated, so if youre buying this device thinking you can use it to read your digicam pics off the memory card and onto your laptop (that doesnt have a card slot) think again. You have to power off the device, plug a card in, then upon poweron you get the choice to read files off your card or hard disk. The card reader is even more shockingly slow than the hard disk interface and frequently ignores button presses.

I guess the idea is you can use the cards to copy stuff to the device - but the interface only allows copying one file at a time. Its painful, tedious, slow and you will jsut enver, ever use it. Gigaview should have invested the time in making everything else better. The Sumvision Aqua is the same device and suffers the same flaws.

The font is rubbish and has no kerning. This means that all lowercase letters touch each other. A sequence of lowercase L would just look like a black bar because they are all touching.

Now, I can accept that it's a budget device - £40 isnt a lot, but if you really want to use a device like this for playing music, spend more and get one with a better interface. If youre just buying it to stack with videos before you take it round to a mates place for a video night then great - rename all the files and folders so they are less than 12 characters and you're in business.

Actually pleased, bought this to store and play DIVX films which it does well and also seems compatable with most variations of the format.
Also comes with a program on CD which lets you format any size drive to Fat32, and it does it within Windows XP!

Ok before I return this damn thing...
when Ive formatted the drive with 2 equal partitions well below the reccomended maximum (40g drive 37.2 actual in 2*18g partitions) but I get nothing on the player when I connect to the TV,it seems to recognise there is a drive attached but reads it as 2000g? and will only show ROOT in the file area,no pics movies or music will show.
Am I doing something wrong or is it kna****ed?
Thank you
Tony

Can anyone point me at a better quality alternative for this unit. It would be good if you had used it yourself or there was a good review of it. I was going to get this unit until I read the in-depth comment above (thanks for that). Now I think my money will be more wisely spent elsewhere (if I had bought this one it would be playing bouncy, bouncy of the walls by now).

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Kevin I have purchased the Gigaview 3.5 and have used it for a day. I have found that some good points and bad points with the product
Good points:
DVD files
1. It is excellent as a device for storing Ripped DVD's (VOB) files, if you store the complete AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS files you can get the Gigaview to play the files exactly like a DVD in set top box, complete with subtitles, menu functions and multi angles.
2. Can play all the promised file formats.
3. Can backup memory cards to HDD without a PC
4. Can randomise photos in slide show
5. can use several transitions between slides, or use random transition

The bad points:
1. Initial set up is a little difficult, as there is no way of telling which output mode is currently active (VGA/Component/Composite). An LED indicator next to the socket would help
2. The video output quality is not as good as a native DVD, I have tried VGA, Component, and Composite, on LED and Plasma displays and found all about the same on both displays
2. While displaying photos it displays a "Out of memory" every few slides
3. Cannot play mp3 music while using random transitions as music stops during transitions. Can use single transition with music without problems
4. Can only play mp3 music with slide show starting from first photo directory, player will then go through all photo directories
5. user manual is not well laid out and not very clear

I have just purchased the Gigaview 3.5 mainly as a portable harddrive. However when using it as a media player the functions can get quite confusing, and are not very staight forward as many cheap Chinese electronic products seem to be. I have transfered all my dvd files, ripped by 'dvd shrink'( split into video_ts and audio_ts), and it does not show that there are any movies on the media player when i connect it to the T.V., what am i supposed to do?

If it is any help the files in the video_ts folder are MPEG, IFO and BUP files

OK, folks enough whingeing here. You've got what you've paid for man.

All (or almost) Chinese products are shits anyway. Cheap nasty copies are mass-produced and out to the market so don't expect to have bangs for your bucks man. Got it?

But still guys you have not listed any alternatives,
Perhaps quit whinging about the gigaview and give us all some options!

Matt

For £40 I'm pretty pleased with the unit, apart from one really annoying gripe: Does anyone else experience ripped DVDs freezing (usually towards the end of the movie)? The ripped DVDs play fine on my PC and when burned back to DVD they play fine on a regular DVD player - would a firmware upgrade help? Anyone know where to get hold of a firmware upgrade? Thanks, Colin

I gave mine away as a Christas present (the latest model M34plus) because quite a few things annoyed me:

AVIs must be less than 2GB so you have to split them if they are over that, otherwise the media player just plays the next movie in the folder once it reaches a certain point.

Playback occasionally stutters if the bitrate of an AVI is too high. Generally AVIs play fine if they are under 3000 kbps. So most SD Xvids from P2P are fine. I wanted to encode my favourite movies in higher quality than P2P stuff and I had to compromise on a smaller frame size and bitrate. It also stutters occasionally on ripped DVDs.

Navigation through menus using the IR remote feels slow and unresponsive.

If you must get one of these HD-based stand-alones get the Noontec Media Station III which has much better looking menus, NTFS support, picture resize functions, responds better to the remote and able to upscale to 1080i or 720p.

Me I'll stick to an HTPC instead.

it looks nice, really cheap with only $75.now most of HDD Media Players can support movie play back and subtitle, lyric display simultaneously and support copy, rename, delete functions, like this one:
http://www.sourcingmap.com/sata-hdd-hard-disk-drive-media-player-ntfsfat32-p-9001.html

This media centre is wrecking my head.All my files are fine on my PC but when I transfer them to the media centre the names are all messed up. I'm also able to pause a movie but not to fast forward or rewind it. Anyone any suggestions?

i have a 3.5' hdd player model hd-351
i have formatted my 160gb hard drive into 4 sections fat32 primary and have put some files on to the first section but when connected to the tv it says no device found.
can any one tell me what to do?

or im gonna chuck it

As for the comment two above from here dated February 25, 2008 7:50am:

Sounds like you haven't formated it properly. You need a special utility to format to (for example) 500GB. Search on the internet for fat32format.exe. It's a great program that allows you to use HDDs that large with the media center. I used it on mine and it fixed the naming and fast forward/rewind issues.

I too am dying for a firmware upgrade. I would LOVE to get it to support heaps more codecs, particularly MKVs and the newer AVI ones. PLEASE let us know if you are aware of any flash firmware versions available out there. (perhaps there's something that can be searched for, from the information on the chip inside the media center itself?)