Quick XMS 888 v Zensonic 330 comparison

[pepito]

I know both these players have been out for a while now ...

... but I've just swapped my XMS 888 with a Zensonic 330 and thought I'd share some quick differences I've noted.

- I'm glad to be rid of those bright red LEDs on the front (though I'd fixed this later with some black tape).

- Build quality of both players seem about on par but the feel of the Zensonic remote definately feels cheaper and flimsier than the XMS remote.

- There is some drive noise from the Zensonic compared to the XMS which was pretty much silent.

- Dissapointingly the Zensonic only plays one of the soundtracks of the dual language DivX5 movie I have, whereas the XMS allowed me to switch between both.

- The Zensonic doesn't show up .SUB subtitle files which the XMS did.

I guess right now I'm wondering if I made the right decision. I'd probably replace the Zensonic with the new Pioneer 676 except I'm reading it doesn't have AVI subtitle support.

I'll come back to this post if/when I discover I've stuffed something up ;)

[jokiin]

I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses, the firmware update possibilities for the XMS888 have pretty well ground to a halt at the hands of ESS, the Z330 still has some life left in the firmware and it is being actively persued with MediTek to iron out some remaining bugs. I would think that even though you might feel it may be lacking a bit right now it shouldn't be too long before there is some progress, you should end up with a good all rounder once that happens.

[d'Wooluf]

Hmmmm. It's been a while since I've had the xms-888, but...

Can't agree with you on the remote or the build quality (externally anyway), the Zensonic supports more subtitle formats, and if your next tv is wide screen and/or progressive scan, you'll be glad you've got the Zensonic. Oh, the extra 5 characters displayed in the filenames is nice too (though more would be better).

[jordang]

I haven't really had too many complaints with the 330.. it's been a great player. Only issues I can find are:

(A) that disk noise you mentioned - i rarely hear it, but during a dead quiet scene in the movie - it's there
(B) xvid 1+ - very jerky during high bitrate scenes. Jok11n mentioned however that this could be resolved in a future upgrade. In the meantime I just reencode to divx - no big loss.
(C) Subtitle font - The font of subtitles is white with no outline or shadowing, try watching it against a white part of the movie! I actually re-encode my movies with textsub and burn them in. the font it uses is v.v.nice.