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aigo E235 (160GB)

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By Edvarcl Heng, CNET Asia
Jan 4, 2007

China-based aigo has been simply proliferating the market with portable video players. It almost feels like one every month. The E235 may look a little different from its forebears, but it's what lie beneath that is truly of note. We have no doubt the 160GB hard drive will still raise eyebrows, but it is the fact that the E235 is possessed of the ability to playback VOB files natively that really has us all jumping.

Viva la VOB
If you have a habit of ripping DVDs, you would know that VOB is a media container for the video, audio, menu and subtitle data in a DVD. However, in order to view it on a portable player, you will need one of two things: A built-in DVD drive reader or a transcoder software to convert a VOB file into a supported video file format on your player.

Both solutions have been unmitigated nuisances. A built-in DVD drive will mean a larger portable unit and the need to bring along a stack of DVDs for that transatlantic flight. Transcoding a file equates to time spent with a computer converting your video library into a playable format. If you haven't ripped your DVDs yet, that would mean even more hours of work.

The E235 is available in storage flavors of 40, 60, 80, 100, 120 and 160GB. If you are fully intent on maximizing its VOB file-viewing potential, we would suggest going for at least 80GB since the average VOB file size is 1GB.

Everything else
In terms of the rest of its features, the E235 looks pretty much like most PVPs in the market. It plays AVI, DAT and MPEG files on top of VOB. It also packs in FM radio, USB host functionality and basic audio file support (MP3, WMA, WAV). The E235 is also slightly beefier, both in dimension and weight in comparison with the Creative Zen Vision W.

Its battery life is certainly nothing to shout about at 2 hours 30 minutes, but for the sheer convenience of not having to convert a VOB file, it can be a fair tradeoff for some.

Now let's diss native VOB playback. We do not know whether the E235 automatically downsizes VOB files to a 320 x 240 resolution and, even if it does, it may not be optimized properly since some widescreen format movies may not translate well onto the 3.5-inch LCD screen. aigo also did not mention whether the E235 supports Macrovision protected content, so protected movies may not be viewable on the player.