Yukyung Technologies Viliv P1 (30GB, red)

Summary: here is my opinion on this product and i will explain why i completely disagree with your review. if you were to compare the viliv with an ipod, you would clearly see that it is a better product. there are definitely many more features (like you said in your review). you can listen to the radio, listen to your music files, watch videos (the quality is amazing), put in text files, etc. it has an amazing design and looks very sleek. most people want ipods, which i don't understand because all it does is play music and the quality of the screen isn't as great as the viliv. the reason why i disagree with your review is because it seems like your opinions are based solely on the interface design. i've been using the viliv since the day it came out and it's worked fine for me and i'm sure it has worked fine for everyone else using the product, except for you, clearly. last time i checked, the interface design has nothing to do with the performance of the product. it does not affect the performance. as long as it works great, the exterior design is amazing, etc., i think that's all that matters. most products don't even have interface designs. at least the viliv HAS an interface design. your opinions on the product are clearly biased opinions. because of the fact that you are not satisfied with the design of the interface, it seems like it has led you to think that it affects the performance of the product. you make it sound like it has a terrible performance level but it actually works great. you said in your review, "after 5 minutes of using the viliv..." maybe you should give the product more than 5 minutes of usage and then you can write a better review on the product without sounding completely biased. also, hopefully your opinions on the product won't be based solely on the design of the INTERFACE.

Summary: I purchased my P1 from someone who bought it directly from the Korean manufacturer. I think the review is correct in that the software interface is lacking. In particular, rudimentary playback control is pretty clunky (only play and pause are readily available via hard buttons). The good news is that this is completely controllable via an OS update from Yukyung Technologies should they decide to revamp it. In fact, I've already updated mine to a version different than many screenshots I've seen - it is an improvement.

I have some experience in this product sector: I currently also own a Creative Labs Portable Media Center. The video quality of the Viliv simply blows the Creative product away (which is admittedly a first generation product). Cnet complains about codec support, yet they fail to mention that Xvid and MPEG-2 are supported. They may not realize this, but MPEG-2 is the native output for many hardware encoding video tuners (e.g., the gold standard of standard def HTPC, the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 250 PCI card). Xvid is also pretty commonplace in certain Internet circles. In comparison, I don't believe the Archos AV500 or the Creative Zen Vision support MPEG-2 natively, which could be a factor for some HTPC users.

If you tend to view TV content which has commercials edited out already or watch a lot of movies in which commercials were never inserted, the Viliv P1 will meet your needs completely, and will provide beautiful picture quality while doing so. If you tend to watch programs where you need to navigate frequently (to skip commercials), the current user interface will probably get in your way.

If Yukyung would simply find a way to map a skip back 7 seconds and a skip forward 30 seconds onto existing hardware buttons, then my complaints about the user interface would be greatly minimized.