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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Goodmans GPDR40 (Mustek PVR H40), 25 Jul 2007
{NOTE:- 30 October 2007 Still going fine. Not sure why the other user is having a problem but I definately have been able to record bought DVD and Videos with protection onto my player without carrying out any special action. Maybe there has been an update to the operating system. What does your machine say when it refuses to record?
I don't have a suggestion to this problem that doesn't involve spending money on cables, let me know how you get on. I would have thought that the copy protection would be copied onto the VHS tape too, but I haven't tried this.
Regards - Vincent0 }
25th July 2007 - Got the Goodmans unit last week, so I've had a little time to try it out. Bought it for a decent price I think, [£......].
Excuse me for rambling and not covering everything or even the important points but I'm just writting off the top of my head.
Well, when looking at all the reviews on the net it seems that this unit is rubbish (it's the same as the Mustek unit - see title), but I couldn't stop myself as it was a shiny gadget and I went ahead and bought it anyway.
First off, it's about the size of an old style walkman, and heavy too. Feels good, made of plastic with the screen covering most of the front facia. You've probably seen a picture of it somewhere.
The first and major problem descibed by net reviewers is the lip synch or lack of it after 5 minutes of video play. Well, it does lose audio synchronisation with the picture sometimes and it is noticable, but you can make it go a way for a short while by pausing then pressing play, not a good method for watching a film. Alternatively you can do that, then slide the "button lock" to on, that stops it going out of synch again - you need to do that anyway as you'd be pressing buttons by accident as you change hand position every once and a while (more about the key lock function later).
The unit gets hot, but mine only got as hot as I would expect a hard drive to be anyway - might be okay in winter as a hand warmer.
The goodmans truncates file names to the 8.3 format so you might have problems with identifying your sound or video files if you put a lot of similarly named files on this unit (the original file name is unchanged so you can still see them with your pc).
The supplied software to convert video files to ASF, which is the only native video format this machine plays is suppose to be diabolically slow - I haven't tried it myself as I don't have anything to convert, I haven't even installed the software onto my pc even though it says to do so a few times in the manual.
I just plug my video, dvd or telly straight into the unit and let it convert the signal on the fly.
The results have been perfectly acceptable.
Downside - I think the video playback is sometimes a bit jerky, but I'm not too sure, it's a bit hard to tell really. [Haven't really noticed this again]
Also there is a blue "unit is operating / on" LED above the screen which shines right into my eyes when the ambient light level is low, a bit irritating. [very irritating now I've used it a bit more]{I;ve covered it with a bit of Post-it note - 30th Oct 2007}
While I remember, this unit is quite heavy, it's a hard drive with a screen attached after all, and I think that it would not survive a drop to the ground. I think you would end up with a hard drive, a screen and a million bits of plastic.
I use it mainly as a video player as you can probably guess and I think it's just fine. I just plug it into a source and record overnight or whenever. It records purchased DVDs and Videos without taking any notice of the copy protection measures at all - suits me fine. I'll then be able to watch this or bits of tv or whatever whenever I have some down time.
I've put about 20 video items onto it [maybe 40 now], including direct tv recording using the built in timer, what a palava, but I know what to do now so it should be easier next time. Also put on, DVD, video, jpegs, mp3s and pc files onto the unit......
[ 10th August 2007 - Well, I lost more than half my review last time, not sure what happened. I decided not to try and replicate what I wrote. I've just tidied it up a bit and added a few comments here and there.]
Update - The unit is working just fine for video. I haven't bothered with the mp3, voice record, external harddrive or jpeg picture functions since trying them out when I first recieved the unit.
As an out and out personal video player this unit is fine. I've found a case in the house that fits it and gives it plenty of protection which is something that is really needed or it will get scratched and scuffed quite quickly.
I've learnt that if I want to change the names of the video files to something easy to recognise I should do it via a pc - all very convenient for me. {It takes forever to change the name via the unit, so long that I started to worry about the battery running out before it finished 30 Oct 2007}
When I need to leave a programme before the end, I press menu, this shows me how far in hours and minutes I'm into the programme. I can then jump straight to that time when I come back later using the "jump to time" function.
Battery seems fine, get about, up to, three hours out of it I think.
The Volume through my headphones seems fine, not too quiet as other reviews have mentioned, although I do use my own cheapo headphones (£1), more expensive ones work fine too.
I still haven't used the conversion software as I don't need it and still haven't any files to convert.
I've upgraded my opinion of the unit to a four star bearing in mind the cost and how I've become use to the way it operates
Bye
30 October 2007 Still going fine.
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39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
You get what you pay for, 17 Oct 2005
By A Customer
The main incentive for buying this product was its attractive price, and yet I now realise that the price is low for a reason. I had bought this product hoping for a multi-purpose media player, which will entertain me with music and videos. The video playback is quite good, but battery life is mediocre (2-3 hours at best). The music playback however is dreadful, with the player taking several seconds to load each new page of songs in each folder. The organisation of your music is awful, as you have to scroll back up to the top of the folder to go back to the previous folder, which took me 5 minutes with 50 songs. The music playback/organiser seems more of an extra bonus rather than a fully-fledged feature. Another problem is the joystick used to navigate around the files. It actually begins to make your thumb sore after using ait for over 5 minutes, as it requires a lot of'pushing' to respond. Add to that no/appalling software for video conversion, unsatisfactory video compatibility and the constant freezes described accurately in other reviews. I bought an ipod soon after trading this in, sacrificing the ability to play movies. I believe my ipod probably weighs about a tenth of this brick, and at least 3 times smaller. There is now a whole array of media players, which are much thinner, lighter, and I can honestly see no reason for buying this product. If you want a video player, face it, its expensive.
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Poor software installation for Windows 98SE, 27 Sep 2005
By A Customer
I was very disappointed with this product - that my brother bought for himself. Coming with a Windows 98SE driver on CD he followed the instructons, rebooted then phoned me five minutes later after Windows 98SE failed to boot with a blue-screen message complaining of an error in a DLL file. It appears that the driver installation overwrote an up-to-date DLL file in his windows/system folder with an older version. I ended up re-installing his entire system from scratch during which time I got to review this product. My impression is of a nicely featured and presented product let down by poor software and firmware.
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