PocketMatrix

RICoder is back after a long absense from reviewing. And he comes back big with his first hardware review. While it is not a PocketPC, the RCA Lyra seems pretty cool..

<a href="http://www.pocketmatrix.com/reviews/lyra/"><img src="http://www.pocketmatrix.com/reviews/lyra/images/lyra.jpg" border="0"></a>

"The Lyra RD2780 A/V Jukebox is exactly that, an Audio / Video Jukebox. While it may not be a Pocket PC, the Pocket PC community will want to take a look. It has 3 primary functions..."

Check it out <a href="http://www.pocketmatrix.com/reviews/lyra/">here</a> <!>

I am thinking of buying one of these for use with my Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel). However I am concerned that the format option of the Canon uses FAT32 by default and hence would not be compatible with the RCA Lyra.

It would seem that you used the Rebel for your review without problems tough so now I am confused.

Did you have to reformat the CF on a PC for FAT16 before using the cards in your Canon? if you then reformatted them using the camera would they revert to FAT32 or stay as FAT16? or has the RCA firmware upgrade included the addition of FAT32 support already? (I assume they intend to add support for FAT32 at some point)

I would really appreciate a fast reply, I already placed a bid for one on eBay and now I am stressing out.

Regards

Mark

I still have the unit, and have seen different results at different times. The first thing I would say is to condition the battery. Quite by accident, when I first got the unit, I more or less did this by draining it and filling it completely several times.

I noticed that when I kept it constantly charged (in the car or home) and then used it with the battery, it didn't last more than 4-8 hours without shutting itself down (not a dead battery, just shuts down).

I still can get well over 10 hours of use out of the thing if I charge it properly, but I haven't done a 'real' experiment since the review...perhaps I will.

Should I have put "results may vary?"

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As an asside, the firmware has been updated again, and most of the features are in now. They also sped up the performance quite a lot for saving settings and flipping around. If they manage to keep pushing out updates, it will certainly keep me happy.

I have also been going through the business of encoding video for it. It hadn't occured to me to actually plop a random video on the device and play it. I'm not going to write a full how-to right here, but suffice to say it is VERY VERY picky (with this firm ver.) Meaning that it must be DiVX video (no b-frames) (or MPG1 VID which I have not tried) and MP3 Audio...