Digital Home Thoughts: The DVX-POD: Great Idea, Poor Execution

Voice Recording
Voice recording is accomplished via the small microphone on the left side of the unit. You can record in 30/60/90/120/150/180/210/240 minute presets. The first time I used the recording feature I recorded about 30 seconds, pressed stop, then tried to listen back to it – and the DVX-POD completely locked up. I had to insert a pin into the very small reset hole to get the unit functioning again.

The quality of the recording was surprising good from about one foot away, but at three feet it wasn’t able to pick much up. Worse still, you can’t record audio from the line in, so I view this feature as being unrealistic – how would someone position the DVX-POD within twelve inches of someone speaking? It’s too big for that, and without an option for a more sensitive external microphone, it’s impractical to use this for recording a lecture or presentation.

The quality of the voice recording is set in the settings panel; it records in MP3 format and the quality settings are 48 kbps (low), 96 kbps (middle), and 192 kbps (high). There’s no way to change the file name, move the file, or delete it. There’s also no meta data tagged onto the file – you have to decode the file name (0102230047.mp3) to figure out which recordings are which.

Audio Playback: Clumsy at Best
The DVX-POD is capable of playing back MP3 and WMA audio files – that’s enough for my needs, but I know several people who are fans of OGG, and given the nature of this device it seems surprising they didn’t include support for that format. Within the MP3 and WMA realm, a surprising array of bit rates and sampling rates are supported.

So how well does it work as a player? The interface shows basic metadata, and the volume is very loud. Beyond that, the experience goes downhill fast. There seems to be no way to play all the songs in a folder, or to queue them up for playback. Worse, even if you select a file, the play button won’t play the song – only the action button on the rocker starts playback. Completely illogical! The playback of audio is a bit quirky: you can fast-forward through a song, but the rocker button doesn’t stop the fast-forward and start the playback – you have to press the play button for that. This is the opposite way the video playback works, which makes for a confusing experience. There’s no cross fading between songs, although back to back songs play without much delay. Support for album art is sadly lacking. There’s also no visualization display, which seems to ignore the most impressive asset the DVX-POD has: the big screen. There’s no way to move or delete files on the device, and the song skips when you turn the audio up or down.

As an audio player, the DVX-POD fails miserably: it’s simply too big and bulky, and the controls and features don’t measure up to even the cheapest MP3 player.