February 2009

Question answered about the Sylvania SMPK2242, and more!

Yet more adventures with my SMPK2242!

J. H. Wrote in to ask me some questions and after answering them, he thought I should post it in the blog, so here goes.

***BEGIN Q/A***

Q: "Do you know of a firmware update that will allow you to play unlicensed mp3's on the player? I have 5 mp3 players in the house with everyone using different applications to transfer the music (songbird being the newest addition) and this is the only device that isn't working properly."

A:Simple, just connect it so it comes up as a USB hard drive, and put all your MP3s in /MUSIC.

Just as the videos go in /VIDEO.

Honestly, I never installed the bit that lets it work with Windows Media Player, as it would probably try to lock up the device as DRM only (Why? So [Company-X] could make you rent things you already own!).

I Just save things to it, as if it were a normal USB drive (Using windows explorer under Start/Programs/Accessories , it appears as Removable Disk Drive G: on my system. Yours may vary.) So next time you connect it to your PC, don't select MTP device, select USB drive. No special conversion is needed for non DRM mp3s, just copy them to the right directory on the device.

As far as I can tell, the SMPK2242 is one of the most OPEN players out there.

Zaphod

P.S. I repeat, no special programs are needed for the SMPK2242! Get back to me if you need more help.

***END Q/A***

I also added later, that the SMPK2242 can also play .ogg without modification, and that one can put in subdirectories like "/MUSIC/Heavy Metal/AC-DC" or "/VIDEO/Music Videos/New Age/Enya/" to keep things organized.

Of course, I can't leave well enough alone, so I did research on the Curtis International website, about what other Personal Medial Players they have that use the same codecs and media type, found out that the data on the TRANSCODING HELP PAGE should also work with these models:

SYLVANIA SMPK1072
SYLVANIA SMPK2072
SYLVANIA SMPK2242 (My model the page was made for!)
SYLVANIA SMPK8854
SYLVANIA SMPK8854B
SYLVANIA SMPK8858

CURTIS MPK7836
CURTIS MPK7836UK
CURTIS MPK8854

And I would assume, many other off brand players that use the AVI container, and the XviD codec may benefit too. Be mindful to match your player's screen resolution with that in the encoder.

If you have any more questions, get back to me at my CONTACT page!

Zap!