Thomson PDP2840

...means is that the 20GB Thomson model feels more like 40GB if you switch to MP3PRO (which, incidentally, was developed by Thomson). I have 357 CDs worth of material recorded at top quality and the drive is just a shade over half full. It'll doubtless see out my musical development.

The device itself is a fairly sleek two-tone silver affair, although the high gloss chrome finish is rather prone to fingerprints. It has a roughly 4*3cm ...
...In use, generally fine, but Thomson will need to update the firmware for the 2840 pretty sharpish. As it is now the performance of the machine stands or falls on what directory structure you set up for the MP3 files on the hard drive. With some 6000 files on there in one root directory it was originally excrutiatingly slow to find a file, advance to the next track on an album or even stop the machine. Sometimes it crashed. I figured out that if I ... more

The PDP2840U is the latest of Thomson/RCA's i-Pod busters, for those in the know, and the latest in its Lyra range of 'personal jukeboxes'.

For those left puzzled, the concept isn't new, but is definitely developing as technology catches up with the concept. We're looking at a pocket sized device (11 by 8 by 2.5cm) which incorporates a 20GB hard drive which you use to store MP3 files on, normally transferred from a PC by a USB port. You've then got a modern-day Walkman that can store up to 700 CDs worth of high quality music.

There must be 20 or so rival HD jukeboxes on the market, so what jumped out about the 2840 to make me buy one? In short, bangs per buck. At a shade under £200 (from QED) it's £100 less than the 20GB i-Pod from Apple and a good hundred or so less than most of its non-Apple rivals. [A previous comment on this op queried these prices, but I think they may have misread the review. I stand by my comments!] Some of these are showing their age and only come with, say, 10GB drives, shorter battery life and so on. In all things electronic, every year sees component prices fall and equivalent components getting smaller. This is no exception.

Another major selling point is that the machine comes already compatible with the MP3PRO format. This new MP3 encoding format claims to halve the size of an MP3 file for any given bitrate, or to look at it another way, to double the effective bitrate of a given MP3 file for the same file size. Given the amount of data which is dumped during conventional MP3 encoding (about 90%) I was sceptical of these claims but I'm pleased to say that having done some pretty critical listening on a high-end amp and decent speakers I'd back them up. What this means is that the 20GB Thomson model feels more like 40GB if you switch to MP3PRO (which, incidentally, was developed by Thomson). I have 357 CDs worth of material recorded at top quality and the drive is just a shade over half full. It'll doubtless see out my musical development.

The device itself is a fairly sleek two-tone silver affair, although the high gloss chrome finish is rather prone to fingerprints. It has a roughly 4*3cm blue backlit LCD and a variety of buttons. The buttons are fiddly to use at times, it must be said, but basically up to the job at hand. It has headphone and line out jacks, a USB2 port (backwards compatible with USB1) and a power socket for recharging the lithium polymer battery. This claims a 10hr battery life, which isn't far from the mark if you just let it play rather than messing about with the controls. Perfectly adequate, anyway. It seems to charge in a few hours and can be used whilst charging.

Also included is a useable enough set of clip-on-ear phones - you'd probably have to pay about £30 plus to get better ones. A mains charger, a phono adapter and a cassette adapter are also included. The phono adapter is great for plugging the 2840 into a hi-fi system - just set it off at a party and let it mix some sounds. I can't comment on the quality of the cassette adapter as I don't actually possess a cassette player any more! It would be handy in a car, though, to take your entire CD player with you on the road. To top it all off you get a decent semi-hard black 'shell' case which gives a fair degree of protection. When using it in the case it's easy to mistake the 2840 for a cassette-based Walkman. No bad thing, actually, when dozing in the sun on a public beach in Cuba as I was recently - who'd want to nab one of those? It seems fairly resistant to jogging, and although a HD-based recorder is probably more resistant to skipping than a CD-based MP3 player do remember that this type of device is based on a very compact HD designed for a notebook, and personally I wouldn't go jogging with it. That said the case has a belt clip and my wife has used it successfully enough on a treadmill at the gym. Or so she tells me, anyway...

Sound quality is absolutely excellent, and for most genres of music anyone but the most critical listener is not going to notice any difference between the original CD and an MP3pro file encoded at its maximum bitrate (96kbps) when played on the move. No MP3 format is an 'audiophile' experience, but top rate MP3PRO is miles ahead of most of the bog standard 128kbp stuff floating round the web.

The software supplied is Musicmatch Jukebox 7.5 (MMJ), which doesn't support MP3PRO. However, the new update to version 8.0 can be downloaded for free. You also get a small system tray utility for managing the transfer of files to the jukebox. 'Ripping' CDs to MP3 files is straightforward enough using MMJ, and it also contains powerful but not very intuitive features to 'tag' your existing MP3s (you didn't download them from the internet did you???) for artist, album, track name, genre and so on. You can also do things like print CD labels and jewel case inserts. See you down the market, then. But this wasn't meant to be a review of software...

The instructions are not great it must be said. Sketchy and showing all the hallmarks of a very new product, and also not provided on paper, but in electronic form only.

In use, generally fine, but Thomson will need to update the firmware for the 2840 pretty sharpish. As it is now the performance of the machine stands or falls on what directory structure you set up for the MP3 files on the hard drive. With some 6000 files on there in one root directory it was originally excrutiatingly slow to find a file, advance to the next track on an album or even stop the machine. Sometimes it crashed. I figured out that if I put all my files into different directories - a tree structure - based on album name, it was never going to have to look through more than twenty or so files in a directory. This is not documented by Thomson in its instructions, although there is a good deal of web-based discussion on this topic. The problem was largely cured, although advancing between different menus when the machine is playing can be slow on the odd occasion. Please please please update the firmware to sort this out, Thomson! You'd turn a potential beauty of a machine into a real i-Pod killer.

Finally, you can also use the 2840 as a highly portable mass storage device, not just as an MP3 player. Whilst it's not going to win any speed prizes - it is USB after all, it's got huge potential as a backup device for whatever data you happen to ned to move around. At 20GB it's even got some potential use for lugging video files around - just don't try doing this through USB1 though!

Buy one today - this is to CDs what the 60s were to bras.

 

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