::A Geek in Korea::

My Cowon O2 is still proving to be pretty damn awesome. It’s not the ultimate portable video player in regards to all formats, but it’s pretty damn good. From a few weeks of solid use, I’ll let people know that it occasionally chokes on really high quality HD stuff and the occasional high quality .MKV file. It’ll play ANYTHING Xvid flawlessly, and usually handles videos and podcasts without problems.

I decided that I’d like to get some comics on too if possible. It’s not an ideal setup for comics by default. There is no way to “grab” images and rotate them around for better viewing. You can’t pinch, twist, or do any of the neat iPhone tricks to images. There are a limited number of fixed zooming points, and trying to figure out how to resize my images to best fit the screen would be a total pain in the butt.

Since I bought the Cowon O2 at the Cowon shop itself, I got mileage points for free products. The custom firmware needed to unlock the better comic viewer features cost 3,000 won. I don’t like paying for partially gimped products. I also hate that the Cowon site uses terrible ActiveX based security, and is only accessible via Windows Interent Explorer. However, since I’m not really “paying” for it since the PMP comes with free “points” to purchase it from their shop, I’ll let it slide. I still don’t know why Koreans make websites that are actively hostile to users, but I’ll survive the encounter with only minor bruises for now. Why this enhanced functionality wasn’t included in the first place is a mystery to me.

I installed the Cowon 02 Compact Shared Document Format conversion program called mTrans via WINE. It actually worked the first time without issues! I was surprised. Sadly, while the product would run, it couldn’t convert anything in the PDF format at first because I didn’t have Adobe reader installed in Wine. It worked in virtualized windows, but it’s somewhat a moot point after I explored it fully.

The mTrans program converted a batch of .jpg files into a proprietary format with no problems, but when I put it on my player, it didn’t work any better than a regular image. I needed the new software on the machine to unlock it, and it threw a warning up at me on the screen telling me as much.

To get the new custom firmware from the Cowon site, I had to wait 20 days and officially “review” the machine, promising not to return it. Then I got points on credit from the store to use it towards the purchase of the file format viewer. I had my wife write down a few gripes about the player that I had in Korean in hopes that the Korean comments might get the attention of the developers.

The comments I mentioned were:

• Image support is worthless. You can’t pinch, spin, or manipulate pictures except for at fixed percentages. Why include images if you can’t decide how closely to look at them?
• Problems with HD file formats falling out of sync. I also mentioned that the USB recharging wasn’t as nice as the Cowon D2 since it didn’t turn off the player automatically if the host computer turned itself off. That’s a step backward in a more advanced player.
• The film for the screen protector had misleading pictures that didn’t match the directions, and that the plastic shield case and the leather case, while sent together, can’t be used together.

For this, I got some credit for the purchase of a proprietary extention to a device I already own. Thanks a lot, Cowon! It’s like I want to get what I already expected to be included in the package, and I only had to wait 20 days to get it!

Anyway, I had to set up this download in virtualization software, because it wouldn’t let me download to anyplace but the Cowon device itself. You had to run the download through their download software so it would go to the proper folder. I guess this is supposed to deter people from downloading and sharing this upgrade with non-paying members. I didn’t check if it’s possible to get around this perceived security hassle in any way. It turns out it’s not worth the hassle of downloading it anyway.

I downloaded the system update to the machine, and went to the new “Document” viewer mode. I guess it worked, because it used to pop up a message saying, “Format not supported”, but now it loaded the batch of images. It used fixed points of zoom, and there is no way to get close enough to read a comic book or any document with text on an image file. The file format they use is so highly compressed that the “High Quality” mode is half the size of the file it started with, and looks highly pixelated on the screen no matter how closely you zoom.

Imagine if all the pages of your comic books or documents on regular paper were shrunk to the size of your wallet, and the only way to read them were from an arm’s length away. You can zoom, but the file doesn’t become any clearer because of the unnecessarily highly compressed format. The letters are being pixelated so you can’t read most of the text. It’s useless because you can’t enjoy the art by scrolling a bit at a time for a larger comic zoomed in with legible text, and the entire page is too small to read. Even the “high quality” format compresses the file too much to be legible. Unless your comic is written entirely in giant size fonts, don’t bother.

There is a GREAT comic book viewer for the Nintendo DS that works with a TINY screen really well. The text is always clear no matter how closely you zoom. It also works by converting files into a totally proprietary format. You move the screen to view the comic one bit at a time, or show as much as you can in both screens. The screen on the DS isn’t as big as the Cowon, but it still works for comics. Why can’t Cowon follow this style navigation or design?

The pdf document conversion for the same viewer doesn’t work much better, except that it has less artifacts when it is compressed. It was *almost* usable, instead of completely and utterly useless. If I had actually paid for it other than getting some credit for filling out reviews I’d have demanded a refund.

Upgrade image viewer is the stock image view with no siginificant enhancements except the ability to read a file format that sucks. No one could possibly use this for viewing documents.  At the moment, do not expect to use the Cowon mTrans or the document viewer extension to do anything but kill your eyes.

I’m excited that the Cowon O2 now has a released SDK to allow people to develop programs for it. The recently released support for the SDK might bring about a chance for a better document reader. There could also be cool programs that make up for the few mistakes so far. I’m positive with support that there will be additional features added that make the Cowon O2 a better player.