I actually really really like this player now, but my breaks in school are long, so I need something with wi-fi, so this won't do it(unless I change my mind sometime).
[ edited Sep 11 (2009) 10:01PM ]

*breathes in relief*

Lol @ the preloaded video ads of old players.

if the release of the zii depends of the sales of this one then I hope this sells like hot cakes, it's just not for me. looks nice but it's nothing I'd like to replace my crappy iphone with
[ edited Sep 11 (2009) 11:09PM ]

If Creative was to base their release of the Zii SOLEY on how well this sells, I would think that that's a bad move. The Zen X-Fi2, while a pretty good ZVM sucessor, is wayyy behind the Zii, and that is my reason for not wanting it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. In other words, the only thing that the zii and the Zen X-Fi2 have in common are a touch screen interface. I personally think that the Zii would sell better than this, but its just my wild guess of course. I'll actually recommend the Zen X-Fi2 to some of my friends who have phones that are capable of browsing and prefer to play movies and music on a dedicated player.
[ edited Sep 12 (2009) 12:29AM ]

has creative not been paying attention to the buzz that they generated by the zii?

if x-fi 2 does not garner the success they feel they want. I guess the only other option is to make a hybrid zii with buttons and touchscreen.

Look at the new nokia and sony phones. they know where its at. Touchscreen is soo 2008/late.

Not too shabby, now drop the Zii processor and an OLED in there and it's a bloody winner!!!!

I find myself neither thrill nor repulsed by the Zen X-Fi 2...

I'm still waiting to buy the 32gb version from my local Fry's, but it appears that the delivery was delayed for some reason.

As many have pointed out at dapreview the video looks like it was sped up quite a bit which makes the interface look a lot quicker than it would normally. That's pretty misleading if Creative is doing this on purpose.

So right now I don't think we can make any conclusions on whether the new firmware build has actually improved anything.
[ edited Sep 12 (2009) 11:26PM ]

False advertising, same as the video stating that the sd card is fully integrated into the player. They really are asking for class action lawsuits all over the place, aren't they?

Wow, your comments made me re-watch the video. I don't think it was actually sped up because if you were to observe the people's movement at the back, it seems normal to me. In the video demo, the timing of the video shows that it wasn't fastforwarded too. Maybe its just me but I think Creative as a company would have the integrity to not speed up the video to make the interface looks faster.

I didn't think so either when I first saw it. It was only when others kept pointing it out at dapreview that I watched and did feel like the motions were a bit unnaturally fast. Your point about the people in the background is definitely valid though and just makes me all confused now!

I do not think this is sped up at all. In the Panda Ad video, when a second went by, it really did feel like an actual second. Look at the video at the point where the ad was at 0:44 going to 0:45, it felt like a second to me. And the movements of the people in the background, pretty natural like kingone pointed out.

Honestly I don't think the video was maniplulated to make it look faster. The people in the background, the video and even the horrid techno music are dead giveaway that its the normal speed. The only explanation I can think of for the dude's lightning fast finger action is that he works for Creative and obviously knows his stuff pretty well ...

the background noise seems normal to me (listen to the music and it seems fine though I've never heard that song before and if you've played an old sonic game on pal and ntsc you'll notice the speed difference *wink*).

Editing the sound is quite easy now and since there's no lip syncing you could easily increase the speed of a video and over lay the original sound on top.

Im leaning on the side of not being edited in that way because he wasn't anything particulary involving and he was just going through menus. That could be easily done. though we won't know now until someone heads off to comex now and checks it out for themselves dammit

Yeah I guess so. Man he really was fast with it, lol.

Lol...looks like everything Creative does nowadays...even a simple video like this is subject to skepticism...

Sometimes, people's skepticism baffles me when it concerns all things Creative.

Look at the 'facts', or rather, obvious indications in the video that it is highly unlikely tampering has been done on it.

From 0.05 - 0:40, people are in the background, and they are moving at normal speed. Well, i don't know the kind folks over at dapreview and the video expertise they have, but speeding up 1.5X or 2X means that the people in the video (without the supposed speed bump) must have moving around really, really freakishly slow.

Come on, try it out yourself using TIVO or your DVD player and see what it means to move at 2X, and match it against this video.

Same goes for 0:46 - 0:54ish, there's human activity at the top right of the player. Now, that in total accounts for 3/4 of the 1min plus clip.

My guess is that the background music is tied to the video imaging as well (i.e. No splitting of track, then overlaying it against the 'speed enhanced video) because quite simply, the start/stop of Music Playback demo and the Video Demo timing fits perfectly. Of course again, it can be adjusted to give that impression, so it probably isn't an iron-clad defense.

For the first time, Creative has moved so fast to fix up something (in a good way), and look at all the blind accusations. Amazing, really.
[ edited Sep 13 (2009) 12:30AM ]

Oh yes, another thing.

Watch the video in HQ and fullscreen.

It doesn't get anymore obvious than that.
[ edited Sep 13 (2009) 12:36AM ]

Yeah it's really the people in the background that shifted back my view to it not being sped up (and made me look like a flip-flopper! lol). I was surprised when I saw so many people at dapreview saying so too. I didn't really watch it full screen either time or pay much attention to the background music, just the finger motions which were super fast. So I guess case closed then.
[ edited Sep 13 (2009) 01:20AM ]

TheManny I guess that's just a result of the reputation the company has built themselves over the years.
It't hard to stop having pre conceived ideas about the company when all they have done in the past support them, they can change thing but it takes some getting used to to this new and positive changes.

The zii processor is so powerful it absorbs light energy from around it and actually ends up slowing down time around it.

This is a serious contender for dumbest conspiracy theory ever.

I am still somewhat put out by the fact that codec support is lacking 2+ mass production models later from the ZVM series. If i'm going to buy a touch screen player wouldn't it be a Zune or other more full featured model..
unless creative wanted to charge around 1/2 price for the same capacity? 16gb zunehd $219 so a comparable xfi2 would be $109?

My fingers move just as fast as that when using my iPod. Just look at most kids texting these days, it's a wonder the keypads don't set on fire.

Laggy or not, the UI is SO far behind anything being put out by Apple, MS, Cowon (who were smart enough to make it editable), Iriver, et al, that I'm not really sure what sort of market Creative is hoping to capture with this. If it's touchscreen PMPs on the cheap, Walmart already sells rebranded touchscreen PMPs from China with MicroSD expansion (probably integrated, too). If it's just the budget conscious in general, then Sandisk has that market sewn up. I'm only talking about North America here; don't know how this might do in Europe, since electronics tend to be more expensive there to begin with. I'd guess outside of Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia, this player's dead in the water, due to the availability of (and preference for) stuff like Sony Walkman MP3 players, SE Walkman and Nokia XPressMusic phones.

People here need to stop hating. It's a fansite, dammit!

I take back every bad this I said about this player. It's now fast enough. The features and format support + nice design all together makes it quite a catch

PT, I don't think people are hating because of the speed.. they're hating for how medocre the innovation is between mass production models. Fans definitely WANT something to be excited about, but when your team comes in last (definitely not 1st or 2nd) for so long (in my book that's 3+ years) we have many reasons to be upset.

The XFI 2 is OK I suppose. Its not bad but its not groundbreaking but Creative were never really groundbreaking in regards to PMPs anyway. Of course they are nowhere near anything that Apple or MS put out in regards to UI and features but Creative products do sound good and play video quite well. It would be great if they could do a collaboration with Apple or someone like Sony but this will never happen. To be honest we can go elsewhere if we are not happy it seems pointless to complain.

ok
like the design of the zen xfi2
but
all eyes are on the zii (egg) now
so
go creative! make it a phone