# Sarotech DVP260s Digital output portable media player - 1st look



## less (Nov 30, 2006)

Hey all,

Some of you with DRZ9255's have probably beenreadingabout a new media player I purchased recently and now play through the optical digital input of my head unit, gaining the benefit of the DRZ's fabulous D/A processing and achieving imho very high quality source quality. Well, since most of you have some sort of digital optical or maybe coaxial input option, I figured I'd place a post here with a review for everyone. 

I place this here with a caution that this is a new product to me and has NOT stood the test of time as a quality audio source capable oflong term survival in a car environment and with no testing to verify anything relative to its signal output quality. I'm only wanting to share this as an option that seems to work quite well initially - even outperforming its own manual in terms of what it will play and do. Please take this for what it is - one person's early opinion about something he has been working on for some time... and has finally found an answer that seems very good so far!

Here it is:









*Ok, so what is this thing. * Step one - go to the web site for the company: www.sarotech.com and head to its web page: Sarotech DVP260s

I spent a lot of time shopping for the perfect media player and it really took a good bit of time to find one that would work best given some of the initial units limitations. So:

*Why this unit over the others that are out there*:
1. Portable and uses laptop hard drives which handle vibration and voltage issues better than the standard drives
2. Supports NTFS formatting - so no fat32 and small partition sizes. 
3. Supports SATA 1/2 - newer and nicer.
4. Unlimited drive size - buy what you want for it.
5. Controls buttons on the actual unit - so you don't need to use the remote control for all functions like many similar products.
6. Supports high def up to 720i output
7. 100% digital output capable (this should have been number one on the list because without it I wouldn't have even looked at it as an option)
8. Optical output - in addition to coaxial (but you do have to purchase a little $2.50 adapter plug to make it work with toslink cables)
9. The remote is really quite good compared to others I have seen - and importantly, it is quite powerful with a sensitive pickup making it handy for controling the unit while driving. Lots of small buttons - but you will get used to it I think. 
10. The package it came with is phenominal- with the optional car kit, you get the following: extended remote control pick up (hide the unit wherever you want - completely out of sight if you want), power adapters for home and car, a three plug car lighter extension, stand, carrying case (not bad either), cables for both high def component and 2 pair of standard red/yellow/white rca connections, svideo connection, coaxial digital output adapter, USB cable. 
11. Instructions and Software - the manual is better than a lot of pacific rim manufactured items which seem to be written by someone with very limited English skills. BUT, they really need to upgrade the manual to match the units newest features. For instance, the manual still says that it only accepts playlists for movies but it supports playlists for music too! Very important feature for me. Also, the software might be decent for some, but has some major drawbacks for me. One is that it will not recognize WAV files, even though they are completely playable on the unit. The good news is that it works like any other hard disk drive - so you can just drag and drop any files you want onto the drive and ignore the software if you want. 
12. Support and retail availability - bad news... its sold on cooldrives .com but SERIOUSLY read reviews on the net about this place and its affiliates before buying... they are BAD NEWS! I couldn't find it anywhre else and so I held off buying one (couple other reasons too) until I found someone better. No clue on support yet, but I bought mine from a great guy who was selling on ebay with only a few sales listed so far. If you want to talk with him, he has a lot of knowledge about the movie aspects of this, but not about the digital output area at all. He has more for sale and I would buy again from him in a heartbeat - great communication and easy to work with. His email is [email protected] Anyhow, I've not read of a single seller of these products that offers any decent tech support - you are on your own... but they have had several firmware upgrades already and the unit works well for me - no sticking points at all - except with the background image. If you replace thestock BG image and it doesn't like the format, its supposed to ignore yours and use the stock one... instead it freaks out terribly and acts like its totally broken. Delete the bad BG and it works like a top again... go figure!

Features shots:



















*How does it sound?*

Good news - at least in my environment. I've never heard a better reproduction of anything I listen too - period. Somehow, in playing for example, "And the Gods made love" from the Hendrix Tribute album In from the Storm (phenominal song), it had the most dynamics and the most incredible stage/image presentation I've ever heard my system reproduce. Generally speaking, any higher quality recording has been the same way for me. At first, I didn't want to say this and was just thinking it was my mind being hyped about the thing working so well...but now I believe its true to say that this unit, used through the digital input of my DRZ9255, sounds far better than playing CDs of the same exact recording (using strictly WAV uncompressed files). Its just great sounding and its made my entire system take a step up... plus I can throw away the hundreds of CD's I used to tote around.

I think next weekend, I will try and hook up with Foosman who lives near me and has never heard my system bvefore. I'll set up a couple CD vs MEdia player A/B comparisons and get his unbiased opinion so I don't overstate this. Might want to hold off until I get my ego out of the evaluation...but i definiately doesn't sound bad in any way... has a lot of that "digital feel" to it... when digital sounds at its best.

*How about its features - does it work well or is it slow and clunky?* 

Overall, I'd give the unit a B+ on its ease of use and how it works. I need to revamp my system of storing files and it will probably go up to an A. Right now, I have files stored in playlist like folders - sineI didn't think it would run playlilsts... so Chill, Rock, SQ Only, and categories like that. In one folder I got up to 27 gb in it and it started to run a little slow...not terrible, but not as fast as you would want to feel seemless either. I am going to go a different route now though - and categorize by artists... then build playlists by the categories I listed before. I'm thinking that will keep the folders smaller, allow me to find individual tracks fast than my current method (which is not fast at all) and generally be an improvement. 

As I mentioned - the remote control handles a lot of functions and is strong enough and wide enough to not be fussy at all... I've got several remotes for my car equipment and never used one at all since they typically didn't work well or it ws easier to do it by hand... this is an exception. It isn't an ipod - and isn't as easy to get to what you want to play... but I really like hitting a general category of music and hitting shuffle then letting the system surpise me with what comes up... and it works well for that.

It has: zoom to make the words larger, random, repeat, skip andabout anything you would want for both movies and audio, plus it has a folder for photos and you can play a slideshow of photos while playing your music (haven't done that yet) and it puts the menu text right over top of your photos, which is pretty nice. It may be a bit fussy about photo size and resolutions... not sure. Read the manual on the sarotech site for more details. 

Overall - again, it seems good. I don't have the drive full yet so can't say if it will get worse or stay the same with more size. So far, the additions I have made have only made that largest folder slower and not impacted any of the others. Its a bit tough to go up out of one music folder name to the main music folder so you could select another category (the way mine is set up) but I think there is some control that I don't know yet to do this.

*Design? Appearance and thoughtfullness in putting the pacakage together?*

This is mostly a matter of tastes so take a look and see for yourself. Personally, I think it is a pretty attractive little piece and its small enough to put easily into many places in your car... a little velcro would work but I'd probably go for something a bit more aggressive. While it definitely adds to the appearance, I was disappointed to see that the front "black panel" was actually a tinted but somewhat see through plastic material. Mostly, I just think that the unit could get marred up and ugly pretty quick if you don't take care of it from the word go... and its definitely not as hard as an ipod or something along those line. For what it is, it seems built pretty well. 

The package as a whole, compared to any other package I've seen in the category, is far beyond the average and gets an A in my book. It has some restrictions (most notably for movie buffs is that it won't play mp4 files) but, based on reviews of the competition that I've read on places like NEWEGG.com, I think this is the shining star of this category.

Honestly, the biggest issue I am having is making a .jpg background in 720x480 resolution that is compatible with the player. Its been rather annoying knowing that several images I've made should have worked, but apparently had some littel specification set wrong in my image editor program... and I've created national magazine ads and such, so it just shouldn't be too hard lol!

Oh, for you fans of album art, you have to have a .jpg file in the exact same name as each song in order to use that funtions, so its pretty impractical. Ultimately, I will probably end up watching a slide show while listening.... if I worry about watching anything at all. You can control the player without the monitor on, but its sure easier at first to get it startedwith the monitor going. Once you are in the playlist or category you want, no worries.... just pop it off and close it up and down the road you go, listening to some of the best quality music available!

I know someday that the manufacturers will likely stop supporting CDs and go with some varient of the hard drive... but I doubt that will be soon! In the mean time, for those of you like me who just couldn't bare reburning another CD because it fell out of you car, or having to dig through a stack of them to play that one song that is on your mind... CHECK THIS OUT! 

Thanks for reading this and I hope you found it interesting. So far to me it sems like a dream come true... naturally, I will update this as often as is needed to keep you all informed. 

Enjoy the music!

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## iskone (Nov 25, 2007)

This thing sounds awesome!! I need to read up on it and see if it will work with a D310/H701 combo. I think it will so I'm pretty excited, forget buying a CD changer!!


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## less (Nov 30, 2006)

Had a question about the screen shots and menus... generally how its laid out... so figured that would be something good to expand on for anyone interested. Your first step should be to go download the manual though... there is a link in the initial post. The manual is fairly decent but probablywon't answer every question... you can, however get a better pictures of how the screens look - colors and style and such. My keyboard is being a beotch for me today so please excuse the typos and run together words if I miss any.

I'll take a couple shots later today and get some posted for everyone. It looks pretty decent in menu mode. but most of the time you will be in play mode... and you can put your own image in for the background there. I like to create my own background pictures but whats very cool is that you can use the images from the Alpine background site, save them as .jpg files and you have a whole catalog of nice backgrounds all laid out for you already! I guess you can do a slideshow of files from your picture folder too - as long is the images aren't too high of resolution/size. 

I'd call this quite easy to operate, especially for people like us who typically have experience with technology - computers and the like. Its reasonably intuitive, and the contorls being on the unit itself means you don't really need to mess with the remote. Once you get into a playlists you like you can shut down the monitor and just let things ride... and apparently there is a way to use the unit without a monitor being active at all, but I'd guess you wouldn't have much control over what its playing and navigation would not be a lot of fun. I do know one thing... I sure wish I didn't have track numbers or band names on any of my files gerr! On longer file names, it shows the first 6ish characters and then three dots and then the last 5-6 characters and this can be a bit difficult at times if you have a lot of other info in the name. 

Its set up fairly simply. Four tabs (like file folder tab tops) going across the top: setup - movies - music - photos. Underneath each tab when you click on it is a vertical listing of the various folders or files that you have in that section... you can use the buttons on the case or the remote to arrow down to the folder you want - then hit enter to go into it. Then you can arrow to the track you want and enter it... and off you go.

In the music folder, once you click a track it has a faily lame stock background image and displays white text over the top. It will either show you the exact file name, a list of songs in the folder/playlist that you are currently playing from or you can hit another button and it will display detailed file information in a black box under the file name. 

Under the first tab: Set Up (I think... may just be blank) - there are two other tabs going down. One is for playlists, although it only shows movie playlists here. If you create a music playlist, make sure you store it in the mymusic folder and it will work fine... just doesn't show up in the setup tab. Below that is the actual set up pages. Very simple - 1 is video set up - output resolution and other video options - 2 is audio output options; digital or standard and then one or two that deal with subtitles and captions.

I'll post some shots soon. Just drop me an email if you want to know anything specific.... have to admit though, we need someone else to get one of these haha... then we can get more input and differing opinions.

Good luck with your systems!

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## goodstuff (Jan 9, 2008)

Any updates with this device? Looks promising.


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## less (Nov 30, 2006)

Hey guy,

I haven't taken the time to post anything on this thread in some time, but there is another thread that is more active so try searching something like "no more cd's for me." Or search SArotech and you will also find it.

I've been using this for several months now and I just can't say enough good things about it. There are a couple very small complaints - mostly in the user interface, but with playlists and the ability to easily scroll to find whatever music you want... and then the very high quality digital output that can be processed by whatever d/a converter you like or currently use, I think this is the new direction of digital music reproductionand portability. 

I can take it in my work and listen to music or watch video if I feel the need... or take it to friends house and get hi def (720i) reproduction and also DTS or dolby digital sound as long as they have any unit with the processor. They have a new unit that does 1080i too.

With the ability to staore 250 - 320 or whatever the largest notebook size drive is now, you have a hard time running out of storage space too. The remote works at odd angles and its just a slick little unit. For the price, its a great deal imho.

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## frito (Sep 11, 2007)

What do they cost. Looks cool. I have a VW camper and I would like this.


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## less (Nov 30, 2006)

I bought mine on eBay for about $150 then added about a $120 hard drive. Oh - that included the car kit too. Strong advice - DO NOT BUY from COOL DRIVES.COM or any of its many subsidiaries... you will likely live to regret it. REad reviews if you decide you might want to do it anyhow. I don't remember the Ebay sellers name but he was VERY helpful and far more amiable than the web sellers I found when I was searching. He's had one in use for about 18 months now with no issue and mine works great after 4 months... and I really can't live without it.

You have to have the car kit though to impliment it in a car... it runs off 5 volts and converters for that seem kind of rare... plus the car kit includes an extension for the remote sensor so you can mount it totally out of sight and have it work fine, as well as a couple other pretty useful goodies like a lighter plug that converts 1 to 3.

Read the other thread though because ALL of the little details are there.


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## ocuriel (Oct 7, 2005)

That is very impressive. Not your everyday system.


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