Sumvision Zengo

Posted 6 December, 2007 in Other Stuff

I just bought one of these devices. It is a 3.5″ DVR or so it says on the case.

It is a hard dive (320gb in this case) in a case. The case is clever in that it not only acts as an externat Hard Drive for your computer but you can also hook it up to a TV and both view or listen to media files and record video or TV.

The theory is great. The problem is that mine does not work. There sems to be a problem with the firmware. It works fine as an external drive o my PC but when I hook it up to the TV I just get a corrupted version of the graphics that you see on the packaging and promo.

Very sad as I was looking forward to getting all my videos and music on to it and shoing it off to others.

Guess where it was made? Oh yes. China. It was cheap and Chinese, and so either does not work, or breaks after one day. The manual was that typical idiotic tranmslation where you get english words mixed up by some computer translation into something totaly illogical.

An example, the chapter is on updating the Firmware and step 7 reads:

7) According to pointing out finishing progressively, upgrade movements.

WTF?

So not only is it broken, there is fuck all I can do about it by reading the manual.

As for upgrading the firmware, there is none! None to be found anywhere on the net.

Oh well. What else do I know? 

The device is the size and shape of any other HD cases and is in fact well built with a nice solid feel to it. I know. Chinese and solid? Yes it is true. It does not work but it is a very nice object.

Apparently recording is not so good as it skips frames. It also uses FAT32 so your files can be no larger than 4gb. This is not so bad in that most movies in Divx or xvid format will be around 700mb. I read somewhere that files are split after 1 hour when recording so movies will be split into 2 or 3 files.

One nice feature is that it can take SD cards too. This is great if you want to keep the device by your television and transfer files from your PC, or from any PC.

I got it on ebay.co.uk from seller tmsuppliesuk who have 100% feedback with over 32000 feedbacks. So it looks as though I should not have any trouble getting a replacement. Do you think they will pay for the return postage? We shall see.

Find out more about video conversion.

I will write more when I get it replaced.

6 comments to “Sumvision Zengo”

Waldo, January 13th, 2008 at 4:11 pm:

• Hi,
  Some weeks ago I bought a Zengo DVR Box; then I’ve mounted a 500 Gb Seagate Barracuda HD inside.
  I found it a very interesting product. It works very well with PC and TV.
  A firmware upgrade it would be appreciated in some musical reproduction functions, so I’ve been searching for some reference on the net and I’ve found SumVision (the producer of Zengo DVR) website where you can provide feedback. So try to have a glance to http://www.sum-vision.co.uk/default.aspx.
  Best regards

ken, April 18th, 2008 at 11:35 pm:

• what happened with this?

Richard, June 30th, 2008 at 11:17 am:

• Just got the Zengo media player from svp for £41
  fitted a 320 gig sata HD…. and works very well….
  its a lovely bit of hardware…and plays everything ive tried sofar

  translations into English are tipicly laughable……
  (what is it with these people….spend all that time makeing great hardware, and cant get a UK speeking person to translate !)
  also the brouser is rubish…..
  otherwise….. worth every penny……..

Bob, December 29th, 2008 at 5:07 pm:

• This page is the first result in Google search, which seems a bit mad as there’s very little info here. And no comments in the past 6 months!

  I got one of these and must say tbh was pleasantly surprised….. after a few initial struggles. Had the same problem as mentioned above (messed up graphics), and the poor instructions didn’t help me figure out how to switch from ntsc to pal to get the picture right. So that wasn’t a good start, but since then it ain’t too bad.

  No frames skipped in my use sofar. 4GB limit is dealt with well too as it seamlessly continues recording to a second file. (and they play consecutively too) Flashed firmware would still be a nice bonus though…

Adam, April 24th, 2009 at 10:38 am:

• I’ve got one of these and the only problem i have is that when you record, a preview comes up showing you what is recording. But, when i try to play it back, i can’t find it anywhere. Also, has anyone found a way of upgrading the firmware yet? Thanks.

The Futtock, April 24th, 2009 at 10:47 am:

• I have not found any firmware upgrades, but I have not used the thing in a while. As far as I can remember the files are stored under Movies or Films and they have strange file names based on date or something. Sorry to be so vague. I am not at home where the machine is.

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