Digital Trends

Mpio FY200 256MB March 15th, 2004 | by

Setup and Use

Since the FY200 offers a good number of features, there is a lot of information you may need to read about in the included manual. Digitalway includes a rather detailed instruction manual, however, the Korean to English translation is rather poor. You may find that you just need to spend some time getting used to the players controls and functions on your own.

For the most part, menu navigation is rather intuitive and if you have any experience with other digital audio players you should have no difficulty navigating around the menu system.

The software that comes with the FY200 is compatible with Windows 98/ME/2000/XP as well as MacOS 8.62 — 9.2, and MacOS X. Software installation is pretty straightforward and once installed, is used to transfer files to the player and back.

Called the MPIO Manager2 and used with most of Digitalways products, this program is strictly flash based and has an overall slow and jumpy feel to it. However, Digitalway has added an innovative touch to the software and incudes a separate plug-in installer so you can use your favorite program to interface with the FY200. This includes support for Windows Media Player, RealONE player, and Apple's iTunes 2, 3 and 4. Transferring files between the FY200 and your computer is relatively straightforward and utilizes your typical drag and drop format inside the MPIO Manager 2 program. The FY200 uses the USB 1.1 standard so transferring files can take quite a while.

The FY200 can read the MP3, WMA, and ASF audio formats. There is however, no support for Ogg Vorbis nor is there any mention of support for this format on the company's Website, despite having multiple firmware updates available. MP3 and ASF buffs will be happy to know that the FY200 can read MP3 and WMA files encoded up to 320 Kbps as well as Variable Bit Rate recordings.

Unlike some portable audio devices which can double as a mass storage device, the full size USB interface is not built into the player itself. Rather you have to use a mini-USB to standard USB adapter which will let you plug the FY200 directly into your computer. We would prefer to have this built into the player since you are forced to carry around an extra part if you will be using the FY200 for data storage. Also worth mentioning was the fact that our test computer equipped with Windows XP Pro did not recognize the FY200 as a hard drive. We had to transfer data files by using the MPIO software. This hurts this player significantly as a thumb drive substitute.

The FY200 nylon case with plastic see-through window