Ramos T13 FHD review by kenand

**kenand** · 05-09-2010 05:35 PM

I bought Ramos T13FHD personal media player from HOUSEOFDAP Web shop. The shipment arrived with registered post, the shipping time was about 10 days from Hong Kong to Hungary. I decided to buy Ramos T13FHD, because has support sub.idx subtitles. And It's fact I liked the design of T13FHD. I come from Hungary, and Hungarian language (like many other in Central Europe) contains special Latin characters. T13FHD can display correct subtitles with many languages. It's great shame, but Sochip based players can not handle Hungarian subtitles.
I decided to chose the HouseofDAP, because the price is reasonable, contains registered post, and the support is well.

The box of player was simple, made from paper. The package is more simple than package of Ainol V9000HDA.

The package contains player, USB cable, OTG cable, simple black earphones, audio cable, component cable, remote, Chinese user manual, warranty card. It's my opinion white accessories should fit more to this player. But we can find more accessories than in the package of Ainol V9000HDA. But you must pay some extra bucks (4-5 USD) for charger.

The design of Ramos T13FHD

I love with Ramos T13FHD at the first sight. The player is handsome. The front panel of T13FHD made from zinc magnesium alloy. The panel is hard and has good corrosion resistance to salt water. It can resist the erosion of hand sweating. The rear cover made from good quality ABS plastic. The rear shell color is white. The surface of rear cover is very smooth. The size of player is only slightly bigger than 5 inch LCD screen itself. It fits user 's hand easy. The front panel of player is narrow. There is a black frame around the LCD screen.

There are 3.5 mm earphones out, component out (analogue HD TV output), Track buttons and Power ON-OFF / LCD ON-OFF /Hold combined button at the left side.

There are MicroSD slot,5V DC in, mini HDMI (1.3)out, mini USB in/out at the left side. Small door covers these ports.

There are volume up-down buttons and built-in infra red receiver at bottom of the player.

There is only one speaker at the back of the player. The power of speaker is weak. It is suitable only in a quiet indoor environment.
The player has dual control touch+button interface. Player has only few buttons. There is not Escape button like come with Ainol V9000HDA. It's fact the Escape button is missing to me.

The inner part of Ramos T13FHD

Ramos T13FHD use many chipsets. The main chipset is the Amlogic AML 8726-H. Amlogic AML8726-H contains two AMRISC processing cores, in conjunction with hardware decoding module, supports multiple video formats decoding up to 1080p resolution. The core is 32-bit high speed ARC 750D RISC core subsystem, the core is widely used in home entertainment systems, portable devices and other systems. Amlogic include NAND controller, SD / MS card reader, two USB 2.0 OTG controller, a Fast Ethernet controller. (The great shame that T13FHD do not use the Ethernet controller) Main CPU (ARC750D) has MMU, so it can support high-level operating systems, like Liunx. Amlogic has AMRISC video processing core, the integration of a number of video optimization technologies, including dynamic brightness adjustment, dynamic contrast control, intelligent image calibration technology, motion compensation technology at the same time. (Pictures of chipsets are from IMP3, IMP3 BBS and from Pconline)

Ramos T13FHD (like T17FHD) uses Silicon Image SiI9022A HDMI output chips. Silicon Image chipset has certification of HDMI Authorized Testing Center (ATC). Similar products on the market, most with master chips integrated into the HDMI rather than an independent chip to reduce costs, while T13FHD use Silicon Image SiI9022A HDMI output chip and compatibility better than similar products. But my Ainol V9000HDA and my Cube H900HD with SoChip SC9800 provide better HDMI quality, than my Ramos with current firmware. I hope Ramos will improve it.

It uses the 42L52CNZ Audio DAC from the Cirrus Logic, IPOD Classic also uses the company's DAC. The sound output of Ramos T13FHD is very good.

T13FHD has 64MB 400Mhz DDR SDRAM cache chip (Nanya) The CAS latency is 3-3-3, the working voltage of 2.5V.

T13FHD has two 4Gbyte Micron flash memory chips.

Ramos uses 3.7V 2200 mAh lithium polymer battery with power management module. Battery has high capacity, but hungry of Ramos - with multi-chips design- is bigger than Sochip SC9800. Ainol V9000HDA provides more movie playing time with smaller battery, than T13FHD. But do not have to afraid. I was playing video files 3h 25 minutes. Full charging time about 3 and half hours with AC adapter.

T13FHD has 5 inch, 800x480 pixel, 16 million colors LCD display. T13FHD screen modules are divided into three layers: resistive touch sensor layer, solid glass layer, and the last the liquid crystal display panel.

The colors of display is good, but viewing angles are average. It is good from up, and from side, but poor from bottom. We can set the brightness of screen at 5 levels. But it's my opinion the brightness is enough only indoor environment. I did not see any on screen in sunlight.

Continue on the next topic...

**kenand** · 05-09-2010 05:56 PM

The user interface
(Some user interface pictures from IMP3 BBS)

Ainol T13FHD has eye catching user interface. There is a transparent Quick Launch Bar at the left side of screen. We can start Quick sound player, Quick picture viewer, Calendar, and Watch from here only with one click. We can hide Quick Launch Bar if We want it. There are OSX like transparent Dashboard with Icons at the bottom of screen. There is not enough place for all Icons. We had to push them to left or right to see all. We can hide Dashboard also.The is battery indicator at the upper right corner on the screen. Player is changing background pictures continuously.

Music Icon

Ramos can play MP3, WMA, WAV, RM, OGG, AAC, M4A、FLAC、APE files. Sound quality is very well with good quality earphones. We can chose files from file browser.
There is a status bar the top of the screen with current time and with battery indicator. There are desktop icon and back icon below the status bar. We can scroll files with gently push them. We can launch music player with click one file.

There is a transparent dashboard at the bottom of the screen. There are controller icon (three dot) at the right side. We can set playing mode (all/one) and set EQ settings. The player has 4 EQ settings: Normal/Classic/Pop/Jazz). There is not manual Equalizer. (Rockchip player have it). We can set the power of sound from 0-32 with clicking to sound icon or with control buttons. We can fast forward within audio files with grabbing the indicator dot. There are the name of the file, the name of the singer, the name of the album and album arts at the middle of the screen. It's great shame but Ramos T13FHD do not support sound library.

Ramos T13FHD plays lyric files automatically.

There are one suggestion to Ramos for Next firmware update. When I hearing music I'm turning off screen for less power consumption. (Short puss power on/off button). Ramos turn off screen, but touch screen is remaining active, and If I accidentally touch screen, the LCD screen turn on automatically. What about I put player into my pocket... LCD screen will turn on. Ainol V9000HDA works better, If I turn out screen, I can turn on only with button.

Movie Icon

The T13FHDcan play MKV, RMVB, AVI, MOV, MPG, MPEG, DAT, MOV, MP4, TS,VOB, ASF, M2V, has support H264, Divix/Xvid, MPEG1 and 2 codecs. Do not support WMV files. It handles Full HD movie files up to 1080p resolution. I recognized some baulking with 1080p playback. ( Not always and not all files)1080p playback is enjoyable, but is not so smooth than with SC9800 or TC8901 players. T13FHD has support many subtitle formats: SMI, ASS, SSA, SRT, SUB, SUB.IDX. If your languages has special characters, you will be very happy with sub.idx raster/picture based subtitle format. We can well subtitles any languages with sub.idx. We need to convert srt to sub.idx with txt2vobsub.exe. Sochip and Telechip players can not handle special characters . Rockchip players support many code pages and displays srt subtitles well.

(Sub.idx subtitle with special Hungarian characters)

We can change subtitles tracks and audio tracks. Ramos support multi tracks AVI files, but changing audio track of avi files is very slow. Changing audio tracks of VOB files also a bit slow. Playing VOB has a bug with current firmware: player do not display subtitles of the VOB files and progress indicator is false. If we forward the video files we will hear changed audio track sooner. We can set brightness (from level 1 to 5), EQ settings, Audio track and zooming mode (Keep ratio/4:3/16:9/Original/Full Screen) with controller icon. MKV playing is perfect. I can play The Lord of the Rings 720p 11GB MKV file from my NTFS formatted USB HDD.

Photo Icon

T13FHD has photo browser with thumbnails. We can change within photos with track button, with track icon of dashboard or with simple push. (But the last one do not work every time, I do not know why).

We can play music while seeing pictures, we can rotate and zoom pictures with icon, but we can not iPod Touch like way with fingers. And zooming mode is very stupid. We see only center of the enlarged pictures, and we can not move then on the screen.This way of zooming is unusable.
(Work with firmware 3.9)
The player knows many dazzling transitions. We can start photo playback with transitions.

Flash Icon

Ramos T13FHD can play simple flash applications. But few of them is written for touch screen operation.
Th Flash support is much better with firmware 3.9

Monkey game

Text Icon

Ramos has Ebook reader, but support only text files with current firmware. We can rotate text, change color and size of characters, playing music, adding bookmark and we can jump directly to the desired page.

File Icon

Simple file browser. We can launch necessary applications with simple click to files. If We click a file and hold down our fingers, file operation menu will display. We can copy and delete file.

Extras Icon

Player has basic Stop watch, Calendar, Calculator and Sound recorder. We also see this applications in Dashboard after the Settings Icon. Sound recorder saves files in wave format. We can add file name with virtual keyboard.

Continue on the next topic....

**kenand** · 05-09-2010 05:56 PM

Settings Icon

Settings menu has four pages. We can set the Output of the display, Brightness level and style of background in Display page.

We can set following output mode: HDMI 480p/720p/1080i/1080p YPBR 480i/480p/720p/1080i/1080p and CVBS NTSC/PAL.

We can set Sorting of files (by name/by date), Directory mode (on/off) and Resume play feature (on/off) in the Media page.
We can set date and time in the Time page.

We can set Language of menu (English or Chinese), some energy saving options (auto sleep LCD off etc), we can calibrate touch screen. We can update firmware in system update menu. Updating firmware is very intelligent. We need to put firmware files to main directory of internal memory, and start update in System configuration menu. We have not to use external applications like with Sochip or Rockchip players.

Memory cards

We can expand Ramos T13FHD memory with MicroSD cards. I examined my 8GB Kingston and no name MicroSD cards with Ramos. It's great shame but T13FHD do not support exFAT file system. If we need large files we must format to memory cards to NTFS file system.

OTG and USB speed

There is free OTG cable in the box, you had not to pay more. Ramos handles well my NTFS formatted 160GB HDD and my NTFS formatted Kingston memory stick. Memory reading speed enough to play 1080p h264 movies, but it is about the half than in the Sochip players.

T13FHD(access physical drive)

Read: 5.8 Mbyte/s
Write: 5.7 Mbyte/s

NTFS 8 GB SDHC Class 4 (access physical drive)
Read: 5.9 MB/s
Write: 5.8 MB/s

Ainol V9000HDA :

NAND
Read: 11.90 MB/s
Write: 10.93 MB/s

EXFAT 8 GB SDHC Class 4 (access physical or logical drive)

Read: 12.54 MB/s
Write: 11.52 MB/s

NTFS 8 GB SDHC Class 4 (access physical drive)
Read : 12.58 MB/s
Read: 11.52 MB/s

I will test TV output in the next review.....

Conclusion

Pros:
-dazzling design and user interface
-good built quality
-good touch screen
-convenient menu navigation
-very good sound quality with earphones
-video playback from previous stopping point
-component and HDMI TV out (I will test the next topic)
-remote
-1080p playback with very good mkv support
-support multiple text and audio tracks in the avi and mkv files
-sub.idx subtitle support: well subtitles in any languages
-Flash support
-NTFS file system
-support adio track change in AVI files (but changing is slow)

Cons:
-viewing angles of screen is average
-OTG/USB speed is average
-movie playing time is average
-do not display subtitle of vob files
-it can not move enlarged pictures on the screen work with firmware 3.9
-do not support vmw files
-there is not music library
-do not support exFAT
-Turned off LCD screen turn on automatically if I accidentally touch LCD screen (for example the PMP is on my pocket) I wish turning on only with button, this way provides more power consumption.)
- annoying bug: if Auto power off or auto sleep turned on player turn off while playing music or movie files! You must turn off this options with current firmware

If you would like dazzling player with good built quality, well subtitles in any language you must have this player.

**kenand** · 05-09-2010 05:57 PM

The TV output of Ramos T13FHD

Ramos T13FHD has support simple TV (PAL and NTSC) and HDTV signals. It has support analogue (component) and digital (HDMI) HDTV output. We must use the proper cable for the TV connection. We need additional audio cable for component connection. HDMI cable handles both audio and video signal. We can set the output in the Settings Icon/Display page/Output menu. We can find many options: HDMI 480p/720p/1080i/1080p YPBR 480i/480p/720p/1080i/1080p and CVBS NTSC/PAL. After We had chosen the proper output the LCD screen close. We must wait some seconds, because Ramos T13FHD player use different operating system for TV output mode. We must use a remote for the operation. Ramos (Amlogic) operating system for TV out designed for remote operation. The operating system is well designed. It looks very good, and looks like than operating system of setop box/ HDD media players.

TV output mode has eye catching interface.
We can chose devices from the top of the TV screen. (Internal memory/USB device/MicroSD card) There are large Icons at the middle of the screen: Movie, Photo, Music, Text, Flash and Settings.

TV out interface video, thank Azbest from Hungary

Movie Icon

Player lists movie files after clicking movie icon. We can launch movie playing with click the desired files. Player displays movie control dashboard if we click the menu button (M) on the remote .

We can change subtitles tracks and audio tracks, can set zooming/display mode (4:3, 16:9 etc.) and can zoom display up to 8 times. Dashboard displays audio the number of audio or subtitle tracks, and the progress of movie. We can control the movie playing: stop, pause, forward, backward, jump previous or next movie files.

Ramos displays enough big characters in the srt subtitles. Ramos(Amlogic) has support many code pages. It's great shame for me than has not support Central European code page, but with UTF-16_LE can display more special Hungarian characters than players with Sochip SC9800 or with TC8901.

T13FHD displays well subtitles with sub.idx We must set the size of characters of the sub.idx subtitle during the conversion.

We can change subtitle tracks or audio tracks only with one click to the proper buttons. The image quality is good both HDMI and component output. But there is a bug displaying logo with convex types. (types with arcs). The types are chewed. (Thanks Azbest for pictures). Amlogic display too smart pictures or has bug in anti-aliasing algorithm.

Photo Icon

We can see our favorite pictures on the large TV screen.

We can start photo playback with transitions and music. Player can rotate and zoom and pictures. We can set display modes (4:3, 16:9 etc.)

Audio Icon

We can play audio files through well designed interface.

Flash Icon

Player can play Flash animations but we can not control them with remote.

Text Icon

We can read text files. We can rotate text, change color and size of characters, playing music.

Settings Icon

Player has very detailed settings menu.

We can set listing types of movie files( List/Thumbnails), type of sorting (By file name/by date), directory mode (on/off), repeat mode (on/off), the size of characters in subtitles (small/medium/big), code page (default, UTF-16-LE/UTF-8/Simplified Chinese/Traditional Chinese/Western languages) type of the display mode (Original/ Full screen/Keep ratio)

Ramos has very good quality operating system for the TV output mode. I hope Ramos (Amlogic?) will remove the bug in next firmware and put Central European code page support.

The Hungarian version of review