09 MAY 2005

Giga Vu Pro from JOBO

A Digital Photographer’s Best Mate

The Giga Vu Pro is a bit hard to classify: its intended purpose is for downloading digital pictures straight from your camera’s CompactFlash card to its hard drive and to do that job fast. Of course, you need to be able to view what you’re doing and edit, annotate and direct print your images. So it does that too.

Throw in MP3 playing capabilities and being able to watch movies and you’ve got a decent PMP. But a Doom game console that looks like a Gizmondo unit??

With that Linux 2.4 kernel the Giga Vu Pro is capable of all this and much more. If you’re in the market for something like an Epson P-2000 you would do well to check out the Giga Vu Pro.

Let’s have a look at some of the highlights.

First up: it’s not hard to realize the lineage of the JOBO Giga Vu Pro (try saying that a few times fast!). JOBO Fototechnik AG has a good name in the photography business with their 8 decades (!) in the field. When I started out with my first serious forays into photography, more than 30 years ago, JOBO was a name every professional was familiar with.

The need for quickly downloading your multi-megapixel images to a computer or other hard drive device has been around for some time. That has been the case ever since digital cameras came on the scene and flash cards were just 4 or 16MB. Now, a Gigabyte card is a good start but fill it up with RAW data from an 8MP camera and you fill up your flashcard just as quickly.

So what’s the solution? Either carry more flashcards or offload the images to a hard drive. But what if you don’t want to carry a laptop around on your treks?

Here’s a solution: the Giga Vu Pro will store 40 or 60GB worth of images, data, music or video. And as indicated above, the Giga Vu Pro is much more than just an external hard drive as you can view and edit your shots, check the histograms on its 3.8” touch screen and Wi-Fi them across. Yes, the Giga Vu Pro is also Wi-Fi capable via an optional CF Wi-Fi card.

Since we’re tossing a few specs around let’s give you a fuller picture.

The Giga Vu Pro has a 400 MHz Intel PXA255 XScale processor with a QVGA (320 x 240 pixel) 3.8-inch touch screen LCD, CompactFlash slot, USB 2.0 and generic USB client connection, built-in speaker, audio output, TV output (PAL/NTSC selectable), joystick, and soft buttons. It can decode and display JPEG, TIFF, and RAW formatted photos. As a bonus it can play MP3 audio files and MPEG1/2/4 and DivX3/4/5 video files.

Just a quick note on the physical dimensions: here’s a shot comparing it with my trusty iPAQ 4700. Dimensions are: 5.7" x 4.2" x 1.5" and weighs 14.8 ounces. That’s 420 grams and 145 x 107 x 38 mm for the (milli)metrically inclined… The Giga Vu Pro comes with an internal, rechargeable 2200 mAh battery.

The battery seems ample until you realise it has to power a big hard drive so don’t expect much more endurance beyond the 2 hour mark (see also the photo of the spare battery option).

If you like to do direct printing you’ll be happy with the support for PictBridge.

Doom, not gloom…

What’s this story about the Giga Vu Pro also moonlighting as a Doom console?

Well, I have not checked this out myself but some folks have discovered that the embedded computer of the Giga Vu Pro runs a Linux 2.4 kernel, giving it a much broader appeal. A free software development kit for the device is available at www.sourceforge.net  along with instructions for loading software into flash memory, plus a tutorial on turning the device into a Doom game console. Folks are also encouraged to share their applications…

But, more importantly, how does the Giga Vu Pro work for its core purpose?

If you have a camera that has a CF flash card, simply insert it (or another type card into a CF adapter) in the CF slot of the unit. Images are being loaded automatically and fast. A 6MP JPG image can be decoded in less than a second.

That sort of speed makes it eminently suitable for its main business. Important is also that RAW images can be handled from most popular cameras at these same speeds.

The copy process starts as soon as a card is inserted. Thumbnails and file names of the copied files are shown and when the transfer is done you’re prompted for a Verify action. Typically, a 1Gig card can be copied in about 12-13 minutes with the Verify doubling that time.

Half a Gig worth of backup stuff (mix of text documents and pictures) took me about 10 minutes with some bitmap images for some reason taking much longer than I expected – around 10 secs each).

The Giga Vu Pro feels like a solid unit because it is.

At the same time, being solidly built and looking pretty inspires confidence that your precious pictures are in good hands. The Q(uarter)VGA screen is adequate but once you’ve been using a VGA screen with four times the resolution as on my iPAQ 4700 you’re spoilt and would like to see a brilliant display like that on all devices. Matter of time and money, I suppose.

Let’s talk about the touch screen for a moment.

I was pecking away at the screen to no avail – not having read the manual yet.

I had expected the touch screen feature to be available in all screen modes -- just like on a PocketPC but it is only active in the data management mode (and also when you touch the screen the backlight turns on again after it dimmed to save power).

So, it’s not a big deal as the softkeys and joy stick are easy enough to use. Apparently, the folks at JOBO surmised that it would be safer to protect the images against unintended touch-ups by not activating the touch screen for normal modes. I can live with that.

A final note on layout: the softkeys are a bit too recessed for my liking and I also would like to have clear labelling on the various ports. There is, for instance, a USB 2.0 port for connecting to a PC and a USB client for connecting to printers. Which is which?

There are also two similar audio jacks but one of them also supports Video Out…

Overall impression

The unit is a solid chunk of European design.

A touch on the heavy side perhaps with a rubber cover that protects the front. This cover has an excellent fit for the front but a bit sloppy for the back where it is supposed to reside when you’re using the Giga Vu Pro. I quite like the use of softkeys that change function depending on the menu you’re in. The joystick is also very well-placed and comfortable to use. I noticed that the newly announced Nokia 7710 also has the joystick in the same location.

The battery live is adequate for its core use but if you start watching movies or listen to music don’t wonder too far from a power point!

The screen is good but not overly brilliant. A VGA resolution would have been really nice and I just wonder how much extra it would have cost?

Again: testing it out in the various modes gave me the impression that the unit was well-thought out, nicely implemented and a pleasure to work with in daily operations.

Is the Giga Vu Pro worthwhile to invest in? If you are an ardent photographer it is absolutely essential to be able to back up your images to a hard drive.

The extra features make it nice to use it for other things as well and to show off.

The current pricing ensures that this is not going to be a device that will be snapped up by the masses. Again, JOBO is clearly aiming at professionals with the Giga Vu Pro.

The unit is priced around the US$550 mark (or just under $600 with a 60GB drive) and available from premier photography shops in Europe and the USA whilst they are actively looking for distributors in places like Australia.