Introduction

The Lyra RD2780 A/V Jukebox is exactly that, an Audio / Video Jukebox. While it may not be a Pocket PC, the Pocket PC community will want to take a look. It has 3 primary functions: recording and playing audio, recording and playing video, and viewing photos. Aside from that, the Lyra is a capable storage device with its USB 2.0 interface, 20GB hard drive and sync software.

What's In The Box

Lyra RD2780 A/V Jukebox AC Power Cable DC Car Adapter 1/8th inch Tape Adapter 2 A/V RCA Cables Carrying Case Driver CD Earbuds USB 2.0 Cable

The controls on the Lyra are a bit confusing at first, but with use because almost natural, almost. On the front of the Lyra there are two thumb stick controls with up, down, left, right and push functionality. One is designed for playback (play/pause, rewind, fast-forward, +/-). The other is designed for menu navigation (up, down, left, right, select). The top of the Lyra has the volume control, record button and the power/stop button, while the bottom has a switch (Lock Controls/LCD/Video Out) and a reset hole. Finally, on the left side, is the menu button.
Menu navigation is pretty straight-forward, though using the menu button on the left to back out of menu selections is cumbersome. Furthermore, the thumb sticks tend to register a push as a left or right command if the user is not careful.
Combining the power button with the stop button isn’t a horrible idea, but an extra button wouldn’t have hurt the design. Overall, the controls are pretty easy to use, and the menu navigation is not horrible.
The Lyra is a well built and sturdy device. The casing is brushed aluminum, with a glass plate on the front for the LCD viewer. This is certainly better and more scratch resistant than its competitor’s solutions.

Audio

As an MP3 player, the Lyra delivers options that consumers have come to expect. It supports MP3, MP3pro and WMA for playback, and user playlists can be created on the device itself or transferred from a PC. Music selection is available by artist, album, genre, etc. just like one would expect. Furthermore, file browsing will allow any supported file to be played.
The line-in port and included cable allows the device to record MP3 audio from any source with RCA jacks on the back. I have plugged the Lyra into my home stereo and recorded live radio, CDs, and streaming audio with no problems at all.
	While there is no built in speaker on the device, there are several choices for listening to music on the Lyra. The included ear-buds are decent, though most audiophiles will prefer to use their own headsets. Either way, the Lyra has a standard 1/8th inch port on its right side. For the car, there is an included tape adapter, which at first surprised me as being generous of the manufacturer. What I soon discovered was that it has a mini-plug adapter and is designed to be used with the line-out port, not the headphone port. The benefit to this, which is immediately noticeable, is the quality of audio delivered in this fashion. It far exceeds any PDA style device I have used in the past. Beyond that, there is always the included A/V out adapter, which can be plugged into any stereo device that supports standard RCA cabling.

Video

Having a Lyra is like putting a digital VCR in your pocket; I just don’t know how else to describe it. It is touted as an A/V jukebox, but there is more to it than just that.
There are line-in and line-out ports on the device. Using the included cables, it is very easy to hook it up to any video source and record videos. This includes a laptop if it has video-out capability. To make things just a bit better, it is configurable in its setup menu to either NTSC or PAL. Recordings are stored in MPEG-4 format wrapped in a .asf file, so they are playable in Windows Media Player on a PC. Specifically, the files have a video resolution of 320x240, 1293kbps bit rate, 24 bit sample rate. Audio sampling is at 32khz, 1448kbps bit rate, stereo. These specifications are for high-quality, the Lyra also has a low and medium quality setting for video recording.
	As a test, I hooked up the Lyra to my stereo’s video ports, both in and out, set it to TV-OUT mode, and recorded an episode of Futurama. Because it has in and out ports, I was able to use it as a pass-through, much like a VCR, so I could watch the TV while it recorded. A sample of this recording is available here (aprox 3mb). Be advised that the recording was brought into Windows Movie Maker so I could trim out just the section I wanted, so the file is now in .wmv format and has a slightly lower quality.
Playback works the same as audio does. You can watch videos on the device with headphones, or run it through a TV. Either way, the quality is quite good and the playback is smooth.

Photo

I have to confess that it is photography that actually led me to the Lyra in the first place. I was looking for a portable, rechargeable storage device with a CF slot on it. I started looking at devices with just a hard drive, and wound up looking at devices with view screens as well. In the photography world, devices like the Flashtrax and PicturePAD rule the day. Fortunately, a trip to BestBuy got me looking outside the norm for a solution.
From the main menu, the user can select the ‘photo’ option and then select a picture or folder to view. The setup screen is accessible to turn on and turn off the slideshow, and the play/pause thumb stick is usable for flipping through photos as well. Thankfully, sharing photos with your friends and family is simple with the included TV Out port, and picture quality on a TV is far better than anything you are going to see coming from a computer or any of the aforementioned devices. On the road or at home, the built in LCD screen is more than adequate to check for proper exposure or to review the quality of your pictures.
	It takes the Lyra about 4 seconds to display a picture taken from my Canon Digital Rebel at the highest resolution JPG format. These files tend to be about 4.5MB in size and have a resolution of 3072x2048. Pushing the ‘menu’ button brings up zoom control, screen settings (some of which are disabled), and a link to the setup menu. In practical use I was able to review pictures from the stands of a basketball game to see if my shutter speed was adequate to eliminate blurring.
Keeping in mind the initial purpose of the purchase, I have to scrutinize the Compact Flash slot. The first thing that springs to mind is that it is Type I only, so micro drives are not usable. This, to me, is not a big deal, since I only have Type I cards. If you consider that a high-speed 512MB card costs about $220, spending less than $400 for this device is well worth it, since one can transfer the pictures to the device and then re-use the card while on the road. Transfer speed from the CF Type I slot to the device is not terribly fast. In a simple test, I copied 160MB worth of photos from the card to the device, and it took a full 6 minutes. That is about 2.25 seconds per MB. I am sure this is a software issue and not a hardware issue, but that is only conjecture. We will have to wait to see if RCA can update the firmware to increase the speed.

As a Portable Storage Device

The Lyra is packed with 20GB of storage, has USB 2.0 connectivity and synchronization software. As a result, it is a good solution for those looking for a portable storage device with some extra features. When connected to a Windows XP machine, the Lyra shows up as 2 removable drives. One is obviously the internal drive, the other is the CF Type I slot. From Windows Explorer, it is simply a matter of drag and drop. RCA provides support on the included CD for 98, ME, 2000, XP and Mac OS. Music Match is a good way to put mp3’s on the device. Your OS’s file viewer is fine for pretty much everything else, but some might want a bit more. In this case there is the Lyra Sync tool included on the CD. It allows the user to synchronize a list of folders on a PC to associated folders on a Lyra. A basic feature set is provided consisting of PC overwrites Lyra, Lyra overwrites PC, and Sync. I decided to sync the My Documents folder with the Lyra to get an idea of how well it worked. For approximately 1.3GB of data, it took the sync tool about 2 minutes to synchronize. What I did find was that after deleting information from my desktop, it still appeared on my Lyra. A future sync put the files back on my computer. This would be fine, but I had it set to PC always overwrites Lyra. So I was a bit surprised.

General Use and Setup

It takes the Lyra about 4 - 7 seconds to boot. Menu navigation is quick, but depending on the number of files in a particular folder, it may take several seconds for the device to list its contents. Suprisingly, the Lyra is a quiet and cool device. Hours of use produced little noticeable heat, in fact I am not sure if the heat was from the device or the ambient temperature. There is a little vibration from the hard drive, but it is negligible, and unless you hold it up to your ear you can’t hear it spinning. The setup menu provides a host of functions ranging from screen brightness and color to audio equalization. However, at the time of this writing, most of these functions are disabled. When you try to select them, a little message pops up telling you to visit http://www.rca.com/lyra-avdownloads. The latest Firmware is version 0.16.03, not exactly something you would expect for a consumer device. It was released on February 25th, about a month after the previous version. This is, at least, indicative of continuing and up to date support by RCA. One can only hope that they will continue this trend.

Software

The Lyra comes packaged with drivers, MusicMatch plus a plug-in for the device, ID3man, Mood Logic, and some links to online music services with free trials. Mood Logic and ID3man are services more than software and cost to use. ID3man will update your ID3 tags automatically, and Mood Logic will provide you with playlist based on tempo and genre. The online services are both subscription based, one of which has hardly any popular music, the other costs $9.95 a month for use. On the upside, MusicMatch with the plug-in is a great piece of software for those currently using free-ware to rip and name their CDs. It is a full version, not a demo, and can rip, play music, organize playlist and transfer profiled music to the Lyra. A “pro” version is available as an upgrade, that provides faster ripping as well as CD burning functions. On Windows based machines, there is a Lyra tray application that provides access to the sync software, an application to update the firmware, and a profiling utilitiy. Profiling music allows the Lyra to recognize music by genre, album, artist and title. Lyra DJ, available here, is a free download from RCA that profiles music by acoustic properties and creates playlists of similar music. Sounds a lot like Mood Logic, but it’s free.

Battery Life

In typical use, the Lyra is capable of 15 hours of MP3 playback. I looped a video on the Lyra to see how long it would play for before the battery died, assuming that video playback would be the most intensive drain on power. The Lyra lasted about 5 hours on a full charge until it shut off. Just to see what would happen, I turned it back on and looped the video again. It finally shut off again about 20 minutes later. As a more practical experiment, I brought the Lyra to work with me for a week. I listened to MP3s in my car on the way to and from work. I synced my “My Documents” folder twice a day, and moved files to and from it with my PC. To stress the device, I also showed some video clips to my co-workers. Additionally, I would take some pictures with my camera, transfer them to the Lyra via the CF slot, and review them for quality. Each night, I would recharge the device. In this experiment, the device would always show the battery icon as red, indicating that it was low on power. However, it never powered down due to dead batteries in my test.

Conclusions

The Lyra is a fantasic little device, but it is not without flaws. The firmware should be much further along than it is, and I am still a bit dismayed by the fact that there are menu options that prompt you to check for a new version to use them. File management is decent and similar to all folder/file based operating systems. I would like to see the ability to rename files and folders from within the device. Putting down $400 for a handheld device is something that most PDA owners can relate to. Typically, there is a lot of research done into what capabilities the device provides. In this regard, the Lyra really delivers, much to the surprise of this reviewer. I expected to get a nice portable drive for my pictures that I might use to listen to music as well. What I ended up with is a great tool for recording TV and Movies, listening to MP3s, transporting my important data and keeping my pictures archived. The only thing missing, now that I think of it, is an e-book reader. Maybe someone from RCA will read this and put one in the next firmware update.
You can check for firmware updates here.
You can get the user’s guide here.
You can get Lyra DJ here.
View my sample video recording here (3mb)
All screenshots from the Lyra User's Guide.