Customer Reviews
Unhappy user 
2006-09-12
I have received 3 replacement units so far since I received my first unit in January. Not one of these lasted longer than 3 weeks and each stopped working completely for different reasons. The 1st time the power button wouldn't work each time. The 2nd time, the unit froze with the vol icon stuck on the display and nothing worked. This last time, the unit turns on with snow on the screen and no response. Up until this last time, Mustek customer service reponded promptly. This last time I guess they don't want to deal with me as 3 emails and no response. They may have returned my call, but the person couldn't speak English or even speak clearly in whatever.
* Don't buy this no matter how good the specs.
Supported card sizes 
2006-07-09
Just in case anyone is interested I have tried a 2Gig card with my PVR-A1 and it seems to work fine and sees all 2Gig of it (Am now wondering if it would be happy with the 4Gig cards starting to arrive on the market) Also the 150x card solves alot of the other problems described in these reviews, i.e. choppy songs and delayed sound on video.
Solution to out of sync video 2006-06-23
Responding to this comment:
"This item was terrible the songs would sound very choppy, when you played the video the words would come way after the lips ended moving."
I too had the problem of poor lip sync. I solved the problem by only using high speed memory cards.
If you have problems with poor lip sync the card you are using is probably too slow.
Terrible Terrible Terrible Save your money and buy something better 2006-03-08
This item was terrible the songs would sound very choppy, when you played the video the words would come way after the lips ended moving. I suggest you get something name brand for maybe 20 or thirty dollars more. Maybe a Samsung mp3 video player i bought one shortly after way way better.
Nice little gadget 
2005-12-14
I would have rated it 5 stars if it can do a little bit more. But for the price, this is what we will get. Here are some of the pros and cons:
Pros:
1. Get audio, video and photo players for as little as $100.
2. The quality of playback is good.
3. Small speaker that is good.
Cons:
1. Bad document.
2. Cannot convert video files other than AVI even though they say it can do.
4. Cannot create play list.
5. Can display just 8 characters of songs.
Some of the customers have mentioned here that they cannot use the convertor software without connecting the PVR. What I found is if the PVR is not connected, it will display an error message. If we press OK, it will say that the media will be stored in a temporary directory which we can download it later.
Another thing is only for video we need the convertor software for audio and photos we can directly copy using the disk drive mode. I usually copy to the SD card directly using my card reader which I found is much faster.
Stopped working 
2008-02-15
I purchased this for my son, he loved it. We didn't use it often, just when we traveled. We had it 1 year and 1 month when it died. The screen wouldn't come on anymore,however the buttons lit up,but then it would not power off, we had to remove the battery. If I had known this item would not have a long life, I would have spent a little more and got a better device.
Mustek PVR-A1 - Obsolete and Unreliable (Replacement Battery) 2008-01-29
I purchased the first PVR-A1 a couple years ago and the feature/price ratio is pretty good.
I purchased one for our on hold music at work. This was one of the few MP3 players that I could find that would accept an external power supply and had an SD Card Slot. I've used up to a 2 G SD Card in the unit without problems. I was disappointed that there was no function to shuffle (randomly play) the MP3s and to continuously loop through the songs. I purchased one for myself and for my Mom (a total of three by now) who lives quite a distance away. This was for digital picture viewer.
The one I purchased for Mom quit working. I'm not sure exactly when because she's not very technically literate. She was telling me over the phone that she couldn't get it to work right -- well it would not come on at all. The next time I visited, I switch with Mom. I contacted Mustek and they replaced the defective unit. This last Christmas I was at my Mom's and I was trying to use the PVR-A1 that I had and it would not work -- It's out of warranty now. I purchased another PVR-A1 (now that's # 4) so I can creat SD Memory cards with pictures on them for my Mom.
Now the battery in the one at work went bad. It was actually bloated slightly. I found a place to get a replacement battery: Battery sku: CS-NP60FU at Infinity Batteries. I had to wait a long time to get these batteries. The first order got lost on its way from Korea.
When I received the battery it worked but I didn't have the power adapter. I used the player until battery went dead. I plugged the PVR-A1 into the charger the next day. After charging it the PVR-A1 will not come on. When you press the power button the blue light comes on but nothing else happens. It seems like it's frozen. I called Mustek and they said that the unit is bad which I find hard to believe since it worked when I received the battery. Since it's out of warranty they are not going to help me with the unit at all.
I think that the tech support person was from India. I had a hard time understanding him. He asked me if I had the power supply plugged into the "Wall Outlet" and I thought he was saying "Vol Outlet" which I thought he meant the headset jack on the PVR-A1 unit.
Any way -- I wouldn't recommend this unit for two reasons: 1 - I've purchased four of them and had two of them go bad. 2 - You cannot find any information about them and Mustek does not even have a category on their customer support page for "Media Player". I think that they've gotten out of producing and supporting media players.
I'm generally unhappy with a company that has tech support oversees and hires individuals who cannot speak good english but almost all of the technical companies (companies producing hi-tech items like media players) are doing that.
bought it 5 years ago....... 
2007-08-29
yeah, i bought this a while ago.... im just online right now bored, so im writting reviews on stuff because i never do that for the things i buy... well, first off i dont use it anymore.... cuz i have a zune! its coool!
but, anyways from what i remember, it was before the ipod video came it, and all my friends were so impressed with the mustek player! t was light some type of james bond thing... it play videos, pics, music.... everything.. and they were all good quality! mine did break once, but i sent it in with my warrenty thing, and in a month they sent me a new one.
recording movies and tv and playing them right away was sooo easy and fun, it didnt cost money to buy them online.
bad things i remembered.... the scoller thing is on the side is stupid... i mean it works, but its just dumb. when you recorded something, there was some type of fuzzy line way at the top of the screen, it was weird, but very easy to ignore... the game it comes with is stupid, tic tac toe with a computer that is mental retarded.
i gave it 5 stars because it was great and fun and high tec a few years ago.... dont get me wrong, i would still use it now if i wanted, it still works... but if i rated it this year i would give it a 3. but this is a good buy for those who want to record direcly off the tv and put it into your ipod or zune.... no conversion needed, just drag and drop! good idea!
lies 2006-12-07
this product does not work in video mode with a mac. you can spend the 15+ hours trying to convert the horrible video over to the mac, but good luck. in the end, you'll want to throw it all away.
just ok 2006-11-06
I bought this mostly for the video playback. The conversion program does a TERRIBLE job of converting videos to the format the player can play...it is choppy and with lots of pixelation...At first I thought something was wrong with the device, but then I recorded a show from TV directly with the device and it had really good quality...so I know now the conversion software is the problem. It really sucks! I tried converting using software I normally use to create ASF files, but it won't play anything unless it is converted by its own conversion program. Even though the price is good, pass on this one...
Oh and another thing...I also have a Mustek Camera/camcorder which records video as ASF files, but this Mustek player won't play the videos recorded by the Mustek camera! That's really sad...doesn't say much for this company.
