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Genica Kalua MP3/CD/DVD Player Review
By Kelly Lu - May 22, 2001
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Over the last few years, we've seen a complete revolution in our home entertainment. The music that we listen to are not only being pulled from the aging technology of CD's, and the movies that we watch are no longer stored on VHS tapes. Instead, regular consumers are now able to take advantage of digital music coming straight from their personal computers and watch movies with theatre picture and theatre sound right from the comforts of their living room.
On one hand, MP3 technology has revolutionized the music scene by enabling the distribution of music, whether legally or illegally, between everyone who wishes to have them-and whenever they wish to have them. Capable of compressing something that would otherwise take up 50MB in size to about 4MB without noticeable loss in quality, MP3 technology enables music to be stored and distributed by the masses, easily and efficiently. This has allowed it to gain mass acceptance and popularity as it allows everyone to share music easily through mediums such as the Internet. Although many individuals and groups, such as the RIAA, have tried time and time again to suppress this technology, MP3 is here to stay.
On the other hand, DVD technology has brought the theatre home. Gone are the days of flickering screens and distorted music; in are the days of crisp, clear images and powerful surround sound. DVD's use the same optical technology as CD's, but at a much higher density, allowing it to store a whopping 8.5GB of data per side per disc with the same physical size of a CD. By harnessing this extra storage area, movies can be stored digitally at high resolutions along with digital music-with room to spare on the disc.
Applications of these technologies have been around for quite some time now. MP3 players utilizing solid state memory, rotating hard drives and even CD-R's have had some time to establish themselves while DVD's have been around for even longer, but we've only seen it become more and more widely accepted within the past few years. Nobody, however, has taken the chance to combine these two excellent technologies into one of their products-until now.
 Enter Genica. They're a company that has traditionally focused on developing products for all areas of computing and consumer electronics; from motherboards to sound cards to even cordless phones. Recently, however, they've taken a different approach to their product lines, shifting more towards the MP3 player market. They have a whole range of MP3 players, from ones which utilize hard drives to their Tavarua, one of the industry's first MP3/CD players. Today, however, we're going to focus more on MP3 players for the home-their Kalua, to be specific. As you might have guessed, the Kalua is a MP3 and DVD player.
Much like the Tavarua, the Kalua is able to play MP3 files that are burned onto CD-R's. Unlike the Tavarua, however, it can also play a whole assortment of other formats, most notably DVD and regular audio CD's, and is designed specifically for use at home with your TV set or, for those of us lucky ones, home theatre systems. What does this have to do with your computer, you ask? Well, the ability to play MP3's that are burned onto CD-R's that come directly from your computer makes this a perfect complement to your CD-burner and MP3 collection-if it works as well as it claims.
 On to: Specifications
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