Personal Media Player (PMP)

SanDisk ‘Connect’ With Yahoo For Wi-Fi Music Service
Flash memory maestros Sandisk have announced that they’re hooking up with Yahoo Music Unlimited To Go to provide a service that lets music fans fuel up their music players wirelessly.
After connecting the Sansa Connect media player to the Internet via Wi-Fi, users will be able to listen to LAUNCHcast Internet radio, rummage through Flickr photos and check out what Yahoo Messenger friends and nearby Sansa Connect owners are grooving to.
Meandering music fans will also be able to access Yahoo’s free music services or connect to Yahoo Music Unlimited To Go subscription service to download tunes to their players, without the need to connect it to their home PCs.
“We see this as a very strong partnership with Yahoo,” purred top SanDisk marketing bod Eric Bone, adding that he saw his company progressing from “fast-follower mode to a technical-leadership mode” in a market still dominated by the ubiquitous iPod.
The attractive 4-gigabyte palm sized player comes with a bright 2.2″ screen, a tactile scroll wheel, a microSD slot and a built in mono speaker for sharing the music with (quiet) friends. There’s also a slightly strange looking stubby antennae for the wireless connectivity.
As well as wirelessly connecting to Yahoo’s Music service, the Connect supports MP3s and DRM WMAs provided by other services like Rhapsody, but you’ll have to get out Ye Olde cable to transfer the music from your desktop.
The Sansa Connect is set to retail for around $250 in the States. We haven’t heard any news about UK pricing/release dates yet.
It looks like it’s a beauty and we’re looking forward to getting out hands on it.
SanDisk Sansa Connect MP3 Player
10 April, 2007
Creative Slim Down Vision M and W MP3 Players
In the highly competitive MP3 player market, every single ounce of extraneous lard could result in lost sales, so Creative’s boffins in Japan have been working hard to slim down their popular Zen players.
Fresh outta hi-tech Fat Farm, the new Zen Vision M and W models have managed to reduce their bulk by 15% on previous versions while wedging in a bigger hard disk.
Vision M
Looking at the vital statistics, the Creative Zen Vision M measures up at a pocket pleasing 62x104x19mm (slimmed down from 22.1-mm to 19mm.)
The rather desirable little fella weighs in at a light as heck 170g (and that includes the battery) and comes with a 2.5 inch colour screen.
Despite its featherweight form, the device manages to pack in a fairly generous 60GB of storage, which should be enough to keep punters entertained on all but the longest journeys (British Rail delays notwithstanding).
Vision W
The Zen Vision W has also spent time on the juddery slimming belt machine, and now comes in a 134x75x22mm package (slimmed down from 26.4mm to 22mm) and weighs 280g, including battery.
There’s also 60GB of onboard storage and a generous 4.3 inch display, although some may be wondering what happened to the 80GB and 100GB models.
When?
At the moment, there’s only been an announcement on the Creative Japan site, so it may take some time before us Brits can get our grubby hands on these puppies.
Source
13 March, 2007
iPods Integrated Into Planes
Apple have just announced that they have signed deals with six major airlines, offering the first seamless integration between iPod and the planes in-flight entertainment systems.
Starting mid 2007, Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM and United passengers will be able to charge their iPod while in the air, but more interestingly be able to watch the video held on their iPods on the seat-back monitor.
Beyond that, Panasonic Avionics Corporation is working with Apple to build it into other airlines
Comment
This is a great deal for Apple. Not only do they fix the problem with people running their batteries down during a flight, and possibly not having any juice when they land and continue their journey, but as they’ve got first mover advantage on this. It’s going to be significantly harder for another player to have their kit integrated in to the planes. There’s only so many connectors that the airlines can make available.
We asked Apple if it was an exclusive deal, thereby blocking out other media players, but at the time of going to press we hadn’t heard back.
For the passenger, surely the wise move would be just to provide a USB port and allow people to plug whichever device they have with them, and have the in-flight system decode the media file and play them back. Thereby not being locked to a make of player.
The only down side we can see for this is for the airlines, as they won’t be making money out of charging for films.
14 November, 2006
Roadbank HTMS 18800 DMB Navigator
Hyundai Telematic Korea have announced their way-posh Roadbank HTMS 18800 DMB navigator, an ultra slim, in-car navigation system with a hefty 7 inch touch screen.
Although only available in Korea (bah!), this little puppy should hopefully be paving the way for a new generation of multimedia navigation gadgets that will eventually get into the hot little paws of us technology starved Euro-types.
Back to the HTMS 18800, the unit comes with an electronic map which offers a realistic view of the roads and buildings as you cruise by, with an embedded Sirf III GPS module offering top notch GPS reception rate.
As well as offering navigation tools, the Roadbank comes stuffed with multimedia widgets, doubling up as a high end media console with support for movie playback formats like WMV9, MPEG-1/2/4, DivX, Xvi and H.264. It can also display digital photos too.
There’s a music player in there as well offering MP3 support, and if all that wasn’t enough, the thing can play live TV using T-DMB.
The Roadbank HTMS 18800 DMB runs on Windows CE 5.0 and comes with 64 MB of Nand Flash with a SD card slot providing memory expansion options.
As we said, it’s a Korea-only release, so we’ll have make do with an iPod, a compass and some Ordnance Survey maps in the meantime. Aving.net
13 September, 2006
Samsung SCH-B470 Offers Picture In Picture DMB
Yet more proof that Koreans are spoilt rotten when it comes to having the very latest must-have mobile gadgets comes in the form of Samsung’s brand new phone – displayed, as ever, by scantily clad models.
OK, the Samsung looks a bit weird with its ET-like swivelling head, but – check out this out – not only does it boast Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB), but it’s got Picture in Picture too!
Perfect for those with an attention span that can only be measured in milliseconds, the SCH-B470 lets TV-mad users view two channels at the same time via a split screen, just like your big TV at home.
The chunky black clamshell phone also lets users switch between having a small Picture in Picture (PiP) display showing the secondary channel or splitting the display in half, with the two selected channels sharing the total viewing area.
Naturally, users can also elect to fill the screen with just the one channel for fuddy-duddy, old-school types who are satisfied with just one channel playing simultaneously.
It’s not all endless fun for tech-savvy Koreans though, as there’s only twelve S-DMB channels currently available.
More features
As well as the way cool PiP TV modes, the SCH-B470 comes with a swivelling 2 megapixel camera, an MP3 player, a flip out and rotate 2.2-inch LCD screen and some sort of ‘pet’ game to entertain users when there’s nowt on the telly.
With all that cutting edge technology stuffed inside, it’s no surprise that the phone comes with a hefty price tag, expected to hover around the 700,000 KRW ($728, £384) mark.
Samsung Korea
What’s DMB?
16 August, 2006
Portable Media Players Hit US Consciousness
Recent research shows that US consumers are becoming more aware of Portable Media Players (PMPs), devices that can play video as well as music. Over 75% of 1,099 people polled were aware of PMPs.
The iPod video is picked out as the device that raised general awareness of the PMP, despite many not classifying it as a true PMP.
In-Stat estimates that the worldwide market for true, video-centric PMPs will grow to 5 million units by the end of 2006, up from under half a million just two years ago.
Putting on her wise-head, In-Stat analyst, Stephanie Ethier said, “Despite the fact that PMP shipments are finally gaining traction, suppliers and manufacturers continue to face challenges. PMPs will continue to compete with other portable devices offering similar functionality, such as notebook computers, portable DVD players, handheld gaming products, and other mobile devices.”
Sony threw their hat into the PMP ring when they launched the Mylo earlier this week.
If you want to read the research in full, In-Stat will be more than happy to help you while taking $2,999 from you at the same time.
In-Stat
10 August, 2006
Daewoo Lucoms Releases UMPC Solo M1
Korean technology company Daewoo Lucoms, have unveiled their new ultra mobile PC Solo M1.
Coming hot on the heels of Samsung Q1, the ‘Solo M1’ UMPC handheld comes in tablet form, with a natty two-tone red and blakc finish and a 7-inch wide WVGA TFT screen.
Unless you’re in the habit of walking into the office donning clown’s trousers, you’re never going to be able to fit this thing in your pocket as it appears to be quite a hefty beast, with near-laptop dimensions at 25.5mm(W)x 114mm(D) x 25mm(H).
The 830g UMPC is powered by an Intel Celeron 900 Mhz CPU, running on MS Windows XP Tablet Edition and ships with 512MB of DDR2 400 memory (max 1GB) and a built in 30GB hard drive.
The Solo M1 features a variety of multimedia features, including video and music playback via Windows Media player, a DMB tuner, a 1.3 MP webcam for video conferencing and a 4-in-1 (MMC/ SDIO/ MS/ MS Pro) memory card reader.
Connectivity options include USB 2.0, Bluetooth V1.1 & V1.2 and Wi-Fi 802.11 B & G, with the unit’s cradle station offering S-Video out.
There’s also a range of optional accessories available, including a leather case, mini keyboard and external optical drive.
We’ve no idea yet about the crucial matter of battery life, but we can tell you that the Daewoo Lucoms Solo M1 UMPC is available in Korea for 998,000 KRW (~£570, ~$1,040) which seems pretty competitive.
But it’s still a chunky looking fella.
Daewoo Lucoms
18 July, 2006
SPH-B1300 DMB Phone From Samsung, Flipping ‘eck
More flexible than a Russian athlete in a vat of oil, Samsung’s double-flipping DMB phone offers a novel twist on the clamshell format.
Naturally, we’re talking about a Korea-only release at the moment, but Samsung’s SPH-B1300 looks an interesting number serving up a DMB handset that flips two ways. A bi-flip-sexual, if you will.
The Samsung can function like a regular clamshell phone, with the colour display viewed in portrait orientation, or, with a clever bit of flipology, the screen can shuffle around into a landscape format – ideal for watching TV and videos.
As well as the DMB functionality, the Samsung SPH-B1300 serves up the usual advanced mobile feature set, complete with a two megapixel digital camera and built-in MP3 player.
It looks like the handset will be taken up by KTF in Korea (DMB is huge in Samsung’s home country), although those waiting for a UK release may be in for a very, very, very long wait (think, “eternity”).
We can expect more details about the Samsung SPH-B1300 to be revealed at the CeBit 2006 show in Hannover next month.
Glossary:
DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) is a digital transmission system for sending data, radio and TV to mobile devices such as mobile phones.
Operating via satellite (S-DMB) or terrestrial (T-DMB) transmission, DMB is based on the Eureka 147 DAB standard and shares similarities with the competing mobile TV standard DVB-H.
Samsung
CeBit 2006
28 February, 2006
Curitel DMB PT-S160 MobileTV Phone Released
In a feast of digital convergence, Pantech & Curitel have announced the launch of their new multimedia-tastic PT-S160 phone.
We’re not sure of all the details (we’re helplessly fumbling around deep in foreign translations here), but the beefy-sized phone looks to be a good example of where digital convergence might be taking us.
With the technology letting mobile users watch terrestrial DMB TV and simultaneously natter away on their phones, Digital multimedia broadcasting could be one of the soarway hits of 2006.
The PT-S160 doubles up as a PMP (Portable Multimedia Player) and a satellite DMB receiver, with a sliding design only showing keys for DMB functions when closed.
Lurking underneath is the slide out keyboard with all the necessary keys for making calls.
The unit comes with stereo ‘3D live sound ‘speakers on the front side of the body with TV pictures viewed on a 2.4 inch 260k QVGA LCD (320×240) screen.
The screen can be switched between landscape and portrait formats.
Also onboard is an MP3 player, a 2 megapixel auto focus camera, T-flash memory slot and TV Out.
With the unit measuring 52.4x 107.5x 22.5 mm and weighing 139g, it’s a bit of a pocket bulger, but still pretty amazingly small considering the technology you’re getting.
The makers claim a talk time of 300 minutes and a hefty standby time of 300 hours (although we’ve no idea how long you’ll get when watching TV).
As ever, there’s no detail of when this product may be available in the UK, but we can dream.
Curitel
16 January, 2006