PMP Today

The Victor Lu XA-AW33 PMP has an ingress protection rating of IPX7 or in layman’s terms is water-proofed for your bathtub. It even has jellyfish-like bluish glitter to help you sleep while listening to music. Obviously, it isn’t a portable media player because it doesn’t have a screen and, presumable, no video file support as well. But this site in Chinese calls it a PMP/DAP sytem and it gave us an idea. Why not put a projector on this one so you can turn off the light and view a romantic film while you’re relaxing with your love one in the tub. Check out another picture after the break…
[via chaorock.blogspot] Read the rest »

The world’s favorite media player + phone is going to be available June 11, according the CNET News. It was as simple as CNET calling Cingular’s customer service (800-947-5096) where a helpful sales manager spilled the beans. A June 11 iPhone release makes sense for CNET, this being the day WWDC07’s (Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference) begins. Gizmodo, however, counters back skeptically that Apple only “releases stuff Tuesday.” My take on the matter? That sales manager at Cingular isn’t going to risk his job by giving out unconfirmed information, especially iPhone release dates. Not unless that information is official.

The iPhone is a multimedia device that combines a cellular phone, MP3 player, media player and a portable internet device. It also come with a 2MP camera and is exclusively available in the U.S. at Cingular

This is the newly released N95’s first TV ad in the U.S. and as you can see, it has a much improved cool factor in comparison with the “World in Your Hands” commercial, which is also posted here after the jump. One can surmise that either Nokia uses a different advertising firm in the U.S. or the advertising firm recognizes the need for less cheese if you want to sell it to Americans, as opposed to international consumers.

The N95 is a multimedia computer with a 5MP camera, WiFi, HSDPA and intergrated GPS. It’s a dual slider that slides one way for the phone features and the other for the multimedia features for playing music and videos. “It’s not a living thing, but if you feed it it can grow.”

Look at the Cheesy “World in Your Hands” Ad after the break… Read the rest »

American firm Haier is the maker of the Black Pearl MP3 Phone, one of the world’s most compact cellphones. Their new product, a Linux-OS WiFi portable media player has iPod form factor in a metal casing, which has improved from the smudge-prone stainless steel introduced in January. It’s got a QVGA LCD screen, 30GB of internal memory and Bluetooth for A2DP headphones. It’s coming out this Q2 and is priced at $249. The Haier PMP will be branded under the AOL name.

Haier features: MPEG-4, AVI, WMV 7/8/9 and H.264 for video; PlaysForSure WMA files, AACPlus, AACPlus Enhanced, WAV, and MP3 for audio; OTA capable; trackpad control.

More photos of the AOL Haier WiFi PMP after the break…

[via infosyncworld]

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It’s great to see that China is on the right path of increasing storage space on the new portable players from dinky 512MB or even 1GB. IMAX is putting out a player that will have 4GB internal flash memory, while keeping the SD card slot, so there will be plenty of space to play around with.In a pretty sleek metallic body is also a 2 megapixel CMOS camera, which can be also used as a webcam when the player is connected to your computer through USB2.0.

This PMP is pretty packed with features, check out more details and pics after the break… Read the rest »

Huaqi Information Technology Company, makers of the Aigo E828 2 GB MP4 player and the Aigo F335 30 GB MP4, is now a licensed music and movie distributor for their own line of PMP products.

Aigo players are also available throughout the world and have recently forecast a 20 per cent increase in its Russian market (Aigo’s newest portable media players can be purchased in the U.K. at this site.) The company also shows innovation through a recent release, the F029 Wristwatch PMP. It’s obvious that with a huge home support from China’s PMP market (by far the biggest in the world), Aigo is set to be a major global PMP player.

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The iRiver X20 first announced for the Japanese market is now available in the U.K. for £149 for the 8GB mode (2 GB and 4 GB models are also available) from this website. And excellent music player with video playback , the X20 supports AVI and WMV and plays videos 30fps, plays MP3, WMA, ASF and OGG audio files and also comes with an FM tuner built-in and a voice recorder.

iRiver X20 Specs in U.K. distribution:

• Innovative wheel-based menus
• QVGA Colour 2.2″ TFT-LCD
• Battery - 22 hours (music) 6 hours (video)
• MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG Q-10
• Micro SD-Card Slot
• FM Radio & FM Recording
• Photo viewer
• Movie Player
• Voice recording
• Direct Encoding & Line-in
• USB 2.0, Ultra fast data transfer
• Easy synchronisation on iriver Plus 3, WMP10, WMP11
• Firmware upgradable

[via trustedreviews]

There’s more about the Zune firmware update today. In February, Zune’s market share has slipped to 8.7 per cent in the hard-drive based players market. While Zune still places second behind Apple’s iPod, Zune’s market share has been slipping since December 2006 when it had 10.2 per cent of the market. In January this year, that slipped downward to 9.9 per cent.

Microsoft’s Zune features a 3.0-inch screen, 30 GB internal memory and WiFi connectivity. The iPod has a 2.5-inch screen and storage begins with 30 GB and a maximum of 80 GB and lacks WiFi. The iPod Zune comparison does not end with the players, both of which is priced at $249.99. Zune Market place and iTunes pricing and services differ significantly. Zune Pass gives you a flat fee and an all-you-can-download access, while iTunes is pay per download.

[via blog.seattlepi.nwsource]

Microsoft has released Firmware 1.3 for its Zune.

Hopefully the update will take care of the skipping problem some users have reported. Content from Zune Marketplace will, hopefully, no longer skip when you play them.

The update will also improve syncing and detection by the player and the FM tuner will no longer be using up power in sleep mode.

Zune is planning to sell 1 million players by the end of 2007 in a market dominated by Apple’s iPod. Selling for $249 MSRP, the Zune Player features a 3″ QVGA screen, 30GB hard disk drive, FM tuner, and WiFi for Zune-to-Zune media.

[via zuneinsider]

Nike’s president and CEO Mark Parker has revealed their plans to make all its running shoes iPod ready with its Nike+ technology. These plans have been confirmed by Nike’s Siingapore spokesperson and added that the U.S. market will be especially targetted for the new Nike shoes.

The Asia Pacific region will follow a little later as the Nike+ series has yet to be launched in 1st of April in the region. Nike has also confirmed that the iPod compatible Nikes will be more expensive than the non-compatible ones. The Nike+iPod technology, which uses the iPod to record running or walking stats on an iPod Nano has been criticized previously for the risks it posts to the privacy and security of users as it can double as a tracking device.

[via asia.cnet]