This is by far the best news this year for true music fanatics. The amazing COWON S9, which was our PMP of the year last year, just got significantly better with firmware update 2.31b. Additionally, there’s now support for M3U playlists. Wow. The new firmware also provides playback support for damaged AVI videos. Got a lot of that in my computer.

Features of 2.31b (international version) firmware for the Cowon S9

• Gapless playback for FLAC, APE and Lossless WMA, as well as Ogg Vorbis and WAV
• M3U support
• plays damaged AVI
• support for AVI containers
• typist feature: notepad with keyboard

[read more at dapreview]

Yet another firmware update from COWON for the S9. The firmware V1.30 is for Koreans and the V2.30 is for international users. Dapreview has the skinny on what the new S9 firmware does:

Added to display the title of the music file on the screen when you start music in matrix browser.
- Improved displaying picture quality of album art in Music mode.
- Improved conducting speed when you play music.
- Added settings that you can choose sharpen or soften tone in Video mode.
- Fixed the error that resume functionality were occasionally not working.
- Fixed errors in UCI FSCommand ‘EtcUsrSetString’, ‘EtcUsrGetString’.

The mighty OLED PMP is now 32GB and available at Amazon.com. Whatever you about the less than sprightly UI or the lack of iTouch features, the S9 rules in screen quality and a 32GB S9 will enable you to enjoy hours of quality videos on the best 3-inch screen (it’s actually AMOLED, which saves even more electricity) available right now. The S9 is in titanium black and priced at $299.

• 3.3-inch 16:9 Wide AMOLED, 16 million colors, res. 480×272, ultra portable
• Play all your digital entertainment: movies, TV shows, photos and music
• Touch sensitive interface
• Bluetooth, Voice recorder with internal microphone, FM radio and TV-out supporting composite connections
• Maximum 11 hours of video playback and maximum 55 hours of audio playback

[amazon via dapreview]

[via dapreview]

Available starting today, the 32GB COWON S9. Early birds will get an extra treat: a shield case and a TV out cable. The 32GB COWON S9 has been announced two weeks ago and the company wasn’t late in delivering its promise. You’d love the 3.3-inch AMOLED screen. For sheer viewing pleasure on a portable player, this COWON PMP is on the top tier. It’s priced at around $286 in Korea.

Oh, also, the 1.2 firmware is available, which will bring the following feature improvements:

• widgets screen has multiple pages now
• better high-rez video playback
• videos with corrupted frames get better support as well

More at dapreview

Our PMP of the year for 2008 recently received a small number of fixes and improvements via firmware 1.1.

Partial list of the improvements of the COWON S9:

• battery life extended to 10.5 hours for video playback
• enhanced photo reproduction
• DivX3 support
• subtitle during music and video playback

For more, head on to Dapreview.

The S9 is a unique touchscreen player that looks really good on paper: 3.3-inch WQVGA touchscreen, 30fps video support, A2DP, DMB and DAB optional and G-Sensor.

[via gmp3]

After announcing the release of the SDK for the O2, COWON now boasts a total 9 applications for the O2. Most of these apps are games like Tetris, O2Pong, BubbleWrap and Bounce but there are also useful apps like Keyboard, which isn;t a fully-featured app yet but is coming along nicely. It’s no iTunes App Store but it would be nice to get a few games on your COWON O2.

[wiki via gmp3, portablealliance]

You can now go on over to JetMall and and maybe think hard about buying a COWON D2+. It’s not the most fashionable PMP out there and not the cheapest either, but it is a COWON. No opitions for color, there is only black. Storage options are 8GB ($139.99) and 16GB ($179.99).

List of features from JetMall:

▪ Touchscreen PMP with Stylish Design
▪ New Graphic User Interface
▪ Superb sound quality with BBE+ Sound Enhancements
▪ 2.5″ 16Mil. Color (24bit) Touchscreen
▪ Memory Expansion Slot for SD/SDHC or MMC Cards
▪ Supports MP3, WMA, Ogg, WAV, FLAC, APE files
▪ Supports WMV9, MPEG4 movie files
▪ Voice recording: Encoding to 32~256kbps WMA format
▪ Line-In Recording: Encoding to 32~256kbps WMA format
▪ FM Radio & FM Radio recording
▪ Supports MAC OS

[product via engadget]

The COWON D2 has had a long outing, but the mother company remains reluctant to let it go gently into that good night. They are refreshing the PMP model with the D2+. It’s the same shape and size and features with a few changes like the new user interface and a longer 52-hour battery life, possibly only for music playback, though hopefully one can get 12 hours of video on this one. The device will continue to offer the same BBE+ audio, which is just topnotch according to many reviewers.

No pricing yet. Note that the COWON D2 has been in the shadow of earlier iPod models ever since it came out and that was when most iPods (Nano included) didn’t have video yet. I wonder what makes COWON think slight changes, including a new color range, to the COWON D2 is enough to be competitive in this market.

[via engadget]