PMP Today

The COWON A3 has been out a month and we have yet to see a comprehensive review about the product. We’ve already seen this video preview from our friends at GenerationMP3 and another blog, Gadgetaholic, has just got their hands on a review unit and will be coming out with their review soon. For know, what seems apparent is that COWON thought the old A2 design would do for the next generation and didn’t change it much in the A3. All the improvements are inside.

[via gadgetaholic]

Nothing much, just a slight firmware upgrade for the COWON D2, but it’s a nifty one. Yes, Flash skins on the D2 GUI. Now that the D2 is equipped with a TV antenna, a Flash skin is just more icing on the cake. The forum iAudiophile has a thread dedicated totally to D2 Flash skins so check it out.

[via dapreview]

NewEgg is now seeling an 8GB version of the Asus Eee PC. Just add $100 on top of the 4GB version and you’ll get 4GB more on storage. Think this is way too much? I think so too. The RAM has beenupgraded to 1GB DDR2 from the 512MB of the original, which should give the little laptop more oomph. Besides that, the specs haven’t changed. Will there ever be a 10-inch Eee PC? That, my friends, is up to you. Complain enough and I believe AsusTek will comply.

[newegg via i4u]

There’s no real difference between the COWON Q5W for the U.S. market and the original COWON Q5, which orginally came out for the Korean market. COWON’s multi-connected and multi-featured PMP has been much wowed here at this web site and for good reason. Not only is the 5-inch 800 x 400-pixel touchscreen PMP and the WiFi, HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS and GPS, FM tuner on board enough to make the Q5 the mother of all PMPs, it’s also reasonably priced at $599 for the 60GB and $549 for the 40GB.

The Q5W’s main difference from the Q5 is the lack of a TV tuner. In Korea, a DMB tuner is built-in. The screen and movie-viewing is excellent, especially with the DivX/XviD support: the 16.7 million color support and 500:1 contrast ratio doesn’t go into waste. Gizmodo has a more detailed review of the COWON Q5W (link below) but in summary, DivX viewing is excellent with great speakers to boot, all aspect ratios of video files are automatically fit to the screen, audio support is from here to Timbuktu, GPS is great, WiFi so-so but workable and Windows CE is tolerable on this one. When they are going to add DVB TV, we don’t know.

[review]

The COWON D2TV is basically the D2 PMP with a screw-on antenna that you can attach for watching TV while on the go. It’s equipped with a 2.5-inch touch sensitive screen with a resolution of 320×240, SD/MMC expansion, an FM tuner, and has 7.5 hours of 1-seg mobile TV, 9 hours of video playback, and 45 hours of music playback. Supported video formats include WMV, MPEG4, DIVX, XVID–all at 30 fps. Audio formats include MP3, OGG, FLAC, WMA, WAV, APE. Images in JPG and BMP formats are also supported. The D2TV comes in two different versions–the white model (d2-2G) has 2GB of memory and the black model (COWON D2-8G) has 8GB of storage. Suggested retail price is 201,000 KRW until 288,000 KRW respectively.

[via toys gadget]

It’s been months since the COWON Q5W got previewed for the US-market and weeks since the rumors of its October release. Well, there’s good news for those of you who have been eagerly waiting for this super-PMP! The COWON Q5W is set to launch in the US next week for a whopping $549.99 for the 40GB version (plus $50 if you want it in 60GB). Before you start freaking out at the rather exhorbitant price, take note that what you have here is a PMP with a 5-inch WVGA (800×480) display, 64MB of flash memory, 128MB of DDR2 SDRAM, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, WinCE 5.0, a voice recorder, photo / text viewer, and support for assloads of file formats (including the more obscure ones like .OGG and FLAC). Not bad at all!

[via engadget]

At long sweet last, Cowon’s finally releasing the A3 PMP on November 14. It’s got a lot of amazing specs to look forward to: a 4-inch, 16M color, 800×480 display; FM radio and recorder; USB host; MPEG-4 video recorder; 1280 x 720 HD output; and codc support that includes FLAC, DivX, and OGG. Grab them in 30GB or GB for $387 and $465 and let us know if it was worth the wait!

[via engadget]

The prices for the new COWON players have been announced. They include the Cowon Q5, Cowon A3 and the iAudio D2 8GB and iAudio 7 16GB. The multi-connected COWON Q5 is slated for an October release in the U.S. and France will get the HSDPA, WiFI and GPS-enabled PMP in the same month and the rest of the lineup either October or November.

- Cowon Q5 40GB 649.95€
- Cowon Q5 60GB 699.95€
- Cowon A3 30GB 439.95€
- Cowon A3 60GB 469.95€
- Modulate DVB-T for Cowon A3 79.95€
- Cowon D2 8GB (Black or White) 289.95€
- iAudio 7 16GB (Money or Red) 349.95€

[via gmp3 ]

Some time ago, we posted the specs of COWON’s new A3 PMP. We didn’t have any picture of the device to show you, but the 4-inch WVGA screen, line-in and Office support looked enticing. The device is Windows CE-based. There is DMB but you have to shell off an additional 100 Euros ($137). The COWON A3 comes in 30GB and 60GB model with not much difference in pricing between the tw: $615 and $684 respectively.

[via gmp3]

COWON’s multi-featured and multi-connected Q5 hasn’t been officialized for the U.S. market yet but there are some people (me among them) who just cannot wait for October. Thankfully, GMP3 already finished their review of their review of the WiFi, EDGE, HSDPA, DMB device. In case we forget, the COWON Q5 also has GPS using DMB navigator and DVR functionality. As a PMP, it is directly competing with the new Archos 605 WiFi. File supported by the Q5: MPC/AVI (DivX, DivX DRM, Xvid), ASF, WMV, MPG, MP4, MP3, WMA (with DRM), OGG, FLAC, APE, WAV, AC3, GMO, SMI/JPEG, BMP, png, RAW/FLV and TXT. GMP3’s conclusion: COWON Q5 is a multi-functional high-end device that provides very high-quality video and audio.

Read on for the video review.

[via generationmp3] Read the rest »