Creative to release a Zen Media Center (portable video player)

June 1, 2004

With several video based portable players springing up, Creative plan on releasing
its version known as theCreative Zen Portable Media Center. As its name suggests, this player is heavily tied into Microsofts Windows Media technology and supports Windows Media Video versiosn 7 to 9, Microsoft MPEG-4 and Windows Media Audio 8. It also supports legacy MP3 playback and JPEG and TIFF image still image
files. Video can also be directly captured on the unit however there is no
mention of its recording specifications.

This features a 3.8" TFT colour display, 20 GB HDD capacity, Lithium Ion Battery and uses the Microsoft Portable Media Center Platform. However unlike most other players, this player will only function with Windows XP which is likely due to enhanced DRM limitations in XP. This player was unveiled in January at CeBIT and is due to ship this fall.

Archos' success with its line of MPEG 4/mp3 players was not something that would go unoticed by other manufacturers of digital portables. The release of the Archos Jukebox Multimedia in 2002 invented a new digital niche that has seen growth among those who trade video files on the Net. Until RCA released its competing media portable several months back, Archos had this whole market pretty much to itself.

Now that Archos has proved there is a market other are jumping in. Several manufacturers already have flash-based portable MPEG-4 units like Sony, but these players only come with 128MB of memory and thus can't hold an entire movie at any reasonable quality compression rate. Jukebox video units with 20GB of memory are the draw and Creative Labs is the latest to enter with a player.

The Creative Zen Portable Multimedia Center was unveiled last January at CeBIT and is due to ship this fall. The unit's stats plays off favorable to the excellent Archos AV300 series.

The Zen Portable Multimedia Center comes with a 20 GB hard drive. Utilizing the WindowsÂ® Media Center Edition interface the player uses Microsoft's implementation of MPEG-4. As of this writing, the player only operates with Windows XP (which has Microsoft's full DRM capabilities), a sign of capitulation to the movie industry that wishes to put locks on how users view digital movies. The unit plays Windows Media Video 7, 8 and 9 and Windows Media Audio 8, along with MP3 files. The unit can also display still photographs in the JPEG and TIFF formats.

Read the full article here.

The player looks more like a handheld game console to me 😉 It will be interesting to see what other specifications it has such as battery life, video capture specifications and screen resolution. While these video players may appear to
be the replacement for the handheld DVD player, just note that DVDs must be
converted first to be able to watch them on a portable unit and also due to the DMCA
legislation, it is unlikely Microsoft will ever offer its own software to do the conversion.

Source: MP3 newswire.net