Last year several brands of portable video media players have sprung up from Creative, Sumsung, Archos and iRiver. Industry experts expect this year to be big for video players, particularly with Europeans who make more use of public transport than the US.
While most video players make use of Microsoft's Media Center, Archos plans to offer more features by offering Linux-based portable media players. The drawback with Microsoft's media center is that it is fairly locked down. However by using the more open Linux-based player, Archos will offer Video recording capabilities like its previous players as well as Wi-Fi connectivity. It even plans to open up its software development kit to allow Linux developers to develop additional applications for the player.
Microsoft has taken a different approach by introducing a TiVo To Go service with a content deal agreement with the company TiVo. This allows TiVo customers to transfer recorded content from their TiVo to Windows based portable players or smartphones to watch on the move. MSN is also launching a subscription based service to offer short news, entertainment and other video content for download and transfer on to these portable devices.
However according to Jupiter research only 13% of Europeans are interested in watching video on the move with consumers preferring to purchase audio-only players. Microsoft on the other hand expect an explosion of portable media and that it would be 'super-cool' for the consumer to carry and share photos on the players. GristyMcFisty submitted the following news via our news submit:
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Last year saw the emergence of portable media players, such as the Windows-based Creative Zen portable media player, the Samsung Yepp, the iRiver PMC-100, and the Archos AV400 series among others. But this year, they are set to get smarter and more connected, to allow people to find more video to watch on them. Archos launched its latest range of its Linux-based portable media devices at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Friday. Dubbed the Pocket Media Assistant PMA430, it crucially has wi-fi capability built-in for the first time. "Consumers are showing a great thirst for devices that store all their media in one place for anywhere access," said Henri Crohas, chief of Archos. "And now those consumers can stay connected and productive at the same time." Archos said the focus for the device is to be the second gadget in people's pockets, after the mobile. Read the full article here. |
As Archos seems to offer a more open solution by not restricting video playback to Windows Media Video files such as provide MPEG4, DivX and XviD support, offering recording support, Wi-Fi connectivity and not restricting usage to Windows XP, I would expect this to be a more popular product compared with the Windows Media Center products. If Archos do open up its development kit, it would also mean that additional plug-ins could be developed such as adding additional audio and video codec support.
Despite the hype about photograph display capabilities, I don't think this would be a very useful feature unless the consumer is interested in frequently showing off photographs to friends. For video support, I would expect this to be popular among those who travel quite a lot but are not the driver. For those who drive, chances are that they are either in front of the wheel having to pay attention to the road, at home where they have access to their home entertainment system or somewhere else where they unlikely have enough time to watch recorded content on their player.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see if the players take off with good sales like Microsoft have been predicting until now, even though I doubt they are going to overtake iPod sales as Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer claims. :p
Source: BBC News - Technology
