With the wide
range of portable audio devices available, many manufacturers are working on video portable devices as they predict video devices may start becoming hot sellers later this year or in 2005. A few competing devices include the TwinMOS X-Frame II, PQI's mPack, Gway's YouGo and the Kobian subsidiary Mercury. All these devices offer MPEG4 video, MP3 audio and JPEG image playback capabilities. The following is
summary of some other features (where available) of each player:
TwinMOS - features a 7" 764 x 480 display, 20GB capacity, MPEG4 encoding at 352x288 30fps, DivX 3.11 to 5, QuickTime 6 and Windows Media audio & video playback and voice recording via internal microphone. Its fairly large and heavy at 600g with dimensions of 19.2 x 11.5 x 2.8 cm.
mPack - features a 3.5" 320 x 240 display, internal speaker & microphone, Compact Flash Slot, 20/40/80GB capacity, MPEG 1, 2 & 4, DivX 3.11 to 5, XviD and MJPEG video playback and AAC, AC3, AIFF, WAV, MP3, WMA and OGG Vorbis audio playback. The device supports recording, but using Windows media audio & video codec only. Battery life is 4 hours video and 10 hours audio. Other features include mobile-phone Java support, FM radio and over dimensions of 14.6 x 8.2 x 2.6 cm.
YouGo - features a 2.5" display, MPEG 4 video playback and recording and a 4GB micro hard drive. It is a light compact player at only 197g with dimensions of 10.9 x 7.4 x 2.3 cm.
Mercury - features a 3.5" display, SD and CF slots, 30/40/60/80GB capacity, MPEG 4, AVI, DivX 4 & 5 and Windows Media video playback, MP3, WMA and wav audio playback and voice recording. Battery life is up to 3 hours video and 6 hours audio playback.
So far Apple does not believe video to be the killer mobile format, but as it is still early days for video they still have the opportunity to develop and launch a video iPod. It looks like portable video players may also replace the PDA - Just implement a touch display and suitable software and it can function as a PDA. The same can be done vice versa by implementing a hard drive in a PDA. GristyMcFisty used our news submit to submit the following:
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These are early days for the mobile multimedia player, so don't expect them to flood the Western market just yet. Machines based on Microsoft's Portable Media Center platform aren't going to be around until next Christmas, which is when the format will start getting promoted more heavily over here. Interestingly, none of the machines we saw at Computex were touted as PMC devices. Apple has publicly said that it doesn't believe video is a killer mobile app, but the iPod certainly has the potential today to be given photo display capabilities - support is already there in the PortalPlayer engine. And with Sony launching personal video players in Japan this month - probably round the world later in the year - and iRiver readying its own video player, the H300, Apple may be forced down such a path. Even if it doesn't, the other launches may still be bad news for the PDA. As Sony's decision to quit the market shows, the pure-play PDA business is already being squeezed as smartphones incorporate better PIM features, and it may not be long before the media players do too - the iPod already does. PDAs are increasingly offering personal media storage and playback facilities, but will struggle against devices that contain hard drives. Of course, the PDAs too will ultimately gain tiny hard drives, at which point they will become indistinguishable from media players, and the two markets will have effectively converged. See the full article with images here. |
It will be interesting to see if Apple do come up with a
video iPod, but then again as Apple rely on its iTunes online music store
to promote its iPod they may also need to start up a video online store to
attract consumers to video based products also.
Microsoft also has the opportunity to try and enforce its Portable Media Center platform in up coming video players. They are already doing this with Creative and does not look good since consumers may be forced to use Windows Media Player only for content transfers and content checking may also be enforced to check for illegally obtained content.
Source: The Register - Mobile Devices
