PCWorld has a nice article about the development of so called digital music players (eg. mp3 players). At the Consumer Electronics Show this week several new models were shown.
They say many vendors keep improving their players. Now FM radio tuners, voice recorders, video players and even a color screen is being added to the device. Several quotes:
The YP-700H also supports Microsoft's WMA music files and the more compact, higher-quality version of MP3 known as AAC. To keep the music playing, you can supplement the rechargeable NiMH battery by plugging in an external pack that holds a standard AAA cell. You can also plug in a headset featuring a combination remote control and FM radio tuner, and you can use the device to record voice dictations. Samsung expects the YP-700H to go on sale in February for a list price of $299. |
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In size and capacity, Samsung's player resembles the BA350 from Bantam Interactive, though the bronzy finish on the Samsung contrasts with the brightly colored, rubberized look of the $199 BA350. Released in October 2001, Bantam's tiny player won a Design and Engineering award at this year's CES. So did Bantam's heftier upcoming BA800 model, which is expected to go on sale in May or June priced at $299.
The BA800 boasts twice as much on-board memory, at 256MB, and like its predecessor, it provides a slot for further expansion. The biggest addition, however, is the BA800's 2-inch LCD screen for displaying JPEG images (stored at about 80 per megabyte of memory).
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A color screen also adorns one of the heftier music players, the Archos Jukebox Multi-Media Portable Entertainment Center. In addition to showing still images, the new paperback-size Multi-Media can play MPEG-4 and DVX video. Movies obviously demand more storage, but there's plenty of room on the player's 10GB hard drive. Filling that disk may take a while over the built-in USB 1.1 connection, but an expansion port accommodates speedier USB 2.0 or IEEE-1394 (FireWire) adapters.
They keep finding new stuff to add to the devices... good development. Read the full article here. Let's hope we can store our music on these devices also in the future with all this new attempts to create copy protections.
Source: pcworld
