PMP

Sony's new S Series Walkman Video MP3 player, announced today, features built-in stereo speakers. Now you can share your music out loud without carrying around an additional speaker system.

The S Series Walkman is less than a half-inch thin and has a 2.4-inch QVGA LCD screen (measured diagonally) with playback at up to 30 frames per second. It has a battery life of up to 42 hours of music playback and up to 6.5 hours of video playback through the headphones. Through the speaker, you can expect up to 17 hours of music playback and 5 hours of video playback.

Importing music, video and photos is easy. Simply simple drag-and-drop from your PC's media folder or via iTunes 8.1 using Content Transfer. A handy Voice recording and FM recording feature is also included.Read more

Yes, it's real. After months of speculation and rumors, Microsoft finally comes out and announces a new Zune. Equipped with a 3.3-inch (16:9, 480 x 272 resolution) OLED touchscreen with multitouch functions, the Zune HD will be the world's first portable media player to feature HD radio. The Zune HD will also feature HD (720P) video-out, via an optional docking station.

Microsoft is planning on pairing the Zune HD more effectively with the Xbox environment by occupying the first slot within the Xbox user interface in the Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace to help promote the brand and bring more videos to the Xbox 360. The Zune HD will also include an Internet Explorer-based web browser, since it will be Wi-Fi enabled.

More info will become available after E3, but you can grab the full press release here.

iriver just announced that it will be bringing the portable media player, P35, to the U.S. this Fall. The P35 will feature a 4.3-inch WQVGA touchscreen with iriver's Spinn Controls. As far as space goes, there will be an 8GB and a 16GB version with support for microSD and SDHC cards (up to 16GB).

The iriver P35 will support MPEG4, Xvid, WMV7/8 and WMV9 videos at a resolution of 720 x 480. Also, the P35 will support MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, APE and FLAC audio files. It is also rumored that the 16GB version will feature a full-fledged web browser.

The price has yet to be confirmed; however, when this launched in Korea, its starting price was the equivalent of $286. For the full spec sheet, click here.

The best part of this device is the graphical user interface (GUI). Like the table of contents of a magazine, the P7 delivers key information from the home screen. The P7 supports many types of video formats (codecs), which means there is no need to convert your video before loading to your personal media player (PMP). The touchscreen P7 not only supports many codecs, but has other multimedia features like an FM radio, photo viewer, text viewer, and voice recording.

The battery in this little gem of a PMP can play continuously for 35 hours. There is a built-in micro SD card slot to expand your memory. Or, if NetFlix, or other services ever start renting movies on micro SD, you have a place to insert them.

The P7 cradle has a built-in speaker, so you can hear your media playback while you possibly share the screen with a friend. The all aluminum casing of the P7 has a great look and feel. The 8GB version has an MSRP of $179, and the 16GB version has an MSRP of $209.

What I like about iriver is the support of DESIGN in the products, packaging and corporate identity. Their Web site www.iriver.com is even cool. The package that the P7 comes in can be reused for your own container needs. iriver suggests that you can use the container/P7 package as a business card holder, a pen holder, a picture frame, or even a flower vase.

Nextar, known mostly for their GPS systems and digital photo frames, just announced a new super-thin audio/video player. The MA809 portable media player sports a 2.8-inch screen and comes with a built-in speaker, Micro SD media slot and supports 20 languages. And get this – it’s only .25 inches thin and weighs just 7 ounces!

It will be available in Q2 2009 with an MSRP of $99.99 for 2GB capacity, $119.99 for 4GB capacity, and $149.99 for the 8GB capacity model. Read more

Well, they are already here … our Summer intern did a review of the COWON D2, and I will say that it was an amazing little device. Now, the COWON O2 touch-screen portable media player (PMP) is here in time for the Holiday’s.

I would much rather have this device than an iPod. The 4.3-inch widescreen has FLASH memory that improves battery life. There is an eight-hour playback with video and 18 hours of audio. This means that you could watch 8 hours of movies before you recharge. Can you do that with your iPod?

The COWON O2 8GB, 18GB and 32GB sell for $219, $249 and $299 respectively. Each player is equipped with a memory expansion card slot supporting SD and SDHC memory cards for additional storage capacity. So you can extend your PMP FLASH memory 32GB! Here is the press release so you can see the file formats this little PMP supports.

Check out the company web site, www.cowonamerica.com