Portable video follows iPod's footsteps

Will consumers tune in to portable
video?

Is portable video ready for its closeup?

mPack 800 Portable Video Player

Another day, another portable media player. This mPack P800 is of hearty, Taiwanese stock, with a heavy-lifting video compressor that will save video at resolutions even higher than its native 320 by 240 pixel screen. That's handy for playing back the videos on a better quality screen, after either copying them off the device or playing them via its video out. It supports a variety of formats (including OGG Vorbis and Xvid) and comes in 40GB or 80GB models. If the screen isn't a total travesty, it'll be a contender—if it makes it stateside.

Product Page [mPack via PVP4 U]

MSN Debuts Portable Video Downloads

Video content goes portable with new MSN
service

Video Players Go Portable (PC World)

AMD chips in for portable video players

AMD targets portable video players

Jobs on Portable Video Players

NeoSol Portable Video Player and TV

CES: GoDot offers Portable Photo Albums

Portable Internet offers huge
opportunities

Portable Media Centers in Action (Video)

AMD unveils portable video player chip

PlayStation Portable Hasn't Enticed
Video Fans Yet

New portable video/movie rights planned

Will consumers find portable video
palatable?

Apple Portable Video/Media Device?

Gates takes aim at Jobs over portable
video

AMD unveils chip for portable video
players

Sony to ship portable video, MP3 player
next month

Sony Shows Portable Audio, Video Player

Creative Labs to Release Video Jukebox
Portable

Shoppers line up for new PlayStation
Portable video game

New Video Conferencing Resource Site
Launches, Offers Thousands of Free
Resources for Video Conferencing

News: Kanguru offers 20GB Zipper Pro
portable drive

PlayStation Portable Fully-working
System Demonstration Video

Two S-Media Portable Video Players:
JoyToGo and Black Diamond

DAPReview has shots of a couple of small, hard drive-based video players, both with planned release dates around September. The first is the JoyToGo (pictured left, and which I could have sworn we'd seen before, but Google says otherwise), built around either a 20 or 30GB 1.8" hard drive, with a 480 x 234 2.5" LCD screen, as well as built-in speakers and SD slot. It will also allow direct recording of video in MPEG-4 at rates of 640x480 at 25fps -- not bad, consider that's larger than its own screen.

And even though it's only a mock-up at the moment, I can't help but be excited by the 'Black Diamond' player, built around a tiny 1" hard drive with an as-yet-unspecified capacity. It only has a 294 x 228 resolution (with the same 2.5" screen size as the JoyToGo), and no speakers or anything like that, but if they could bump the resolution of the Black Diamond up to 480 x 234, I would be happy -- honored, even -- to carry around the little player in my pocket.

Both players are from S-Media, the makers of the moderately successful CoCoPod hard disk player.
Read [DAPreview]

Related
CoCoPod Music Player Reviewed [Gizmodo]
Shimy Shimy Cocopod [Gizmodo]

Web surf, watch video, read e-books, all
on your Playstation Portable

Microsoft, MTV, TiVo and Leading
Networks Open New Sources For Portable
Video

Ricochet Offers Broadband Portable
Internet to Municipal & Public Safety
Workers

Redi2 Offers Most Portable Enterprise
Fee Billing System to the Investment
Management Industry

Samsung Introduces 667MHz Mobile
Application Processor for 3G Mobile
Handheld Devices

TechRestore, Inc. Announces the iPod
Battery Freedom Service - Lifetime iPod
Battery Replacement.

Samsung And Verizon Wireless Announce
The Samsung SCH-a790 Global Phone

Playlists of Web-available music

Seb's getting into music playlists now

Playlists as media integration

RSS and weblogs tag team mano a mano vs. syndication and broadcatching

the weblog of Lucas Gonze: RSS and weblogs tag team mano a mano vs. syndication and broadcatching. "The reason for the awkwardness is that RSS is about content from the creator of the RSS feed, while playlists are about deep linking to resources not owned by the linker. (Thanks to Alf Eaton for this insight)."

The funny thing is I was thinking about emailing Lucas about his thoughts on RSS 2.0 and the proper integration of audio posts and playlists integration into it when I saw this post. 

I don't know if I totally agree that RSS is always about content from the creator and never and can't be about deep linking to resources not owned by the linker.  I think that is what Lucas is trying to say above.  When CNET uses RSS maybe but not when webloggers and blog software outputs it.

Lucas points to some good links about the integration of RSS 1.0 and playlists.  It looks likes he's spent some time thinking about this.  I just don't know if I missed a whole online conversation around the subject and how he came to his conclusions.

When I try to think about this area's awkwardness, I keep thinking something is missing.  Maybe we need to study the best practices of mixing the two.  Should there be more then one "best" way in RSS of refering to playlist as a whole and others for deriving playlists out of RSS?

One thing I noticed it that when the big pubs starting using RSS they made RSS work for them. 

[Audio/Mobile Blogging News]

The nature and location of the payload is crucial to the success of all this.

Enclosures don't have meta-data - so they're worthless.  What ever happened to OpenMedia?

Oh yah, I dropped the ball on that - too.

P2P to influence radio playlists

Playlist: Brilliant Playlists

Are Playlists Factual Information?

iRiver T20

I use my Shuffle regularly, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't cheat on it with other flash players. The iRiver T20 is kind of like that cool young thing at the office, all flash and excitement. You just want to pop out its sensuous USB port again and again while the poor, morose Shuffle sits around the house waiting to yell at you when you walk through the door. "I have a lanyard," it screams to you as you hit the fridge for a beer. "I have a lanyard!"

The T20 includes an LCD screen (!!!), line-in MP3 recording, and plays Ogg files. Priced at $99 for 512MB and $139 [UPDATE - It's Pounds, baby, Pounds, not Dollars. I don't know. Multiply by two, essentially, to get dollars.] for the 1GB model, I'm thinking that if you're considering a flash player, you may want to consider one of these instead of that plain-Jane Shuffle.

iRiver gives iPod shuffle a wake-up call [T3]

iRiver T20 and T30

In addition to the attractive U10, iRiver has also announced the T20 and T30 [pictured left and right, respectively], both of which are not anything special in the 'function' department, but have fairly unique designs. The T30, especially, looks as if it could be holding the power core that drives a giant mecha, as long as that power core was a AAA battery. The T20 happens to be the first iRiver player with a sliding USB plug, a feature of which we are fans.

iRiver U10, T20, T30 introduced in iRiver 2005 Lanching Show [MisticRiver via I4U]

iRiver IFP-790

Smart playlists that truly follow your
mood

Share playlists of videos to Xbox

Mac Tip: Smarter iTunes Smart Playlists

Make M3U playlists play in Safari

iTunes Celebrity Playlists: Anything But
Ordinary, Please

Publish iTunes 4.5 library and playlists
to the web

Add logic to smart playlists in iTunes
4.5

Footlights organizes video with
playlists

Import playlists and songs into iTunes

New iRiver PMC-100 Pictures

DAPreview found some new hi-resolution shots of the upcoming iRiver PMC-100, the Microsoft-based Portable Media Center that is the cousin to the non-Microsoft PMP-120/140. It looks considerably different than the original, more slab-like mockup we'd shown you, but it does look a lot more practical to use. It also looks like it is probably just a remolded bit of plastic that fits over the same hardware that powers the PMP-1xx series players.

I still like the old design better, but I also know which one I'd rather hold in my hands for two hours at a time.

Read - Fresh pics of the iRiver PMC-100 [DAPreview]

Related
More iRiver PMP and PMC Details [Gizmodo]

iRiver H10 Official

iRiver officially unveiled the H10 today in Korea, the 5GB hard disk-based player that looks a lot like a mini Creative Zen Touch (or Zen Micro, even). It's got pretty much the same specs as everything else in this segment, except notably the 1.5-inch screen. It'll be available on the 22nd in Korea for around $340. If they want to make it in the American market, let's hope they drop the price a little before it gets here.

iRiver H10 is out! [DAPreview]

iRiver IHP toolkit 0.3.0

More Hands-On With the iRiver PMC-100

SorobanGeeks got their hands on the iRiver PMC-100 series, the Microsoft Portable Media Center player that's expected any day now in stores. They also had a short sit down with the Vice President of iRiver's parent company, who seems to have a real hard on for Microsoft in the upcoming portable player wars, because the "PMC OS will work in total harmony with the future operating systems of Microsoft." I suppose that's true in a sense, but I still think that until someone can provide plug-and-play functionality, be it Big M or someone else, none of these players are going to be widely adopted. They're just too big of a pain to use.

You know who should make a portable media player? TiVo.

Read - iRIVER Press Conference... 1ères photos live de leur PMC !!! [Akiba.SorobanGeeks]

More iRiver PMP and PMC Details

iRiver PMP-140 (P)Reviewed

Soroban Geek's Portable Media World got their webbed hands on a pre-release version of the iRiver PMP-140, the upcoming personal media player that is the one that isn't the Windows-branded Portable Media Center (that's the PMC- models). Although the review is a little heavy on pictures and a little light on opinion, they seem fairly impressed with the device. It does look nice enough (from a feature perspective, at least; its case is ugly as sin), and I've got fairly high hopes for this one. DRM-free means, if nothing else, greater ease of use as a rule of thumb.

Read - Teasing Preview iRIVER PMP-140 (UK/US) [PMW.SorobanGeeks]

Related
Sony HMP-A1 VAIO Video Pocket Review [Gizmodo]
More iRiver PMP and PMC Details [Gizmodo]

iRiver N10 First Impressions

SorobanGeeks passes on some first impressions straight from Korea of iRiver's new wearable flash memory MP3 player, the N10, as well as some pictures that are probably stock photography but that I hadn't seen; this picture showing how the headphones double as a necklace was especially interesting, I thought. You guys know how I feel about flash memory players -- I like them, smaller is better, but I just hate paying so much for so little storage -- but on up side the prices for the N10 are at least somewhat more reasonable than some players in the past -- a 1GB version should sell for around $440. If that's still too painful just wait. The hardware to decode MP3s is a fraction of the cost and the price of flash memory should continue to fall for a while.

And you know what's making me come around on these flash players? Cool designs like pendants. That's what they should have been doing in the first place. If I'm going to get reamed for a 1GB, it should at least look cooler/more interesting than an hard disk player.

Read - N-10 En Direct de Seoul ! [Akiba.Soroban]

Related
iRiver N10 OLED Flash Player [Gizmodo]

Rename iTunes playlists to control order

iRiver PMP-100 offers portable video playback