Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

In efforts to showcase the best looking portable media player’s and digital audio player’s at IFA, iriver has announced a new PMP and a GPS with media capabilities.

The first device announced is the iriver P20, which was originally shown off at the past CES in January 2008. It sports a 4.1-inch AMOLED touch screen, which is a bigger screen than most PMP’s these days. In addition, the battery life is pretty good, 12 hours for music, 9 hours for video, and up to 8 hours with DMB TV. Although, I do think the battery life when just playing music should be a bit higher, but for video and DMB TV, it’s good. It is expected to come with either an 80GB or 120GB hard drive. 

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I’m not certain if the ‘iMovie’ name is a trademarked term, because I have seen this label used on an Apple (of course, the “i” prefix was a dead giveaway).  In that case, this was for a product that can edit home movies. However, there is another product that has been labeled iMovie, but it is not software. It’s the RAmos iMovie, which is a movie viewer that looks (dare I say it) rather sexy. 

It has a 4.3-inch WQVGA display, and it is very thin at just 10mm. The video support includes RMVB, AVI, FLV, WMV, MPG, MP4, DAT, and 3GP formats.  It can also support popular audio, photo, as well as text files.  Not only that, but it has TV out as well as integrated speakers. 

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Epson is adding two new multimedia photo viewers to its product line with the release of the P-6000 and P-7000. Featuring 4-inch 640x480 VGA resolution LCD screens that can display up to 16.7 million colors both, photo viewers offer a high-speed USB 2.0 connection and a built-in CF that supports UDMA and SD card slot.

Both photo viewers can display photos in up to 94 percent Adobe RGB color space, support JPEG and RAW photo file formats and MPEG-4, Motion JPEG and H.264/AVC SVGA video formats. Epson even throws in a 3.5mm headphone jacks for connecting external speakers or headphones.

In addition, the P-7000 comes packed with a travel pack that includes a dual batter charger, car adapter and case. While both photo viewers yields three long hours of usage which makes them perfect for traveling photographers.

The P-6000 and P-7000 photo viewers will both be available sometime in September with retail prices of $600 and $800 respectively.

Product [P-6000] Product [P-7000] Via [electronista]

Like we said, it was just a matter of time before Creative would make its new media player, the artsy-looking Zen Mozaic available in the US market. Creative now has two models of the Zen Mozaic on its website with a notation that says “In Stock (Available for Shipment).” These are the 2GB and 4GB Zen Mozaic media players with retail prices of $59.99 and $79.99 respectively.

If you’re eyeing the oddly-designed media player, here’s what you’ll get for your bucks; a 1.8-inch TFT color display, 36 hours of continuous audio playback, 5 hours of continuous video playback, an FM radio, 8 preset equalizer settings, voice recording feature, USB 2.0 connectivity and support for album art. 

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Sony has recently began to venture into the Chinese market, and they did this by announcing the new, fancy, and pretty expensive PMX-M80 portable media player.

One of the key features of this PMP is that it comes with preloaded maps, similar to Google Maps, which could be found on the iPhone. These maps also come with POI’s. In addition, it comes with a GPSesque 4.3-inch screen with a 480 x 272 resolution, 16GB hard drive, voice recorder, up to 6 hours of video playback, expandable memory via memory stick, and a lot of format support including SRS 3D audio, MP4, AVI, WMA, MP3, and AAC.

As on now, Sony is retailing the device for 2,260 Yuan, or about $331 US.

Via [PMP Today]

I have noticed that portable media players are getting more advanced, and that many of them have some great features.  They have to do more than just play tunes and video, but have an FM transmitter, photo-viewer, and e-book functions.

One of the latest PMP’s to hit the market is the ABigs player from Sarotech.  Not only does it have that aforementioned FM transmitter, photo viewer, and e-book viewer, but it has a 2.5-inch display, H.264 and MKV support, as well as 1080p over HDMI and 5.1 channel out. 

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Chinavasion recently unveiled their new MP4 player that they claim is the world’s thinnest portable media player. It even beats Brando’s disappearing screen MP3 player, in fact this 4GB CVSJ-1304 beats the former record holding device by a whole millimeter!

To give you some perspective on how thin this 4.5mm thin device is, it would take 4 credit cards stacked on top of each other to be at equal thickness. It comes with a 1.8 inch touch screen, with a resolution of 160 x 128, supports media formats such as MP4, MP3, WMA, ASF, and WAV. Additionally, it comes with an FM tuner, a rechargeable battery and USB connectivity. It is already on sale for only $39.55, which is a great price for a 4GB MP4 player, especially one that is this thin.

Via [PMP Today]

It was only last week when Creative made the ZEN X-Fi PMP available in the US, and here they come again teasing us with a new media device; the ZEN Mozaic. Featuring artsy designs that are rather unusual for media players of such kind. The ZEN Mozaic features a built-in speaker, a 1.8-inch LCD color screen, FM radio and voice recorder.

In addition the Mozaic gives out 32 hours of audio playback with a single charge of the battery. Weighing a mere 18.8-ounces and measuring 3.13 x 1.57 x 0.50-inches, you wouldn’t have a problem carrying this media player around with you.

The Creative ZEN Mozaic media player will be available in Singapore by August and will retail for $72 on the 2GB model and $94 on the 4GB model. Additionally, 8GB and 16GB models are expected to be released later on. No information was announced on whether it be will released in the US market though. But like the X-Fi PMP which was also released first in Singapore, we’re expecting the it will just be a matter of time before Creative makes the Mozaic available for all of us to purchase.

Product [Creative] Via [I4U]

Gemei has a new PMP called the X780 which is similar to another one of their PMP’s called the X760. This one is the newer and more improved model, and comes with a few improved features.

One of the main features in Gemei’s PMP’s are the gaming-like qualities. Gemei’s previous PMP’s, the X900 and the X590 featured gaming emulators, but weren’t iPod Touch knockoffs at the time. However, with the X780, Gemei seems to hope to create something similar to the iPod Touch, and they sacrifice gaming support to achieve this. Some features include a 3-inch WQVGA touch screen, TV out and FM tuner.

The X780 also has support for a wide variety of media formats to include MP3, WMA, WAV, APE, FLAC, RM, RMVB, FLV, AVI, MPG, MPEG, DAT, ASF, WMV, VOB, 3PG, MP4, JPG, BMP, GIF, and PNG.

Unfortunately, no word on pricing or availability at this time.

Via [PMP Today]

United Kingdom based company, Electro Box, recently came out with a new, innovative PMP called the miShake. With a name like this, one would assume shaking the device would cause some navigation changes, and this is correct. The unique feature in this PMP is that every time it is shook, it can change songs, videos, images, and move through pages of an e-book.

The 2.4-inch TFT touchscreen PMP has been uniquely designed to be a competitor to Apple’s iPod Nano, and other small players. It comes with 4GB of onboard memory, but can be expanded via microSD. Additionally, it comes with voice recording, an FM radio with recording, pedometer, gaming support and an e-book reader. 

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