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Microsoft Launches Portable Music Player

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the crowded-marketplaces dept.

prostoalex writes "Microsoft announced Portable Media Center, a digital music player, to be available in the second half of 2004. The announcement follows Dell's foray into portable digital music. Microsoft plans to license their software for the Media Center to third-party manufacturers as well. Samsung Electronics, Sanyo, ViewSonic, and iRiver are already on the list. The actual Microsoft-branded devices are promised to start at $350."

9 of 382 comments (clear)

  1. Microsoft Software is also on DVD Recorders now by i4u · · Score: 1, Informative

    The DiVA 489 which is the first DVD recorder to record using Microsoft's innovative Windows Media 9 Series video compression (WMV9) for digital video recording to DVD and CD disc, as well as playback of streamed and downloaded video. http://www.i4u.com/article768.html

  2. Beware the exchange rate by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the article:
    The iPod comes in three models, ranging from $529 to $799, depending on capacity.
    Must be tallking in Ozzie dollars. According to Apple's website it goes from $299 to $499 in US money.
    --
    Drill baby drill - on Mars
  3. Re:Future-proofing? by AuMatar · · Score: 2, Informative

    Having just written avi support for an embedded platform, I can honestly say AVI is nowhere near dead. A lot of digital cameras use it for video.

    --
    I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  4. Did anyone RTFA??? by christopher240240 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Including the author? This is not a piece of Microsoft hardware...

  5. Not quite slot loaded, but can do now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    My cd/radio head unit plugs into a pre-amp that then plugs into my amps and speakers. The pre-amp has a selector, with a spare set of RCA jacks in the back. With an RCA-to-minijack cable, I can plug in my iPod (or any MP3 player with a headphone jack) and select it as my other input.

  6. Re:iPods are $299 to $499... what's with the AIT ? by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nothing odd about it. The Australian author, writing for an Australian audience, refers to his own currency as 'dollars' and refers to the American currency as 'US dollars.'

    It's like in Ireland (pre-Euro days) when we talked about 'pounds' (meaning Irish pounds) and 'pounds sterling' (meaning British pounds.) In the UK they talk about 'pounds' (meaning pounds sterling) and refered to the old Irish currency as 'Irish pounds.'

    Nobody puts the nationality on their own currency in everyday speech. Where's the confusion?

    --
    Drill baby drill - on Mars
  7. No No No by Cyberllama · · Score: 2, Informative

    Microsoft announced an *operating* system for media players -- primarily for use in PVP's (personal video players). This is basically a stripped down windows CE. They didn't announce an actual player (To be manufactured by them).

  8. Re:Innovative??? by NanoGator · · Score: 2, Informative

    "From what I have seen, WMV9 is a decent codec, but it is far from "innovative". It' sjust another hash of MPEG4, and has huge attributes in common with DivX 4/5, XViD, and other MPEG4 codecs."

    Innovative is not the word I'd use, but you are oversimplifying the value of WMV. It's not just a codec, it's a suite of tools.

    Here are a few pros to using WMV:

    - *Anybody* running Windows 9x - XP can play a video from it. Even if the codec's not installed, the player will go get it and install it. The other players in this field are Real and Quicktime. If DivX somehow did this (or became a must-have like Quicktime) I could finally ditch WMV.

    - The quality's not bad for low-bitrate stuff. It's not as good as DivX, but it suffices. (Note: One thing that stinks, though, is I don't have a lot of control over the compression. I can't play with the Quantizer, for example... GRR.)

    - The toolset is pretty decent. Though the UI is a little confusing, you get plenty of cool stuff up front. If I wanted to, right now, I could set up my computer to capture video from cable and broadcast it in realtime WMV. The Media Encoder tool makes that possible. Never used it, not sure I'll ever use it, but it's something DivX doesn't immediately provide.

    - While you're encoding, you can see the encoded video as it progresses. That's useful in determining the right compression etc.

    - You can encode it to stream at different bitrates. I can't tell you much about this, though, as I haven't personally played with it.

    For the record, I'm not posting this with the idea that people should immediately go use this. I personally prefer DivX. But I did want to share my own experiences here. DivX has WMV beat in terms of quality, but WMV is FREE and it is more widely deployable, assuming you don't care about the non-Windows world.

    So no, I wouldn't call it 'innovative', but it does solve problems that DivX and related codecs cannot, plus it's got a spiffier toolset in some respects. Don't be so quick to discredit it.

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  9. FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    Announcing a product a year in advance is FUD.

    From The Jargon File:
    "...After 1990 the term FUD was associated increasingly frequently with Microsoft, and has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon."


    Now, Microsoft have just announced a new, super-dooper portable digital media device, but it won't be out for an entire year.

    So people will wait for it, and avoid products such as the iPod, the Rio line, iRiver, etc, etc.

    Then Microsoft's device isn't released next year. They delay it. Perceptually.

    Stops you from buying their competitors product when they have no other way to compete. That's FUD.