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Creative Labs to Release Video Jukebox Portable
An anonymous reader writes "Following the success of the Archos line of digital video portables, Creative has announced they will release the Zen Portable Media Player this fall. Like the Archos the unit will sport a 20GB hard drive, 3.8" screen and will be able to record your favorite TV shows on the fly."
how soon after it is released that someone has Linux running on it?
- "Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Betrand Russell
Now that Archos, Sony and Creative labs have release video 'personal media players', will that mean that Apple will follow next with a video iPod?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Sounds impressive (although I'd prefer an iRiver one because it's driverless so it works on anything that supports USB 2.0 and will have no DRM), but no matter how impressive other companies make their jukeboxes and media players the masses will continue to suck up iPods like there's no tomorrow.
"I know it's expensive with less functionality, shorter batter life, lower sound quality, and forces me to use bloated software, but it's so pretty!"
I think they're overestimating the demand for a portable video player. The appeal of a portable MP3 player is the ability to listen to what is in essence, a commercial-free radio station you control, while you're doing some other activity. I don't see too many people interested in trying to watch a movie while exercising, mowing the lawn, working, etc.
Generally, a movie is something you sit down for, relax and enjoy. If you're just going to be watching a movie, you may as well do it where the movie watching experience is better. Chances are, if you have the money to blow for a portable video player, you've got a relatively decent A/V setup back at home.
Now on the topic of having content for this video player, who really has a lot of (or any for that matter) Windows Media Video files? I know I certainly don't have any worthy of buying a portable player to watch. I'm sure most people's format of choice for a home movie collection is DVD. Unlike converting audio CDs to MP3s for a portable player, converting DVDs is a very slow and legally questionable (due to having to circumvent the CSS encryption) process. For anyone that wants to watch movies portably, an inexpensive portable DVD player has a lot more usability appeal.
While I'm sure eventually buying movies online will be a big deal, right now it offers none of the benfits of online purchasing. Puchasing music online allows you to buy just the tracks you want, purchasing a movie online screws you out of higher quality and a physical disc you can resell if you so desire.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I would love to have the ability to capture digital video to this thing from a firewire-equipped camcorder. A feature like this could even be used to record video directly to hard drive instead of to those lovable miniDV tapes.
This would be interesting to me if it supported Ogg/Vorbis/Theora. I just bought the fantastic Rio Karma digital music player, and I chose it over the other offerings, specifically because it supports Ogg Vorbis. I'm in the process of encoding my entire CD collection in this format, for both quality and philosophical reasons.
Besides the Rio, there are two other HD based players that support Ogg/Vorbis, the iRiver H120 and the Neuros but I went with the Karma mostly because it's the smallest of the three, the price was right, and the sound is excellent.
The reason isn't Windows Media, battery life, drive space or unit size, it's something much more simple.
Sunlight.
I don't particularly think that screen technology is up to the standard required to watch a 3-4" TV screen outside on a bright, sunny day. Sure, transflective goes some way towards solving the problem, and might be tolerable on a PDA, but on a $400 device that's being sold as a viewer? If you're envisaging using this while sat on the bus, in the park or outside Starbucks think again - you aren't going to be able to see the screen very well if they're using current technology.
the player uses Microsoft's implementation of MPEG-4. As of this writing, the player only operates with Windows XP (which has Microsoft's full DRM capabilities), a sign of capitulation to the movie industry that wishes to put locks on how users view digital movies.
However:
can record video directly from the VCR's tuner
just hook the thing up to your computer on TV-out or your DVD player and record, no DRM problem.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
who wants to watch movies on a 2 inch screen????
Before you say pictures, supposedly it will have a color screen and yes you will be able to view pictures on it, just not movies.
Course this is all rumor, but you never know, we already DO know the next gen iPod will have encode on the fly and the ability to do color from leaked memos from the chip manufacturer.
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