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What A Portable Media Center Might Look Like
An anonymous reader writes "From the Redmond's answer to iPOD dept... While wandering the exhibitor aisles at Embedded DevCon, we were drawn to this slick looking reference design board in the Freescale (formerly Motorola Semiconductor) booth. The Portable Media Player Reference Design, a.k.a. "Jazz", is based on a Freescale i.MX21 embedded processor, runs Windows CE, and is compliant with Microsoft's Portable Media Center (PMC) standard. PMCs, Microsoft's answer to the iPOD, will initially support digital music and videos, digitally recorded television shows, and digital photos."
I dont think this is designed to complete with the iPod at all. Looks like they are trying to create a whole new device market here.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Why would a media player from MS be "necessarily larger, necessarily heavier, necessarily more precarious." All you'd have to do is buy a iPod and look at it and you'd have an idea what has to be done. The iPod was cool, but its not like you have to be a rocket scientist to understand it.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
iPod is #1 because of marketing, pure and simple. They're selling a branded lifestyle, not electronics.
Designer jeans don't cost so much more because they're necessarily better, or of a higher quality construction, etc..
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Until the size, weight, and power consumption of screens that display video and photos are both reduced, and show an increase in quality, I don't believe that a device such as this will win out over the Ipod. It will be either too bulky, or it's screen will be too small for any real use, or the batteries won't last an acceptable amount of time, or a million other problems. Sometimes it's better just to do one thing, and do it well, than to try to do many things, and do all poorly.
Before everyone gets in an uproar over the word 'Microsoft', remember that this device simply follows the standard Microsoft created.
It's based on an ARM processor, so should this device ever take off, the ARM Linux port could easily be customized to take advantage of all the features.
This could also be used as a MP3/video player for your living room stereo and TV, connected to the server via the built in ethernet.
Also, if you look carefully at this larger view, notice the device could make a really cool portable gaming device. Imagine running MAME on this...
Of course, if Linux were loaded on the device we would not need to worry about silly things such as DRM (included in the Microsoft specification.)
This isn't supposed to compete with the iPod. The LCD screen alone is the size of a PocketPC screen, but has incredible resolution, so much to the point where you look at it and you FEEL like you're looking at a much larger high-res screen. (I am speaking from personal experience).
Yes it plays MP3's, VCD's, etc etc and uses hard drives for storage (they might have a CF version, I don't recall), but its definately not an iPod competitor based on its dimensions alone. It is still _VERY_ cool, and I wonder if their intention is to turn this into some sort of Game Boy Advanced device a-la XBox Embedded or something to that effect. That would be pretty cool....
It seems to me that this has got to be an all time low point for announcements of innovation in consumer electronics. Why? Maybe its because of the down turn in the tech-market means new products are not being developed. Another possibility is that microsoft's moves into hardware production(x box,phones) and Hardware specification (palladium, watches, media player, smartScreens) is having a chilling effect on the electronics industry. Recently they (allegedly) tried bankrupt a phone maker and move his technology to a competitor. Shades of Stacker and all the other software companies microsoft co-opted, ruined then bought their technology.
There is little doubt that MS stifled innovation in software. Just the fact that jobs could tweak an open source project to tripple the speed of a web browser over IE, when IE has had a clear field to innovate for five years or more, speaks volumes about the MS innovation stifle field. How could apple even dream they could technologically beat MS in the Power point market, but they did.
Does anyone else find these MS offerings utterly tepid compared to Apple innovation the day before?
M$ gates announces a recylced idea for a portable that shows sport scores, headlines, and plays RIAA/MPAA approved media. The debut the smartScreen, a 1500$ screen-only that hooks to your compute by wi-fi but cant play movies or mp3s, then they announce that anyone who already bought was is out of luck since that they will be changing the specs to use 802.11a to get better bandwidth for movies. then an oversized so-called "video" ipod that also cant show DVD movies, for more bucks than a ipod.
The only thing I thought was interesting was that they decided to switch to 802.11a for the smartScreens and not 802.11g. I dont know much about these standards except what Jobs said. 802.11a is dead, because it is not backwards compatible with 802.11b hotspots whereas 802.11g is.
How is it possible that one company can lead the entire market year after year going back all the way to the taming of dynamic memory. While the other company can lead the bussiness world and innovate nothing.
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Walkman, before this, was popular not because it offered equalizer (it didnt), radio (initially, it didnt), multiple headphone jacks etc. It was popular because it was simple.
If you want to make a iPod killer, make a device that is simple to use, good 'OS' (that has AI like remember my favorites and gives them priority in random mode), practical capacity (not insane sizes like 40GB, who has or wants 10,000 songs on their palm?).
Oh, it also has to look cool and not be a commodity. And, did I say, no DRM?
MS has decided to build a video player with a big, color LCD screen. This is what makes the larger size and weight necessary, while simultaneously making the device more fragile and limiting battery life.
No offence, but that's the price you pay for using a fringe format. I mean if you want something supported by everyone use mp3. I fell in love with ogg vorbis early on. No matter what quality I used in mp3 the trebble always had problems. So I went to ogg vorbis and was very happy with the result. I also had to accept the fact that hacking ogg vorbis into my iBook was less than ideal, and I would probably never get support on most devices - but I still like ogg vorbis better.
Does it come with a magnifying lens so I can see what's happening when I play my TV shows and videos? Maybe it's just me, but I find that any video screen smaller than about 10" is completely unwatchable. To make matters worse, mobile video is even more difficult to see on the go because of the variations in ambient light intensity and the jostling motion of walking/commuting/etc.
These mini-video players look like a poor solution to a non-problem.
While thinking philosophically, we see problems in places where there are none. -Wittgenstein
Jazz is also a MIDI sequencer. Naming issues?