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."

Comments

Not an iPod killer

[StraightTalkExpress]

There are several reasons this is not an iPod killer per se. Mostly because it does not beat the iPod in any of the areas in which the iPod excels: being a very small, very light, fairly durable, tightly enclosed music device with good battery life and a nice interface. MS's stuff is going to be necessarily larger, necesarily heavier, necesarily more precarious unless they ruggedize the HELL out of those LCDs and reinforce the plastic grating over the speaker. Battery life will probably be about the same as a portable DVD player, and if the interface is anything like Pocket Media Player, it's got NOTHING on the iPod.

In short: this looks like it has exactly the same features and price point as the device I traded in for my iPod, a Toshiba PocketPC. And just like the PocketPC, it'll have limited appeal which becomes even MORE limited when Joe Q. Fancydevice realizes how hard it is to get first run movies onto it...i mean, how fast can the processor be in these things and still keep battery life?

Still, competition is good for the industry. The market pressure will force Apple to make iTunes even better (and there's room for that). But I don't think they have too much to worry about...a bigass laptop wannabe is NOT in the same league as a tiny little music device.

Re:Not an iPod killer

[Timesprout]

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.

Re:Not an iPod killer

[kevlar]

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....

Re:No one can beat iPod

[stratjakt]

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..

Right approach

[coolsva]

iPod isn't popular because it can do a lot, rather, because it is simple to use and very limited in what it can do. But what I can do, it does it very well. I don't need 3 rocking buttons, 5 regular silver buttons, one jog dial having a zillion functions to play my music.
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?