Looks like ginormous SSDs aren’t the only products PQI’s been cranking out of late, as the firm’s latest DAP was showing off its sparkle at Computex. The JoyTone U820 features a glossy black exterior, 1.5-inch 128 x 128 resolution LCD, ID3 tag support, MP3, WMA, and SMV playback, a photo viewer, digital voice recorder, and USB connectivity.
Unsurprisingly, there was no word as to when the U820 would find its way from the show floor onto store shelves, but as you already know, more pictorial delight awaits you after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’d been wondering when you’d ever hear anything more about Meizu’s M6 Second Edition PMP, today’s your lucky day. Looks like it’ll officially sport a seven-millimeter thick enclosure, support MPEG4, MPEG2, WMV9, H.263/264, and RM(VB) movies at 720 x 480 resolution (30fps, too), and include TV out for piping multimedia to your tube.
Additionally, the viewing angles have been improved and the screen size was bumped up a mere 0.01-inches (huzzah?), and we’re told that it can purportedly last 30 solid hours playing back music or between 3 to 5 hours when watching videos. The bad news, however, is that the August ship date has slipped to Q4, and we’re warned that even that may end up falling through. Way to test our patience, Meizu.
[Via MeizuMe]
Not too long after Belkin threw its name in the iPhone accessory hat, the company has now introduced a number of replacement iPod docks and charging kits. The $49.99 F8Z126 Power Dock AV is essentially a basic silver iPod dock that sports USB connectivity and AV output in order to pipe multimedia to your television set, while the vanilla $34.99 F8Z122 Power Dock strips itself of any video exporting abilities.
On the charging side, the $34.99 F8Z152 Charging Kit for iPod consists of an AC outlet to dock connector cable, USB cable, and a cigarette adapter for road trippin’, while the $24.99 F8Z121 Power Adapter for iPod offers up just the AC adapter for those strange moments when you can’t seem to locate a spare USB port. All four units should be available any moment here in the US, while launches in Asia, Europe, and Australia will be following soon.
[via engadget]
Just got official word from SanDisk that they’re putting the Sansa View on ice, at least for the time being. A rep we spoke with told us that SanDisk has, “decided to re-scope the product, so we’ll not be bringing it to market this year.” Apparently they’re still committed to the portable media player market, but that, “the market is changing fast and furious and we want to shift our efforts to develop a PMP that will meet the needs of the market versus pushing out the wrong product. So we’re taking another look.”
It’s disappointing that we won’t be seeing their take on a widescreen flash-based portable video player, but we’ll give ‘em points for at least being upfront about the sitch — and for realizing that it’s better not to release a product at all than to release one that offers a sub-standard experience. Usually when an electronics company kills a product before launch like this they just try and pretend like it never existed in the first place and hope that nobody notices that it never came out.
[via engadget]
Korea sure loves ‘em some convergence, and few homegrowns can top Cowon when it comes to packing audio, video, SatNav, and mobile TV into a single sleek device. No suprise then to find Cowon’s L2 packing enough acronyms to choke a middle-manager: FM radio, DMB TV, 7-inch TFT LCD with PIP, SiRF Star III GPS, and support for JPG, BMP, PNG, MP3, WAV, ASF, WMA, MPEG-4 media stored in the 2GB of built-in storage or SD card expansion.
Unfortunately, it’s only capable of a weak sauce 432 × 240 pixel resolution scattered across that big 7-inch display. Hey, what were you expecting, 1080p — oh, right. Fully configured for 299,000 or about $322 when these hit K-town on June 5th.
[Via Akihabara News]
Even in this age of slim, lightweight televisions, few consumers short of bored bodybuilders would want to have to lift one whenever they needed to, say, change the channel. (Hence the remote control remains as popular today as it was 20 years ago.) But the iPod is a different story. For all the lawsuits targeted at Apple for iPod-related consumer complaints, none has alleged a strained back or pulled groins caused by Apple’s miniature media machine. (Indeed, this has held true in spite of past rumors from credible sources that Apple has been working on a giant iPod.)
Nevertheless, as close a companion as many iPods are, there are times when they aren’t packed in our pockets. Since they can hold months’ worth of music, hard drive-based units in particular can serve as the main music library in the home in any number of ways — with one-piece or, more recently, a variety of separate speaker docking speakers, through add-on docks for receivers or home theater-in-a-box systems from popular home audio companies, or via standalone media docks such as the Kensington Entertainment Dock and DLO HomeDock and HomeDock Deluxe (which added a Media Center-like television user interface).
Further taking advantage of this new role, USB remote pioneer Keyspan and iPod accessory veteran DLO have released new remote-controlled docks — the $179 TuneView and the $129 HomeDock Music Remote. What separates these new arrivals from earlier efforts such as previous AV docks from DLO and Kensington is that they have screens that can be used for track display and navigation — a simpler slice of Sonos.
The tiny DLO remote includes a razor-sharp OLED display that would shame many neon signs, but is confined to only four lines. The Keyspan remote, on the other hand, has a color LCD larger than the iPod nano’s. Its color scheme, menu structure and screen layout more closely mimics that of the iPod itself. Both products use RF signals so that they can work without clear line-of-sight to the dock. Neither, however, includes a scroll wheel, relying on directional arrows for their navigation. Read the rest of this entry »
It may not seem like all that much given Apple’s recent announcement that it’s sold 100 million iPods, but Microsoft seems to be content with the one million Zunes it has sold so far (or will have sold by the end of June), which meets the sales target set at the Zune’s launch.
That tidbit of information comes from Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, who told the San Francisco Chronicle that the company has sold "a little over a million Zunes," reportedly giving it a 10% share in the hard disk-based player category.
While Bach sees that as a "good start" he admits that the Zune hasn’t quite gotten as social as the company would like, saying that "when your installed base is a million, the benefits of sharing, frankly, aren’t as wide as we hope to see in the future." Unfortunately, Bach didn’t get very specific about any future Zune plans, choosing instead to talk up the pink and watermelon-colored Zunes, which’ll surely make all the difference.
[Via Zune-Online.com, thanks Nate W]
While not quite as wildly popular as iPod sound systems, you shouldn’t have any trouble locating an iPod mixer these days, but Bird Electron is aiming to give you yet another interesting option. The retro-styled micro mixer DJ-4 sports a minuscule stainless steel enclosure, a couple of electric guitar volume knobs, two 3.5-millimeter auxiliary inputs, and a 3.5millimeter stereo output.
Of course, the iPod inclusion is more of a marketing gimmick than anything, as the company itself admits that any audio source can be used without issue. Regardless, this nifty (albeit limited) device should hit the Japanese market next week for ¥9,600 ($79).
[Via Impress]
Meizu CEO revealed today in a forum post that the Meizu M6 Mini Player SE announced late 2006 is finally in progress. The M6 SE is identical to the M6 in everything except thickness, it’s expected to be a mere 7mm thin – the same thickness as Meizu’s most recent offering, the Music Card.
Currently, it looks as if only a 8GB version will be produced and sold at 999 CNY (approx. $130 USD) August this year.
While we’re still trying to figure out whether the SE stands for Special Edition or Second Edition, Chinese Meizu fans have been speculating about the M6 SE, predicting that the SE will use the same firmware as vanilla M6, that the current 700mAh battery will be swapped for a smaller 500mAh battery and that internal wirings will need reworking.
Thanks to member xx-c for the find.
[Via Meizu BBS]
