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Gadgets Acer iPod Video Contender
Brandon Hill (Blog) - February 27, 2006 7:05 AM

8 comment(s) - last by mechwarrior198.. on Feb 27 at 9:47 PM

Acer beats Apple to the punch with a touch screen portable media player

Acer appears to be taking a page out of Apple's book and is releasing its own touch screen based portable media player. The Acer MP-500 comes complete with 3.5” touch screen and a rather meager screen resolution of 320x240 -- basically what you get on a Windows Mobile 2005 based PDA.

The 7 ounce unit can be equipped with either a 20GB or 40GB hard drive and can operate for as long as 4 hours when playing back video and up to 8 hours when only audio is being played. Supported audio formats include WMA, MP3 and AAC. It is not known what video formats are supported, but one would expect MPEG, AVI, ASF and WMV support among others.

Acer is certainly not the only one in the ultraportable market. Microsoft recently leaked details of the Origami project, Nokia is working on a successor to the 770 tablet and Apple certainly isn't twiddling its thumbs either. If last year was the year of making these devices as small as possible, 2006 looks like it could easily be the year of the video shootoff.

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Similar to PDAs

By plewis00 on 2/27/2006 7:27:01 AM , Rating: 3

Given what these actually are I'm really surprised no-one has actually gotten a Windows-powered PDA and bolted a 2.5" (or 1.8") hard disk in the back of it with a high capacity battery. With a large flash buffer and low-power but high-speed ARM CPUs, these could last a fair while but also offer good organisation capabilities. My PDA has always been good enough for watching videos on but transferring and transcoding them has always been an arse (as well as storage limits). This would of course allow for upgradeable codecs and the like. It could even be offered in a transparent-mode so the user never saw the Windows interface. I would actually not be surprised if this is what the Acer device is. I think the only thing PDAs are missing the is the TV-out option, so hopefully these media players will rectify this.

RE: Similar to PDAs

By astrodemoniac on 2/27/2006 8:27:47 AM , Rating: 2

That's a great idea you have there. I mean, the PDA would be almost perfect:

Movie capability with large storage and battery life
Audio
GPS
Organizational funtions
Connectivity to phones and hotspots
Decent size

I'd be happy to pay a good 500-600 dollars for a device that could do all that :)

Parent

RE: Similar to PDAs

By Johnmcl7 on 2/27/2006 9:34:52 AM , Rating: 3

Archos had the right idea:

http://www.archos.com/products/ip_centric/pma_400/...

I was hoping this would 'inspire' other companies to release similar devices but sadly not, a PDA with 1.8 inch or 2.5 HD seems ideal on the back of a mobile PVR.

John

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RE: Similar to PDAs

By plewis00 on 2/27/2006 12:48:34 PM , Rating: 3

Thanks - I was going to dabble with hooking up a hard disk to my PDA (HP iPaq H4150) but am not sure about the logistics of it and the time it would take. I think you have about the right amount of connectivity suggested there. I don't feel the need for a phone to be built-in and to be honest, I think the GPS could be left out too (use a Bluetooth one). So long as it offered Bluetooth as a minimum and maybe WiFi it would be fine.

Anything below about 300g in weight including battery would be passable. I'd probably take a 3.5-4" touchscreen (QVGA is adequate), under 1" thick and TV-out would do it. Of course, if it is going in your pocket all the time, under 200g would be more ideal.

Can only hope...

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RE: Similar to PDAs

By mechwarrior1989 on 2/27/2006 9:47:00 PM , Rating: 2

The only problem I see with bolting on a 2.5" or 1.8" harddisk would be the size of the device would be increased substantially. And also battery life would be decreased, especially if you're constantly accessing the HD. The Dell Axim X51v is already pretty darn big, I don't expect there'd be too much more space in that thing, though if you add a 4 or 8gb microdrive it makes a pretty nice media device. Yet once again, battery life is an issue that must be dealt with.

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320x240 ?

By foolish501 on 2/27/2006 7:25:15 AM , Rating: 3

Why bother bringing out a PMP that only has a 320x240 screen. Computers like MSI & Creative have had players out for several years now, so it's not big news.

Surely using the VGA screens like used on the Axim X50v would be much better.

How is this taking a leaf out of Apple's book?

By Johnmcl7 on 2/27/2006 7:24:32 AM , Rating: 2

This seems much more like an Archos device rather than an Ipod, specifically the PMDA 430.

John

Motorola is working on a successor to the 770 tablet?

By tomaal on 2/27/2006 11:57:00 AM , Rating: 2

I think it means Nokia, since they produce the 770. Or maybe they mean working on a rival?
Whatever they mean, theres plenty of operating systems and ways of making one of these, its just noone wants to be the first to come up with a hideously expensive and limited functionality Personal Video Player. Not when you can pick up a personal DVD player for ~£70 on the highstreet.