Media player battle
The appeal of carrying your media with you is not new. It began with the portable radio and (at the time) revolutionary walkman, and has been a venerable idea that has continued for almost forty years.
But while dedicated media players mainly focused on storing and playing back music, cell phones have been steadily challenging this market in recent years, offering higher capacities and more storage as well as dedicated music phones. It begs the question: why pay for a dedicated media player when you could simply use a cell phone for both?
In response, and in a bid to remain competitive, manufacturers of dedicated media players have been pushing their boundaries and adding an increasing range of features.
High definition video, Internet browsing, wireless access to home networks, games and access to an applications store has been added to the mix, offering a richer user experience than ever before.
With the recent introduction of brands such as iRiver and Archos to the South African market, consumers are now being offered a variety of choices.
Archos’s Internet Tablet 5 for example, with its five inch screen, doubles as a superb internet browser as well as portable personal video recorder (PVR). One of its closest competitors, Apple’s Touch, has far surpassed its original role of simply storing and playing back music. Instead, it has become a platform for a library of applications that extend the Touch’s functionality beyond that of the original iPods.
iRiver, on the other hand, has a slightly less ambitious flagship, in the form of its 4.3 inch P7, that caters for video, music, photo playback, recording and text. Creative’s flagship Portable Media Player (PMP), the Zen X-Fi has a slightly different approach, much like that of Microsoft’s Zune, with a stronger emphasis on wireless synchronization of media via one’s home network.
The latest news is that Sony’s Play Station Portable is set to receive a revamp in the coming months, with the PSP Go, that will most likely feature a more compact footprint and a slide out keyboard.
What each have in common with one another is that all sport larger screens and higher resolutions than their cell phone rivals, and most have storage capacities that range from between eight and two-hundred and fifty gigabytes. Whether this is sufficient to earn them a continued place in your pocket, only time, and your wallet will tell.
Mobile media players – which one do you think is best?
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