Oh! Gizmo

By Evan Ackerman

If your iPod Nano is too small for you, you should ask yourself why on Earth you bought an iPod Nano. You do know what “nano” means, right? It means “tiny,” except about a million times smaller. The iPod Nano Converter TV won’t solve your problem, but it will help mitigate it by enlarging the Nano’s screen up to 2.8 inches (after you shove it up inside) and playing audio through built in stereo speakers. As retro sexy as the TV/VCR combo styling is, its bulkiness does have the side effect of de-nanoing your Nano, and without any obvious Apple branding on the outside, you’ll probably start to ask yourself why you’re bothering to use this thing at all. It’s about $23, with free shipping.

[ iPod Nano Converter TV ] VIA [ RFJ ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Details are a little vague right now, but Akihabara News is reporting that the Cube 100HD portable media player not only supports 720P video content, but will actually pump out a 1080i signal to a connected hi-def display. Now I’m not entirely sure where the video-out connection is on this thing, given those 2 product shots cover pretty much every angle (minus the back I guess) so I’m going to assume it uses some proprietary break-out cable. Other features include a 5-inch WVGA (800×480) touchscreen display, FM tuner, e-Book reader and even basic flash game support. Pricing and availability are unknown though.

[ Akihabara News - Cube H100HD, the first PMP with 1080i video Out ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Dear hardware manufacturers and industrial designers. Adding an integrated carrying handle to your product does not necessarily make it portable. Now the fact that this media center includes everything from an 8-inch 16:9 LCD display, to a DVD player that supports most of today’s popular video file formats, to an NES emulator is all well and good, but it’s not like you’re going to carry this thing on the subway, or using it to watch a movie on your next flight. So maybe we should start reserving the term ‘portable’ for devices that are at least small enough to stash in a backpack, and terms like transportable or haulable for larger items like this. Thank-you once again Chinavasion. (~ $175)

[ Portable Digital Media Center ] VIA [ 7Gadgets ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’m not in the market for a portable DVD player, nor will I ever be, but were I forced to choose one I might lean towards the DCP951/37 (what’s with the slash?) from Philips. On one hand, the 640×220 resolution is pretty crappy, but on the other hand I really like the slide out dock that’s compatible with the iPod Touch, iPod Nano and the standard ‘big on storage, low on features’ iPod Classic. While the DCP951/37 has a DVD slot that can play almost every kind of standard-def video disc in existence, as well as an SD card slot for those all-important Divx files, being able to watch your iTunes video purchases on a larger 9-inch screen is a nice option.

Other features include MP3 support, 2 x 3.5mm stereo headphone jacks for sharing with a friend and a built-in LI-Polymer battery that’s rated for about 2.5 hours of playback. And you can pick one up from Amazon right now for a very reasonable $139.98.

[ Philips DCP951/37 Docking Entertainment System ] VIA [ GadgetGrid ]

By Evan Ackerman

There are about a bajillion semi-decent portable media players out there, and most of them are varying shades of “meh.” The ODYS MP X66-NEO (huh?) is no exception. It has a 2.8″ touchscreen, 8 gigs of memory, an FM tuner, does e-books, and has a microSD slot.

Oh, and it has a 1.3 megapixel camera that does stills and video.

Why? Well, because it can, and because the camera makes it different. Does it make it better? Probably not. And for what it does, I’d say the asking price of $125 is a bit steep, unless you desperately need another crappy little camera to carry around in addition to the crappy little camera you probably already have (and probably almost never use) on your cell phone. Hey, you know what else would make an MP3 player stand out from the crowd? A taser. Just you wait, it’s inevitable.

VIA [ AVING ]

By Evan Ackerman

The Clarion MiND (which I will herein capitalize as normal) is supposed to be a lot of things. It’s supposed to be a GPS, an internet tablet, a media player, and more… All stuffed into one sleek and portable package. It’s a brilliant idea, an idea that a lot of companies have been trying to make happen for a long time. So is this what the Clarion Mind is? A video explains it all, plus my review, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

Samsung’s YP-Q1 personal media player comes in 4, 18 or 16GB sizes and boasts such features as a Rhythmizer screensaver that syncs to your music, an audio upscaler that restores higher frequencies lost when your music is converted to MP3 or WMA, playback speed control without pitch shifting and a text to speech converter for listening to text-based files. And I have to say, it’s refreshing to see a company not caught up in the whole “let’s make it as small as we can” mentality.

[ Samsung YP-Q1 ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Samsung announced their P3 touch-screen portable media player at their press conference yesterday, but the only unit they had on hand at the time had a dead battery. Thankfully their booth had a small collection of them on display this morning, and I got to spend a few minutes playing around with it and snapped a couple of photos; though apparently that was a big no-no. Oh well. The P3 comes in 4, 8, 16 and 32GB capacities and features a 16:9, 3-inch WQVGA touch screen with Samsung’s EmoTure touch interface plus haptic feedback. In other words, it vibrates in response to certain button presses.

The die-cast metal housing comes in silver or black matte finishes, and like most touch-screen devices, the screen collects more fingerprints than a CSI. (As is apparent in the photos I took.) It’s also got an FM tuner and a voice recorder, and for some reason it can connect to a mobile phone over bluetooth and be used to answer calls. Not really sure why though. But the feature that Samsung was really pushing at their press conference (and another ‘CES2009 buzzword’) was the P3’s widgets. This includes touch-friendly mini-apps like a calendar, world clocks and games, but the ones they had running at the booth were kind of lame. You see that mini-gingerbread man? When you touch him he breaks up like a shattered cookie, and then resets. Hopefully that’s not as good as it gets, but with no wi-fi, it’s not like you’ll be downloading new ones every day. The UI however was rather nice, if a bit slow, and if you’re looking for an alternative to something like the iPod Touch, you can get your hands on the P3 sometime in the first half of 2009.

By Andrew Liszewski

Even if it only gave you a couple of months worth of entertainment before it crapped out, I’d still be tempted to pick up one of these cheap, $46-47 PMPs from Chinavasion for the simple fact that they’ve gone the extra couple of yards to include an NES emulator. On the audio/video side of things it supports MP3, WAV, WMA, 3GP and AVI files which are displayed on a 2.4-inch, 320×240 TFT LCD, or on an external monitor with the included set of AV cables. And I assume the same functionality exists for the built-in NES emulator. There’s also a 1.3 megapixel camera which can be used for capturing stills or 3GP videos, an FM radio, a standard sized headphone jack and a miniSD card slot. (Up to 2GB sizes supported.)

[ MP4 Handheld NES Emulator 2.4 Inch Screen + AV Out - 2GB ] VIA [ PMP Today ]