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This week at the IFA Consumer electronics fair in Berlin, Creative launched their new supersmall creditcard sized media player, the Zen. With a width of 8.3 cm, 5.5cm high and measly 1.13cm thickness, it still manages to pack from 4/8/16gb internal memory and an SD card slot, making it upgradable to a total of whopping 32gb (counting the new Toshiba 16gb cards coming out soon). As if this wasnt enough, it packs a 2.5", 16.7 million color capable 320x240 bright tft screen..... and the real news is.... not only does it do Radio, voicerecordings, a calendar, but it is Itunes compatible my friends. Yes, the Zen does Aac4. Heres the list of formats it supports : Audio- MP3, WMA, AAC4 (.m4A), WAV (ADPCM), Audible 2,3,4. Video- MJPEG, WMV9, MPED4-SP3, DivX3 4/5 and XviD3. Wauv... thats what i call every Indiekids dream. Get it everywhere soon. 149$ for the 4gb, 199$ for 8gb and 299$ for 16gb, aint bad.
Also check out the Cnet.com Review video here
It seems (obviously) that the original Sony Bravia ad (with the colorful bouncing balls) over the years has inspired quite a bit of commercial progress when it comes to Tv-ads. Doing things, in a bit more imaginative, childish and hands on way (adding special effects ofcourse). I can only state, that from my personal point of view, its a delite to see more and more groundbreaking and not to forget lovely ways of making tv more exciting. Take a Ford..... some balloons.... and some music from the movie Donnie Darko..... and you instantly have a succesful tv ad.....right? Im not even into new cars (or cars in general for that matter)... but this commercial just like the latest Nissan Qashqai ad, is nothing less than fantastic.
Check it out. Cute huh?:
The new Iriver unit2. What is it and where to even begin? Its a dvd/cd player stereo with a massive 7" display. A display that doubles as a Portable media player supporting Divx, Xvid, mp3, photos etc.. Its wifi at its coolest, its a tv, its a widget (or hostage taker of widgets atleast)...... Its highend design wrapped in "Wauv".... and its all remote controlled with a delicious remote (standard remote on outside, Qwerty keyboard flips out from the inside). Bang & Olufsen eat your heart out, Apple cry your eyes out..... This is what the good life is all about (ehhh... the tech fetish part of it anyway).
As mentioned above, the huge 7" display comes of, claiminig a life os its own as a very nifty media player.
When the display/pmp is of the unit, the speakers slide together, melting into a new smaller unit, so to speak.
The remote doubles as a "standard" remote, but also folds out revealing the qwerty keyboard inside. Crisp, clean, nice big squary buttons, for your punching pleasure.
Along the unveiling of these fantastic pics, iriverfans forum suggests that 2 other units - unit 2a and 2b (3 and 4?) are in the process aswell.
Im seriously stoked about this general direction that Iriver has managed to thread. This is bright and refreshing news for, not just the design commuity, but also for consumer electronics in general. One can only guess that maybe a smaller device will be joining aswell, maybe one that doubles as a remote (which Iriver have done before). Enjoy the pics. Spread the good news.
As promised in my earlier posts about the Commodore Gravel series, i would follow up on the last of their devices, the c200. It is in the wild, and apparently available for preorder in the Netherlands already. The Gravel C200, is the smallest of all the players in their wonderful new Gravel series. The specs for the C200 is, 1.8" Oled screen, 1/2 gb capacity, Wifi capable, playing up to 18 hours of music and 2 hours of video, supporting all possible formats from Divx, Xvid, Mpeg2, Mpeg4, Wmv, mp3, mp4, Wav, Wma, Jpg, Gif, and Bmp. The 2gb version is currently available for preorder thru Dutch Misco for 125euro/170$. A bit steep, but pressumably not the "real" price, since its preorder. And if you didnt know already, the Gravel devices is a big part of Commodores fullscale attack on not just music and film sharing/shopping services, Television but also social networking (apparently). One could say from the rumours, that what Commodore is approaching with their Commodore world and its Gravel series along it, is a mix of Apple Tv/Tivo crossbreeding with Joost and Myspace. I am very excited about that. Very excited.
Check out Commodore world of Gravel here : Commodoreworld and the Gravel c200´s Commodore profile here : Gravel C200.
