[tab:Intro][flagallery gid=1 name="CrunchGear Gift Guide 2009"] The common portable media player has a tough existence. It’s expected to handle many tasks well, while being rugged enough to withstand daily (ab)use. It’s expected to look nice, it’s expected to provide more-than-decent battery life, and it’s expected to provide a simple enough interface that it can be… → Read More
Sometime in the past two weeks I decided, with some thought being put into is, to buy a Zune HD. Why, I don’t know; I thought it looked neat, and I was thoroughly unimpressed with the new iPods Apple showed off at that Rock and Roll event. For the most part the Zune HD is, indeed, neat. Its user interface is miles ahead of the iPod’s, and, with a little forethought, can be used rather effectively… → Read More
It’s expected that the European Commission will pass legislation that will require manufacturers to include a noise limiter on portable media players. This is being done, of course, because listening to said devices at extraordinarily loud volume levels is quite dangerous; up to 10 percent of users are in danger totally destroying their hearing by keeping the players on too loud. → Read More
The “anybody but iPod” crowd has another portable media player to choose from, and it’s from Samsung. It’s called the R1, and it’s your standard issue touchscreen PMP. It does play Divx-encoded video, which should be a benefit to those of you who haven’t moved into Blu-ray rips, or who enjoy watching standard-def rips of TV shows on the subway. → Read More
In the interest of helping you kill time at work or school, we present this gadget from the Far East that you’ll never own. It’s the Cube H100HD, a portable media player that does something no other one can do: it outputs video at 1080i. Now, 1080i is about as impressive as an elephant wearing a tutu—it’ll make you say, “Hmm, interesting,” but it won’t change your outlook on life. That’s… → Read More
The guys and dolls over at iSuppli have taken apart one of those new iPod Shuffles—you know, the one that talks to you—and have estimated the total cost of components to be $21.77; the iPod Shuffle retails for $79. Setting aside the additional costs of the little music player, such as industrial design and programming, that represents only 28 percent of its retail price. The rest… → Read More
Manchester United won the Carling Cup, which is primarily a little-valued “bonus” trophy handed out in England, yesterday. Great, good for them; go for the quadruple for all I care. More importantly to us here, however, is the revelation that the team’s goalkeeper, Ben Foster, used an iPod to help his team win. → Read More
Microsoft’s Steve Balmer doesn’t know if the Zune is coming or going. The portable media player hasn’t knocked the iPod off its perch in its two-year run, and now Balmer recognizes that it may never. → Read More
Round two of eliminate the fluff, Samsung edition! This time, we’re looking at the Korean corp’s P3 portable media player. This time around it’s got a touchscreen, with haptics thrown in for good measure. → Read More
What’s the most annoying part of your favorite gadget, be it your laptop, your phone or your portable media player? In fact, what do they all have in common? Here’s one vote for terrible battery life. (I have a cheap-o Philips digital audio player whose battery lasts, I think, 27 seconds before dying.) So here’s hoping that Energizer’s new zinc air battery, to debut at CES… → Read More
Did you hear the news? MySpace is thinking about creating its own portable media player! Reuters seems to think that such a player would be in competition with the iPod, which we all know is a lie: there’s the iPod WAY UP HERE, then everything else WAY DOWN THERE. If anything, the MySpace player would be in competition with Zune and Sansa—you know, the “other” portable media… → Read More
Let’s not spend a second longer on this than we need to. The “Zune Tattoo Guy”—right up there with Magellan, I tell you—got mad at Microsoft’s handling of the Zune, so he elected to obscure his original Zune tattoo. He now has this delightful “Evil Dick Cheney” tattoo. We wish the man well on his future endeavors. → Read More
Fans of Creative should get themselves ready for an exciting September 17. Why’s that? Well, that picture certainly alludes to something. Creative has been sending out special media invites for an event on September 17. The above picture clearly features an X-Fi logo. Whether that means Creative will unveil a new line of PMPs, or, who knows, an iPod dock (oh God, not another one!)… → Read More
After about a half-year break from making anything substantial, the well-rested Cowon has just announced two new portable media players. The S9, seen above, will be primarily geared towards light portable computing and more with a 3.3-inch 480×272 AMOLED display, 500 MHz dual-core CPU (Atom, possibly?), capacitive touchscreen, TV-out, voice recorder, digital TV (T-DMB), Bluetooth, and… → Read More
Get ready for the next generation of Archos portable media players. A banner on the company’s Web site reads “Coming up soon…” There’s zero info other than that, and why would there be? It’s not like Archos fans don’t like to know the company’s plans from A to Z, right? via DAPreview.net → Read More
Is this what the new iPod nano will look like? So says iLounge, a site that doesn’t really deal in nonsense rumors. Apple is keen to incorporate a larger screen in this year’s nano, but the only way to do that is by using a form factor like the one pictured here. Sorta reminds you of the old iPod mini, right? The screen would have the same 1.5:1 aspect ratio as the iPhone and iPod… → Read More
We eagerly await to hear what “perfection” sounds like. That is to say, we eagerly await to try out the Creative Zen X-Fi, a series of portable media players with built-in Wi-Fi. Aside from the usual set of features from every PMP ever, the Wi-Fi is used to instant message your dumb friends, presumably about what music you’re listening to or what video you’re watching right now. So… → Read More
Samsung will release later in the year, maybe, the P3, a haptic, touchscreen portable media player in the vein of the iPod touch. There’s quite literally no other information about the player, which is why you’ll see comparisons to the Korea-based corp’s $700 W420 cellphone. Oh. I graduated yesterday. That is all. via PMP Today → Read More
Something called the Microsoft Zune 80 (wasn’t that an ABA team, the New Orleans Zune?) was released in the color red a few months ago, but you had to purchase it from the Zune Originals online store, which added tacky artwork to the backside. Seems now, however, you’ll be able to find it in normal retail stores. Still $250. via Zune Insider → Read More
[photopress:pmphearing.jpg,full,center] Teens don’t give a damn about losing their hearing as a result of listening to their portable media player too loudly. That’s the conclusion of a Dutch study published in the March Journal of Pediatrics, which says that kids willingly crank their PMPs to the loudest volume level despite knowing how harmful it can be. The researchers suggest users… → Read More
I would have preferred that Polaroid just ran itself into the ground making the same exact Polaroid film cameras and cartridges, but someone got ambitious over there and now they’re getting into the business of making just about everything. Coming soon is a new PMP, and believe it or not, they didn’t call it the PMPeroid, which would have sold so many. The PMP itself sports a… → Read More
Really, there’s nothing I like better than writing about something when only the most basic information is known. Take this Hacha PC20 PMP. I can tell you that it has a 3-inch screen and that it’s fairly slim at 7.7mm. So I’ll save you from all the clever witticisms and just leave you with one more picture. → Read More
Portable digital video recorders are becoming an essential item in any traveling video geek’s arsenal. But Archos and Cowon aren’t the only companies pimping PMPs that help you pirate time- and place-shift your favorite TV shows and movies. The Blue Raven MediaMate 7000 sports a 7-inch widescreen LCD and up to 80GB of storage, as well as a $429.95 price ($379 for the 40GB model) that… → Read More
Over in the mythical land of Korea, Atree’s got a rather suave-looking portable media player—the UJ10—that lets its design do the talking. That’s because the feature set is fairly basic: it plays the big audio formats like MP3; MPEG-4 and WMV9 videos; JPEGs and other picture formats; FM radio and DMB-TV. That last one means that it’s Korea-only. Boo. The 2.2-inch… → Read More
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