Archos is already the king of the portable media player (PMP) market but it feels there’s a place for tiny, and cheap, PMPs too.
The Archos 105 certainly fits the bill, with a small 1.8in OLED display and 2GB of storage crammed into a chassis that measures 1.8 x 3.3 x 0.3in. I guess that means that the A1 from Thomson is no longer the smallest PMP on the planet.
It’s fair to say that you won’t be getting pristine visuals from the 160 x 128 pixel display but it is diverting nonetheless. The display supports 262,000 colours and the 105 will play WMV files at 25fps.
On the audio front it will play MP3, WMA, Protected WMA and WAV files. And don’t forget, it’s only going to cost around £55 when it lands next month in black, red and white flavours.-Martin Lynch
[Archos Lounge]
PMP music MP3 movies
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French TV maker Humax is no stranger to combo devices and is one of the pioneers of cramming personal video recorders (PVRs) into skinny TVs.
The company has now announced two additions to the range, the 40in LP40-TDR1and the 32in LP32-TDR1, both sporting generous 160GB hard disk drives and twin digital TV tuners so there’s no need for a separate set-top box or recorder.
What’s better is that they are both Freeview Playback-certified, which means they include a number of cool features that Sky+ subscribers already get – just without the subscription fees. These include one-touch recording, pause and rewind live TV, recording and watching separate channels and Series Linking, which lets you easily record an entire series.
The Humax TVs can display 720p and 1080i content and feature picture-in-picture and dual-screen modes. The prices are very keen too with the 32in and 40in models priced at £800 [with free glass stand] and £1,150.
The downside – and it’s a real shame – is that the they only come with one measly HDMI slot.-Martin Lynch
[Humax]
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A couple of years ago you’d have been hard pressed to find the DivX logo on any kind of electronics device but now it’s on over 100 million of them. Not bad, considering certification only started four years ago.
The DivX logo represents the DivX video compression standard used to shrink really fat DVD and other video files into much smaller, manageable and not completely mangled video files for playback on DVD players, portable devices etc. Despite the shrinkage, DivX does a good job of retaining quality.
According to the company, the 100 million devices are comprised of more than 2,500 individual products ranging from DVD players, DVD-recorders, portable DVD players, digital still cameras, mobile handsets and in-car devices. It claimed that 32% of all DVD players sold globally now support DivX playback.
The company is now working to certify a new generation of products, including set-top boxes, HD devices and mobile phones, among others. The more the merrier, I say.-Martin Lynch
[DivX]
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Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
