Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Apex MP-2000 Portable Media Player
Posted by James Fee in "ARTICLE" @ 11:00 AM
"From out of no where Apex Digital, Inc. has just announced that they will be entering the Portable Media Player market and will have a device ready for consumers to purchase as early as next month. TWICE reports that the $399 Apex MP-2000 "can be used to play video and music transferred from a PC or copied directly from a TV, DVR, VCR, DVD player or stereo system. The device stores audio and video on a 1.8-inch 20GB HDD. Digital still images and video can be viewed on its 3.5-inch 320 by 260 color LCD screen. Audio can be heard through stereo headphones or the device's single mono speaker.
People can use the device to view recorded video when they're on the road, but they can also plug it into a TV to display video or still images on a friend's TV. The device won't play Macrovision-protected prerecorded video, but it is upgradable to support DRMs that authorized movie-download sites it might support in the future, Brothers said."
No matter what Steve Jobs says, video would seem to be the next important feature on Portable Media Players (note to Steve - the word media has replaced MP3 to describe these devices). Of course this unit plays all the important media types (including WMP9 which should add this player to Jason's list of approved devices). BUT what is really intriguing is the ability to encode and save 640X480 video for playback on TVs. The 20GB hard drive can store up to 40 hours of MPEG-4 video at 640X480 and 80 hours of WMV at 640X480. Battery is rated at 12 hours for music and four hours for video. Apex also hopes to offer improved units with bigger screen sizes and larger hard drive capacity.
People can use the device to view recorded video when they're on the road, but they can also plug it into a TV to display video or still images on a friend's TV. The device won't play Macrovision-protected prerecorded video, but it is upgradable to support DRMs that authorized movie-download sites it might support in the future, Brothers said."
No matter what Steve Jobs says, video would seem to be the next important feature on Portable Media Players (note to Steve - the word media has replaced MP3 to describe these devices). Of course this unit plays all the important media types (including WMP9 which should add this player to Jason's list of approved devices). BUT what is really intriguing is the ability to encode and save 640X480 video for playback on TVs. The 20GB hard drive can store up to 40 hours of MPEG-4 video at 640X480 and 80 hours of WMV at 640X480. Battery is rated at 12 hours for music and four hours for video. Apex also hopes to offer improved units with bigger screen sizes and larger hard drive capacity.
