Digital Home Thoughts: Thoughts On The LG PM70

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The PM70 represents the new flexibility afforded manufacturers with Portable Media Center 2.0 - the first generation of devices were largely homogeneous, all having roughly the same screen size and form factor. In fact, that was one of the primary complaints about the first generation PMCs: they were too big to be easily pocketable, but too small to really enjoy full-length movies on. Looking at LG's PM70, you can see a very different type of PMC. Although this device was announced at CES 2006 in January, there has been precious little information about it. In fact, the only official information from LG comes from a paragraph on their CES press release. Thankfully, I've had a bit of hands on time with this unit and other Web sites have dug up further details.

What Does It Offer?
First let's look at the specifications: the 30 GB hard drive is spacious enough, though it seems a bit small given the overall size of the unit. It's likely a price point issue - if LG put in a 60 GB drive, it would drive the cost up. I own a 30 GB Zen Vision:M and I've found the hard drive big enough to hold enough music and video to keep me entertained on trips. To put the size into perspective, LG says the 30 GB drive can hold 7500 songs, 3000 music videos, or 50 hours of TV/movies. The real shining feature of the PM70 is the 4.3 inch wide-screen display. It's huge compared to previous PMC units, and the quality is very high. Interestingly enough, it's QVGA (320 x 240 resolution). When I asked why none of the second generation units were VGA, I was told it largely came down to cost: VGA screens are very expensive, and it seems most manufacturers would rather put in a high quality QVGA screen than a poor quality VGA screen (witness the poor reviews of the Zen Vision with its cheap VGA screen). When I watched sample videos on the PM70, they looked great - strongly saturated, good colour, and crisp. That was on a pre-production unit, so hopefully the final shipping product has the same level of display quality. It also boasts stereo speakers, which is a nice touch if you're showing videos among small groups of people (one of my common PMC scenarios).

Here's something that will make a segment of the mobile multimedia crowd sit up and take notice: the PM70 includes the ability to record directly from external sources via a composite line-in cable. I wasn't able to find any specifics about the recording feature, nor was I able to test it in my brief hands-on time with the unit. I assume it's some sort of compressed MPEG recording, because I have yet to see shipping hardware that supports direct-to-WMV recording. I didn't see anything in the user interface to indicate it had a scheduling feature, so I think it may be more "on demand", as in when you want to record something you connect the unit and hit record. Myself, I've never needed a feature such as this, but I know it's important for the type of person that purchases an Archos unit. The PM70 also supports video out via composite cable, allowing you to connect the unit to a TV for watching videos or slideshows.More...

The Digital Camera Connection
One ability that the PM70 has that does interest me a great deal is the interaction with digital cameras. First, it has a SecureDigital card slot and the operating system allows the user to copy photos to the hard drive on the camera. This is ideal, because when I'm on vacation and doing a lot of photography, I tend to fill up my memory cards quickly - unfortunately, the unit only has an SD slot, not a CompactFlash slot, and my primary camera is CF-based. Given the size of the PM70, I'm certain LG could have put a CF slot in the unit, and included an adaptor to allow the use of SD cards as well. This problem is mitigated somewhat, however, by a USB camera input port. Again, I wasn't able to test this, but reports I've read indicate this port will allow the direct connection of a camera (perhaps using USB To Go?) and copying of memory card contents. This is less ideal than a CompactFlash card slot, because connecting the camera directly requires me to tote an extra cable, and uses up battery power on the camera, but it's better than nothing.

Online Service Compliant? Probably
The PM70 will undoubtedly be PlaysForSure compliant, meaning it will work with subscription services for movies (Vongo) and music (URGE, Napster, etc.). I haven't been able to test out Vongo, because it's a US-only service, but have heard good things about it - for $9.99 per month you can watch an unlimited amount of movies from their library. Similarly, URGE and Naspter offer subscription services at the $15 per month mark that allow the user to put as much music as they want onto their devices. Although subscription services have been slow to take off (people were accustomed to the iTunes model), I've seen increased interest in subscription services since URGE was announced. Myself, I still prefer to own my music outright, but I can definitely see the appeal in paying $15 a month to get unlimited music.

But Wait, There's More!
PMC 2.0 on LG's PM70 isn't just about entertainment though - they've included a text/PIM Viewer that has options for viewing email, contacts, calendar, and text. One would assume it would synchronize with Outlook, but again there's no hard facts because no one seems to have tested this feature and written about it online. I can only hope it works with Exchange servers - my Zen Vision:M has a "PIM sync" feature as well, but it only works with a traditional local Outlook PST file. Hosted Exchange is where it's at!

Something missing from previous PMC devices has been broad support for other audio and video file formats. Microsoft offers support for WMA and WMV (no surprises there!) but LG has added support for a who's who list of file formats, including WAV, OGG, DivX and Xvid. The latter two are particularly important, as DivX is a very popular consumer format - I've been using it myself lately, as the DivX encoding tools are very simple to use, unlike the convoluted Windows Media Encoder.

That All Sounds Good, But...
So the question is, where is this device? In researching this post, I discovered that the PM70 was originally slated for an end-of-year 2005 release, then an April 2006 release, and now it's "mid 2006". No price point has been set, but I'm guessing it would be in the $400 price range, give or take $50. The closer LG gets to $500 the less they'll sell - if the first generation PMCs taught us anything, it's that people are only willing to pay so much for these devices, and $500 is simply too expensive.

The LG PM70 looks like it could be a real winner in the portable media devices space, and I'm looking forward to seeing it finally released. For more photos and details, check out this excellent article by Steven Hughes from Boston Pocket PC.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, his sometimes obedient dog, and he wishes he had an LG PM70.