At the heart of the compact box is a 120GB 2.5-inch hard drive, capable of storing many hours of HD content in MPEG 2, WMV9HD, or DiVX formats. The tiny box has outputs for component video and coax digital audio, but doesn’t offer HDMI at this point. Regardless, those outputs should satisfy most of us with a high-def craving.

It’s even got AC3 and DTS audio processing circuitry, so you can have full surround sound if you hook it up your amplifier’s digital input. In addition to its video playback capabilities, it’s also a full-fledged audio server, with playback of MP3, WMA and OGG format sound files.

As is typically the case with these cool Korean gadgets, you’ll probably have a tough time finding one outside of the region. If you’re willing to deal with the overseas shipping you can find these for about 219,900 KRW (about $235 USD.)

The Magnetox V120 features the same white and aluminum accented case design as Apple’s popular compact computer. But the Magnetox V120 is a dedicated media recorder/player designed for use in your living room, so it has more in common with the AppleTV than the Mac Mini.

The little box features hardware MPEG4 playback and recording, and can automatically convert recorded video for playback on your TV, PC, iPod, PSP, GameBoy Micro or mobile phone. To keep its svelte profile, there’s no storage device built-in. Instead you can either record to an SDHC card or to an add-on IDE hard drive if you pick up the matching B200 USB hard drive enclosure.

Similar to the AppleTV, the device can only handle standard definition content, but unlike Apple’s device, the V120 can actually record television programs thanks to a built-in tuner. It’s not clear to me if this is a traditional UHF/VHF/CATV or a digital tuner though. I’d gamble that it’s of the analog ilk. There’s some date and time based scheduling capabilities, but no program guide, which is unfortunate.

Since the V120 is a full-fledged media player it can handle audio playback in MP3, WAV, WMA and AAC formats. There’s also a photo album viewer for JPG, PNG or GIF images.

You can find the Magnetox V120 from Hong Kong exporter GoldenShop for just $179 USD. Be sure to specify whether you want the NTSC or PAL version.

This iPhone clone is for those of you who want to look like you have an iPhone, but can’t afford it (or don’t actually need any of it’s best features.) Beyond it’s strikingly similar looks, the player has very little in common with Apple’s device.

For starters, the FT4021 MP4 Player from China’s i-Fighting is only a media player. Sure, it has a touchscreen interface, but there’s no phone, no wireless access, no web browsing, no e-mail, and no other useful applications. It does play MP4, MP3, WMA and WAV files, and has an FM tuner, but so does every other cheapie media player these days.

[via I4U via ubergizmo]

The GoGear SA6000 series features a 2.2-inch color LCD screen (320×240 resolution,) and can play back WMV vid clips. Philips also throws in a software converter for AVI, QuickTime and DVD (VOB) format files. Audio playback includes MP3, WAV and WMA audio file formats as well as an FM tuner. Battery life is rated at 4 hours for video playback, and 15 hours for audio.

I was able to find the 2GB model (SA6025) for about $105 and the 4GB model (SA6045) for about $132 over on Amazon.

[via Electronista]

The Plezo PMG-250 media player features technology that lets it play classic (and not so classic) games from Sega MegaDrive, Nintendo NES and GameBoy Color consoles. The PMG-250 has a 2.5″ LCD color screen, with stereo speakers and a joypad for controlling games. In addition to its game playing prowess, it can play audio and video clips in a variety of formats, and has an SD slot for expandable storage.

The manufacturer doesn’t indicate if they’ll be selling games for download onto the system, or if they’ll just rely on the savvy of owners to find their own (under various rocks.)

Retail price for the PMG-250 player is KRW 169,000 (appx. $180 USD.)

[via QJ.NET]

The Brica ViewArt 1000 is the Swiss Army knife of mobile technology, combining all of the aforementioned features in a single pocket-sized device. In addition to the usual media playback capabilities, it’s got an on-board video encoder which can take an input from a DVD player, satellite or cable box, and record 320 x 240 clips for viewing on the internal 2.5″ LCD screen.

The Brica player can play a wide variety media files including MP3, WMA, WMV, AVI, Quicktime, MPG, RealMedia and AAC formats. The digital still camera claims a 4-megapixel resolution, but is actually just 2 Megapixels, interpolated up. While the Brica is truly a “jack of all trades, master of none,” it’s worth a look if you’d like a single gadget that combines tons of functionality.

Gadget importer Calibryze sells the Brica player for $265, including 512MB of on-board memory and a 2GB SD card for extra storage.

The player features just about everything you could want in a portable. The 4.3-inch display looks great, and supports up to 800×480 (better than DVD) resolution. The audio features include a Burr-Brown digital signal processing, and full support for Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks (downmixed to 2ch from what we can tell). 802.11b/g Wireless connectivity is also provided. The device can also tune DMB television signals with a built-in antenna, although it’s unlikely this feature will be useful outside of South Korea any time soon. The system runs on the WinCE 5.0 platform, and an Adobe Flash based user interface.

Hopefully, we’ll see these turn up on eBay at some point.

[via dapreview via CNet Crave]