Tag: Media Player

While the SEGA Dreamcast and Genesis were arguably their most memorable consoles, the 32-bit Saturn was quite fun to play too. I spent many a day flying through the skies on the back of a dragon in Panzer Dragoon II Zwei.

Sony recently set me up with a couple of pieces of audio gear from their Hi-Res Audio line, so I could hear first hand the differences between typical digital music players and the higher quality sound one can expect from their product line.

Once a cool and thoughtful expression of affection, the mixtape  – along with handwritten letters and photo albums – has become a mere inconvenience. But what if you could update its concept? What if you could still pass on a physical token, but instead of that token being an actual storage device, it linked to the content you wanted to share, which you stored or found online?

Growing up back in the 1970s, during the height of the C.B. radio craze, the U.S. had truly romanticized the life of the trucker. Between movies like Convoy and Smokey and the Bandit, kids were aspiring to take to the open road and drive an 18-wheeler.

Looking to add a media player to your HDTV but don’t want to buy another set-top box? Then check out the latest media players from Germany’s Dune HD, which offer full 1080p playback in a tiny package.

There are tons of media players on the market, and a number of relatively inexpensive “pico-projectors” as well, but here’s a fun gadget that combines both into one cheap and compact little package that costs less than $100.

I’ve actually stopped using my 160GB iPod Classic, ever since I got my iPhone 4S, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for dedicated music players – if done right. While a lot of people use their smartphones to play their favorite tunes, others still prefer standalone media players.

There are only a few 3D movies that I’ve seen that were actually worth it. Most of the others were somewhat disappointing, but check out this PMP that’s supposed to do 3D without any glasses. It’s called the Gadmei P83 PMP from Marvel Digital, and hopefully it won’t harm your eyes when you use it, because we’ve all recently heard the (not so) shocking news that 3D isn’t good for your eyes.

Most of the personal media players on the market are pretty much the same thing. They are generally boxy devices that look like big MP3 players with a color screen. iRiver has a new PMP called the P8 that looks nicer than the typical PMP.

Most of the cheap Chinese game console knockoffs do just one thing – play old 8-bit NES or Famicom games. Some of them don’t even do that. Here’s one console clone that claims to do way more than those.

When I was a kid, I collected my share of baseball cards. I was particularly fond of a line of cards called Sportflics. These cards were made of cardboard like all cards, but when you moved them back and forth, the image on the card would change.

iRiver has a bunch of different media players. The company has gone official with one of its first new products for 2011 and it is called the U100. The thing looks nice and can be had in a couple colors, with the green and pink offerings in the photo below.

Designers Chih-Wei Wang and Shou-Hsi Fu think that in the future, music albums could be packaged not just in a compact medium, but one that integrates a music player as well. Their concept device Skinny Player is a lot simpler and thinner than the iPod Shuffle, incorporating storage, a battery, a play/stop button and speakers into a Band-Aid-like form factor.

I don’t know a lot of kids, but I’m betting they’d prefer to play on the iPhone, Nintendo DS or PSP rather than the SNES or NES. If they even know what those two are. But I think there’s still a lot of us 80s kids that’ll find Chinavision’s all-in-one gadget a hoot.

What would have happened if you could have had an iPod, a laptop, or a cellphone all the way back in 1977? Designer Alex Varanese decided to go back in time with his modern gadgets to see what life might have been back some 30+ years ago, but with today’s tech.

The handheld media player market is so crowded at this point, you really need to do something special to stand out. This PMP from China strives to differentiate itself with a large high-resolution screen and a form-factor reminiscent of a small tablet PC or e-reader.