What will it take to get us to tune in to portable video?
Posted on 26/07/04 00:40 by Dan Bell                             
What will it take to get us to tune in to portable video?

b314x used our news submit to tell us "I have an iPod, and would love a way to watch video on the move, of course these have been around for years, but the battery life is pathetic, often barely over 2 hours so just long enough to watch a film (although many films are longer than 2 hours) , when battery life reaches 5 hours then its a must" :)

Thanks for the news and the comment, you are a lot like many others out there that are on the move every day. We want to carry some entertainment around with us. But, the question is, what's the magic formula that will make these portable video devices a must have. Battery life is definately a factor, what else?

"Initially, this is an early-adopter product, but down the road, we're hoping, we've set ourselves up for a hit," said James Bernard, product manager of Microsoft's Portable Media Center, the company's upcoming software for video devices. "It's the early adopters that people turn to for (buying) advice." 

 
In the short term, few services have been created to deliver content, and consumers will have to get used to the idea of carrying video around to watch while waiting in airports or commuting on trains and buses. By contrast, millions of consumers were already accustomed to using music devices such as the Walkman or a portable CD player prior to the emergence of MP3. 

"The total demand from people who need to take their video with them is smaller than those who have time in their day to listen to music, which is a more passive activity," said Ross Rubin, an analyst with NPD Techworld. "It's tough to watch video while you're jogging."  

Well, that may be true, but people are shelling hundreds of dollars for Mp3 players already. So, if for say fifty bucks more, (a hundred?) you have the option to watch a movie, what the heck? These hard disc players can sure hold it, too bad it is a pain in the neck to transfer the films to portable devices. When will the entertainment industry learn? There is more to be done with a DVD than sit on the couch and stare at the TV. Give us some options already.

Well Sony may be doing just that. The image in the quote is a Sony HMP-A1, that's being offered outside Japan for about 700 dollars US. Yes, that's a lot of money, but it does do about everything. What I mean by that is, this Sony unit does WAV and MP3, not that sorry proprietary Sony ATRAC and sports a 20 gig hard drive, no transcoding is needed. Plus, for you video enthusiast's it can handle MPEG 1,2,4. You can also transcode Video files in AVI and Windows Media Video. Bitmap, GIF, TIFF, PNG, and PGPF graphic formats can be converted to JPEG with the supplied software as well.

Battery life is purported to be about 4 hours in MPEG 2 and 6 hours for MPEG 4! Recharge time is 7 hours via USB hub and only about 2.5 hours with an AC adapter. You can check out the player gallery at Dynamism. 

Source: C|Net

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By b314x, Mon 26 Jul 2004 01:20
as i said earlyer, wen it gets a good battery life ill buy one, come on sony stop wating time with SecuROM and make me a nice portable video player with at least a 4 hour battery life so i can watch films on the go, the ill pay up my £400 supergrin
By kahoona, Mon 26 Jul 2004 20:45
Portable video players will also have to have the ability to update the codecs that it uses to decrypt the videos. With XviD and DivX versions coming out, it would be great to be able to keep up with them! biggrin
By cd11, Mon 26 Jul 2004 23:02
When there is a foldable 20" LCD monitor, I'll buy it ... but then again, I think I'd go for a laptop.

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