“It was a Holy Grail looming on the personal electronics horizon: a pocket-sized device with a workhorse battery and the capacity to hold hours of audio and video. After all, because people already stuff multimedia files on their cell phones and personal digital assistants, or PDAs, why not give them one dedicated device to swiftly handle all their entertainment-on-the-go needs? The answer will disappoint: The new breed of portable media players is finally here, but the devices are too small to comfortably watch movies on and too bulky to compete with my MP3 music player,” Ron Harris reports for The Associated Press.
“The US$499 Creative Zen I tested, from Creative Labs Inc., is about twice as thick as a PDA, as well as longer and heavier, so it’s not something you’d toss in your purse or pocket. [It and other Portable Media Center devices] all use Microsoft’s Windows Portable operating system, which is really just Windows CE, the operating system commonly used in PDAs, minus some personal information management tools,” Harris reports.
“Microsoft has partnered with a few content providers, and I used one of them, CinemaNow, to buy a documentary on Area 51 and a spooky thriller called ‘Anima,’ for $2.99 each. Most of the CinemaNow titles are B-movie fodder. ‘Anima’ weighed in at 318 megabytes and took about 20 minutes to download. The movie was encoded at 514 kilobits per second, meaning when you look at it on a SMALL screen like the one on the Zen, it’s as clear and crisp as a bell. Any larger and it would pixelate badly, and it did when I connected the Zen to a television using the supplied cables. But if I’ve got a TV nearby, why use the Zen at all – right? …Using the Zen only made me want an iPod Mini and a new laptop instead. Convergence, at least for now, will have to take a backseat to usability,” Harris reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs was and is right. Back in January he explained why tiny video on-the-go wouldn’t work well to The New York Times’ David Pogue, “‘there’s just no equivalent of headphones.’ That is, when you put on headphones and press Play on a music player, the results are spectacular-you get a very close equivalent to the concert-hall experience. But watching video on a tiny three-inch hand-held screen is almost nothing like the experience of watching a movie in a theater or even on TV. It can
First post. I am God. All the chicks want me. SPJ works for me. Gates sucks ass.
he he, anyone remember the “VR goggles” we were all supposed too be wearing by now?
this chick doesn’t want a tiny video player OR u :p
whats the point if it looks bad on a TV?
I personally think that the best route for apple is to have A chipset (most likely external)made that plugs into the dock connector and decodes mpeg video out to a Television/ display
give it a year
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
CONVERGENCE DOES NOT WORK…
To hell with what Thurrott thinks..
Speaking of Thurrott, I wonder what he thinks about the PMCs.
converge on this Paul T
“……Speaking of Thurrott, I wonder what he thinks about the PMCs…”
He probably thinks a new treaty should be signed to discourage the use of them world-wide
Portable Media Center, an answer looking for a question.
Thurott thinks Apple is missing the boat by not putting out such a device. Or was he just complaining about not have a paddle?
I think the PMC is crap, you can multitask while listening to music, but can you really multitask while watching a movie on a lil screen. I dont think so…Are we really that TV dependent that we need to bring something like the PMC with us?
I have a decent home theatre system and thats how I like to watch movies. Jobs is quite right, and I’d be spending Apples R & D elsewhere.
The PMC is just another technological novelty item.
I have an A/V lyra and I enjoy it I don’t watch movies on it but I do watch music videos and TV shows ( I donwload them on the go and watch them when I want, most of the time its when I’m waiting for the bus or on the bus or when I have big spares between classes).
Although the ipod does not have video yet, it will or at least people think it will because of apple’s ipod divisions new job postings.
Creative is so stupid… How the heck can they release a product that is so obviously flawed. I hope MSFT paid them to do it, otherwise a huge waste of R&D. Steve Jobs is right on this one.
just give me video out on my ipod so i can play movies on a real tv
paul-
Most every one I know is going for larger and larger TVs and DLPs. Only an idiot will think that people will spend time and money on a miniscule screen to watch movies with. But then again, we’ve all pretty much agreed on what Paul T’s IQ is.
audio out via AX would be cool.
“Converge, or Fall forever.” CoR
RJ
“all use Microsoft’s Windows Portable operating system,”
They have the Portable operating system named right: MW-POS
Convergence:
It can work, but it has to do so without compromise, or the secondary function needs to be trivial. So a DVD player that also functions as a CD player works. A fridge that also functions as a television does not. That’s just stupid. All it does is save you a plug and make the thing more expensive.
Other examples :
Alarm clock radio : GOOD convergence. There’s an added function to the combination and little compromise between each individual function.
Mobile phone/MP3 player : BAD convergence (at the moment). The compromise at the moment is that the storage is limited. There’s no hard drive based mobile phone (cellphone). But even we get such a device, it still won’t be good because it will clutter the interface and kill the battery life.
Convergence only works when the technology is ready.
iPod is good convergence. It’s a hard drive and a music player and a music database on a computer with a fast method of transferring data. It needed i) tiny hard drives; ii) tiny computer capable of decoding compressed data and turning it into quality audio; iii) iTunes; iv) Firewire
When it was the creative Jukebox, it didn’t work. It was close, but it was still wasn’t quite right. The hard drive wasn’t a miniature device, it was a laptop drive. That made it too big and heavy. The player itself was capable enough, but the interface wasn’t so great. The music database was clumsy. It used USB, which was too slow to use to swap songs over regularly.
I didn’t buy a creative jukebox because it didn’t feel quite ready.
Just look at the poor success of those handheld televisions!
Tv/video content on a tiny screen just dos’ent work!
I hand a handheld tv and it was crap! No signal, poor sound quality and contant atmospheric interference!
I think Steve Jobs is exactly correct! – and I also think the solution to this lies in the new Apple Quicktime scalable video encoding too…
This is the sort of IT/user innovation problem that only one company can solve – and that company is APPLE.
Until APPLE does solve this, stear clear of handheld video devices like the plague!
Let M$ waste it’s money on developing a product that no one wants to use along with a market that won’t exist in reality until EVERYONE has at least 10mb broadband!
Another example of bad convergence:
Mobile phone + email.
Until someone re-designs the way we use and interact with mobile phones, typing a 300 word email will never be as quick or practical as just making a call and speaking to the person instead!
The PMC will go the way of the tablet pc.
Only a few die hard gadget freaks will buy this device and after a couple of months when the novalty has worn off, will be leaving it in their attic to gather dust.
The tablet pc is dead – and at the moment there is no usable and practicle one portable video converegnce device around that gets the balance right between the convenience of music and the practical aspect of viewing video content at a watchable size.
The other factor is that people want hand held devices as small as possible – so watching video content is totally impracticle for this.
Unless of course, APPLE comes up with a way to project the video content from the hand-held device… as in the minority report movie with tom cruse.
Now that would work!
I agree that the Portable Media Centre is next to useless but I would not say that portable video will not work due to the small screens. Sure, watching a feature length film on a portable device is not practical but shorter content may work. Music videos, trailers, short films and commercials would be fast to download and fast to watch. The mistake Microsoft and Creative have made is to focus on the technology instead of the content. If Apple were to implement video into the iPod I am certain that they would market the device as a music player first and a video player second.
Sol – if you want to download commercials to watch on your PMC – go for it! “Let’s download the new Burger King ad – I watched the last one 43 times and it only cost me 25 cents,,, bargain!”
Funny how ‘hi-tech’ companies seem to employ very low-tech thinking. This was an agruement which was over probably as far back as the early sixties with the advert on mini TVs no one wanted to buy.