The Hindu : Front Page : Take your video library with you!

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 27, 2008
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Take your video library with you!

Anand Parthasarathy

Media players that can play 20 movies and thousands of songs

— Photo: Anand Parthasarathy

The Aigo F 336 MP4 portable media player stores movies and music on an 80 GB hard disk — enough for hours of entertainment on the move.

Bangalore: MP3 is so “yesterday,” let’s talk MP4! The popular standard for compressing and playing digital music is making way for a new format, one that is compatible with MP3’s audio standard, while extending it to video.

Compact battery-operated machines, complete with (a typical) 4-inch liquid crystal screen, made for MP4 replay, are being called PMPs or portable media players. The Hindu has tried out one of the early models to go on sale in India: the F 336 from the Chinese maker, Aigo.

Weighs 300 gm

Fitting neatly in the palm of one’s hand, the F 336 weighs about 300 gm and incorporates an 80 GB hard disk — enough to store at least 20 full length movies provided they are in the formats AVI, MP4, DivX or XviD or thousands of music and audio tracks in MP3, WMA or WAV. Indeed the strength of PMPs is their ability to accept almost all popular audio/video formats.

Built-in speakers

There are built-in speakers, but for the original experience, buy a good headset. A voice recorder is built-in and the lithium-ion batteries are good for about four hours on a full charge.

The large disk storage makes it easy to dump directly into it from a video camera, transfer contents from a digital camera — or transfer entire shows that have been pre-recorded from TV, for later viewing.

Once e-books become available as downloads, you can also store a small library for reading on the move. The F 336 costs Rs. 18,000 and is being distributed in India by Bridge One Technologies ( www.bridgeonecorp.com). If the asking price is not a problem, it will end up a chunky pocket companion for hours of entertainment or education on the move.

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