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Creative Portable Media Center
The next cool handhelds will be portable video players — basically, iPods with video-ready color displays. RCA and Archos already sell them, but Microsoft seeks to dominate the category with its Portable Media Center. Creative showed off a prototype; iRiver, Sanyo, Samsung and Viewsonic also plan to launch players this year. One catch: You have to convert MPEG video to WMV files before loading the player up, but Microsoft is busy booking content partners to offer original WMV file downloads.
Price and availability: Various prices TBD; Late summer 2004
Website: microsoft.com/portablemediacenters |
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Sharp Open Aquos TV
Sharp's new 15-in. and 20-in. LCD TVs now come with digital video recorders built in. Open Aquos isn't TiVo, with smart programming, etc., but it's good enough to pause and rewind live TV and to manually record a few shows. The TVs come with a PC-card slot for the included 5GB hard drive, plus another for a Wi-Fi adapter or camera-card reader.
Price and availability: $1,400 to $1,900; Spring 2004
Website: sharpusa.com |
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Philips Streamium FlatTV
The Streamium may not have a built-in DVR, but unlike the Sharp Open Aquos it comes with the latest Wi-Fi networking built in. (Yes, geeks, we mean 802.11g.) Like the Streamium boombox before it, this TV plays MP3s stored on your PC and draws audio content from the Net. It can also read video files, and will soon have access to video content directly from the Web. A similarly-talented home-theater-in-a-box will also soon be available.
Price and availability: Price TBD; Fall 2004
Website: streamium.com |
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NEXT: Mission USA ViSound A/V Mirror  |
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