If there's any love lost between Creative Labs and Microsoft over
the latter company going ahead with its own MP3 player brand to compete
with its own one-time partner, judging from today's announcement, it's
hard to find out where it went. Creative picked this day -- right in
front of an anticipated Microsoft announcement on its Zune device -- to
roll out a widescreen version of its Zen player in North America.
Called
the Zen Vision:W, some of its competitive advantages are a little more
obvious than even Zune's. On first glance, it looks like a UMPC, though
maybe a little stretched out, with a 4.3" TFT display using the
"widescreen" 16:9 ratio. Launched in Korea two weeks ago, North America
will get a 30 GB edition priced at $299.99 USD, and a 60 GB edition
priced at $399.99 USD.
Creative is saying the 60 GB model can hold up to 240 hours of video,
assuming that's all you store on it. The small print reveals this video
would be encoded using MPEG-4 Simple Profile (SP) at 500 Kbps
throughput. That's far from what you'd want to see on a big-screen TV,
but for a presumably lower-resolution display, it's actually quite
adequate.
The W does include AV outputs to a 480-line display
(standard NTSC TV resolution), so how well its videos translate to a
20th century display, if not yet a 21st, remains to be seen.
Since
Apple launched its video-capable iPod last year, multimedia analysts
have been saying if any new portable media device has a chance to upset
the iPod, it would have to give the consumer freedom and a download
service on a par with iTunes. Surprisingly, Creative may be taking the
best shot at this one-two punch we've seen from outside Apple thus far.
Like
other Zen devices before it, the Vision:W will support multiple codecs:
in this case, MPEG-1, -2, and -4 SP, along with DivX 4 and 5, XviD, and
on top of that, TiVoToGo for transfer and display of files downloaded
via TiVo. The Zen isn't locked into a single DRM scheme, enabling it to
display a variety of videos that aren't just Hollywood films and
repurposed reruns.
As for the #2 punch, Creative made sure the
new Zen is fully compatible with Amazon's Unbox video download service.
Already, Unbox is making available content from Paramount, 20th
Century-Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros., while iTunes today is limited
to offerings from its Pixar-pal Disney, and Sony remains locked tight
with its PlayStation Portable.
Although the PSP is certainly
popular, its own PSP-centric derivative of MPEG-4 encoding is not
exactly portable in its own right. If Creative can succeed in making
media portability a must-have feature, it could use that to its advantage against both Apple and Sony.
Of
course, like the iPod, the Zen Vision:W will house multiple JPEG images
and, lest we forget, MP3 songs. Transfer between the W and the PC -- or
possibly some cameras as well -- can take place via a USB 2.0 cable, or
indirectly by way of its built-in Compact Flash memory reader. An
optional adapter makes the CF reader compatible with SD, SmartMedia,
and MultiMedia Card.
All this makes the W connective, but
admittedly, what it lacks is the built-in networking features that will
distinguish Microsoft's Zune, including the feature where one user can
"DJ" songs to a handful of other Zunes in its immediate vicinity. But
that kind of connectivity hasn't yet popped up on consumers' wish lists
just yet - at least, not above, "Make the screen bigger," and, "Let me
see what I want to see."
Add to all this the fact that Creative
has buried the hatchet with Apple, letting it concentrate on product
development rather than on legal proceedings. And with Apple having
missed an opportunity, some say, to widen its own iPod screens to
something closer to what we've seen in that company's patent
applications, Creative could have its best shot in years to actually
become the iPod contender - in some respects, even a better shot than
does Microsoft.
0 comments:
Post a Comment