Basically, PlayonHD Mini is a smaller version of A.C. Ryan's original HD media player, but it doesn't sacrifice much other than an internal drive bay and a card reader. It doesn't seem like a bad deal overall, unless you compare it to a full-featured HTPC. [A.C. Ryan and Engadget]

The tiny player sports a 1280x720 TFT LCD screen with a resolution that's comparable to some 13-inch netbooks, notes PMP Today. There's also an HDMI out, FM radio transmitter and voice recording.

The video format support list goes thusly: RM.RMVB, AVI (Xvid, DivX), WMV, ASF, DAT, MPG, MP4, VOB, SMI. Audio? Try MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, OGG, FLAC, APE. As you can probably tell from all the translating going on in the source links, this is probably going to be an import for you, for now. [Lisse via PMP Today]

The UI's been redesigned with a new home page (up top), that's divided into three sections: The feed, which pulls in video and photo recommendations from your friends via Twitter and Facebook; Featured content, which is stuff Boxee highlights; and the queue, where you dump everything you want or plan to watch (for instance, you can add the video from any web page to your queue with a Boxee bookmarklet).

The other major UI change is the new global menu, which'll instantly drop you into any of Boxee's major sections, like movies, photos, TV or your favorites.

What looked impressive during the demo was how cleanly it aggregated both local and online sources of video content—that is, it collect and treats all video the same, whether it's from Netflix or on your hard drive. It's just all one big, searchable library. TV shows are organized more cleanly, too, by seasons and episodes.

Boxee's pushing its "apps" hard, and there's a few new ones, like the Suicide Girls one here—essentially, they're customized browsers that drop you into videos or pics or whatever. Clicker is probably the most interesting, in that it's a video show search engine of sorts, scouring the web for shows from multiple content sources, making it easy to drop into your Boxee queue.

On the technical side, Windows users will be a lot happier, since the backend has been rewritten to use DirectX instead of OpenGL, and it supports full graphics acceleration from Nvidia's Ion chips, meaning cheap PCs will be able to play 1080p video through Boxee. (Which makes us think even more strongly that the Boxee box is gonna be an Ion-based machine.

We'll see more of the Boxee box tonight, hopefully, and definitely more at CES next month, where it's gonna make its full debut. Which is where we'll hear more about Boxee's other "device partners," who'll be sticking Boxee on their own boxes in 2010. In other words, Boxee may very well be the next Netflix streaming app—embedded on anything that'll handle it, from TVs to Blu-ray players.

[Boxee]

The LaCie LaCinema Classic HD is, at its heart, a 1TB hard drive with HDMI-out. You can load up media through USB from a PC or Mac (or flash drive). Then you can carry the drive to your television and watch DivX or MKV H.264 movies.

But it's always a DLNA-compliant HD media player. In other words, you can hook it in to your network through ethernet (Wi-Fi dongle available) and stream media without copying the files over.

Time will tell if LaCie's player can compete with the rest of the competition (see our full Battlemodo here), but available now for $250, it's certainly the best-looking media streamer we've seen to date. [LaCie]

Boxee's post on the box has nothing in the way of details yet, so I'm just going to have to take a WILD guess at what this thing will look like: It'll be a box, with an Ion chipset, a medium-sized HDD, HDMI-out and a Boxee sticker and a $200 price tag. Why? Because nothing else would really make any sense.

We'll get to see the box—assuming it's not just this Boxee-compatible Myka number we saw a few days ago—come December 7th, when it gets the full unveiling treatment. Also interesting, though probably a little aspirational:

* make it easy for users to consume and find content – no matter what the source
* give content owners, aggregators, and developers the tools to create unique experiences with a variety of business models
* enable CE companies to enhance their Connected devices

This will be the first connected device running Boxee, but the idea is to provide consumers with a way to get Boxee in their living rooms, no matter whether it's on a Connected TV, game console, set-top box, BluRay player, computer, etc.

Multiple Boxee Boxes! Boxee Boxen! [Boxee]

1. New Home Screen and Tweaked UI

The old home screen had a grid of categories, including Movies, TV, Music, Settings, etc. Now the home screen is horizontal, with all of those same categories running across. Besides mere orientation, the major difference is subtle: Apple TV anticipates what files you're going to want fastest, and puts them above the category in Cover Flow. Click the up arrow to get to the speed rack. The rest of the "new user interface" doesn't seem very new at all. Buffed a bit, shinier in places, but honestly, it's not full revision's worth of new user experience.

2. Genius DJ Playlists

My wife is a huge fan of the Genius option, because she doesn't want to spend an hour making a playlist, but she also doesn't want any of my unexpectedly angsty rock messing up her Beth Orton-fueled revery. Apple TV finally gets what a lot of Apple products have had for a while. Yippee.

3. Movie Extras and LP Compatibility

If you are so devoted to Apple's music and movie retail operation that you care about Extras and LP, visual portals that lead to the main content plus some token extra stuff, then you probably already are excited that Apple TV has this. As much as I am not into it myself, I do admit LP and Extras look much cooler on a TV than they do on a computer.

4. Improved Syncing

iTunes 9 means that, like the iPhone and iPod, there's more refined sync features—you could select particular movies before, but now you can select individual artists, specific TV episodes and iPhoto events as well as albums. This is closer to full manual control, but it's not full manual control.

5. Photos Still Require a Sync

I don't quite understand this quirk of Apple TV: While music and movies I don't sync to the local drive still appear as long as they're in iTunes on my Mac, the photos that live on that same Mac are off limits unless I physically sync them. The alternative is to share them via MobileMe, but that's not the same thing. This highlights an ongoing weirdness between iTunes and iPhoto that may never be resolved.

6. No DivX

"This file was not transferred because it is unable to be played on Apple TV." Steve Jobs once said that only 4% of music on iPods came from iTunes. A lot of movies that would be nice to play on Apple TV simply don't, while H.264 is an option on Handbrake and other personal-use DVD-encoding software, it's not the only game in town.

7. Not NAS Friendly

Assuming I play by the rules and rip all of my personal DVD in H.264 format, I still have to leave them on my laptop, or transfer them to the Apple TV's puny hard drive. Can I stick them on my 1TB NAS, or point the Apple TV to that same NAS to look for other compatible movies? Nope, I cannot.

8. USB Jack Still Unused

Speaking of terabytes, what the hell is that USB 2.0 drive for? It certainly isn't for USB drives, because whenever I connect one, nothing happens. Laptop users don't keep all their movies on their local drives, and many Apple TV drives are too damn small. I don't honestly see how a USB slot could be used for anything evil, and yet three generations of ATV OS have passed without firing it up.

9. Hardware Sluggish and Hot

Even when doing nothing, the Apple TV is still remarkably warm to the touch—the 3.0 update doesn't help that. What I did notice, though, was that the remote was sticky—I'd hear the little "bonk" when I'd push a button, but on many occasions, that was followed by a pause before the thing did anything. This led to several accidental double-taps. And that ain't right.

10. No Netflix or Pandora

Or any other cool third-party services for that matter. YouTube is still there, along with MobileMe and Flickr. And I can understand the conflict of interest in embedding Amazon VOD or CinemaNow or Rhapsody or Napster. But why can't we get some Netflix love? Or Pandora?

11. Too Much Emphasis on Spending Money

I have always felt that Apple TV's insistence on paying for content was crass, given the fact that it is supposed to be the extension of your music and movies on your TV. Don't get me wrong, I actually like that there's a movie rental option on it (and it's my understanding that many people who are drawn to Apple TV are excited because they don't have as much media of their own). But on your computer, you make a deliberate choice to enter the iTunes Store. On Apple TV, you're basically inside the store from the start.

12. Still Best for a 1:1 iTunes-to-TV Connection

I don't use Apple TV regularly. I tried, I swear I did. But the shortcomings I mentioned above eventually drove me from it screaming. There are other simpler and cheaper devices that do what I want in a way that may not be as pretty, but is actually more functional. Returning to Apple TV now, though, I recognize something Brian and I were chatting about earlier: If all you want is your iTunes experience quickly replicated on a TV, it's the perfect device.

As you can see, Apple TV 3.0 isn't some miracle that will suddenly make Apple TV more relevant. It's really a 2.5 if you think about what it does to improve functionality. We asked Apple for a briefing today, in hopes we'd get some idea of what makes this revision special, and no one was available to chat. Guess we'll have to wait for 3.0.1.

For about $122, the HD8800 will play back your media in glorious HD on its 4.3-in. screen. Or on a TV, where you can boost the portable's 800x480 image all the way up to true 1920x1080 HD.

The player supports *deep breath* RMVB, MOV, AVI, VOB, MKV, MP4, WMV, TS, TP, MPG, Flash, and can play MP3, WMA, FLAC and APE music files. [Ownta via PMP Today]

The kit includes a remote, 2.5-in space for a you-provided HDD, three USB slots, Ethernet, and support for more than a few file formats. It launches, well, soon, as there's no date and it's currently in pre-order. [Amazon via The Gadget Site via Engadget]

He also throws out one other tip: If you're choosy about colors, don't pre-order, because you'll be stuck with black for the 16GB model or platinum for the 32GB one. If you wait until Sept. 15, when you can pick the color of your poison. Kind of a sad day—if Zune is killing off the giant capacity model to exclusively go the HD route, it makes it seem just slightly more likely that the iPod classic could be getting the axe too next Wednesday. [WinSuperSite via ZuneSpring]

Topping the list of new features are network playback over Ethernet, DTS audio encoding and a component plug (for better picture quality on SD displays).

No price or availability info arrived with the leaked pic and specs sheet, but from the looks of the case this thing is all but ready for retail shelves. [AVS Forum via Electric Echoes via Engadget]

I was trying to figure out what it was about the Zune HD's TV interface that I was enjoying so much, and then I realized: Unlike every other device of its size and capacity, this thing is a true portable media center. It's not as fast as a fully fledged PC running Windows Media Center, but it is zippy as hell for a pocketable, portable player.

Zune HD goes dark when it's docked, like you see in the gallery. This isn't like an iPod—once docked, it's invisible, the power behind what you watch or listen to. The remote is the key. I bopped around, browsing music, scanning for radio stations (that HD has a few meanings, including an HD radio receiver, so you can see the "what's playing" data and everything) and even watching a short full-screen video on this 60-inch Samsung. The demo Zune only had the one video—I can't wait to see what it's like to fill a 32GB one with great movies and TV episodes.

The only noticeable thing missing from the interface was any online connectivity—you can't download movies to a Zune without a PC anyway, but docked, I am not even sure you can stream music (as you can when carrying a Zune in a Wi-Fi environment). More on that when we review it, naturally.

As we showed you months ago, the player itself takes the PMP user interface to a new level. When you select something, all the screen elements move at different vectors, creating at times a 3D effect, as you can catch up close in the video below. (Pardon the glare, but that's one hazard—for better or worse, it's a shiny shiny screen.)

I don't want to say more—this is not a review, and I won't be the reviewer when we do pass judgment—but let me say that, as someone who's never been terribly excited by past Zunes, this one took me pleasantly by surprise.

[Full Zune HD Coverage on Gizmodo]

Zune HD AV Dock

• $89.99
This all-in-one package enables your Zune HD player to charge sync and play supported 720p HD videos on your HDTV. Send music and HD Radio reception to your home audio system and control it all via a wireless remote.

Includes dock, three inserts (one for each Zune model), wireless remote, AC adapter, HDMI cable, and AV output cable. Zune HD player sold separately.

Compatible with: Zune HD (32 & 16), Zune 120, Zune 80, Zune 16, Zune 8, and Zune 4.

Zune HD AV & Power Pack

• $49.99
Connect your AV cable to your docked Zune HD to play music, HD Radio, and audio podcasts through your home audio system. The HDMI cable connects your docked Zune HD to HDTVs to view movies and videos. (Zune HD player required for HD video and HD Radio reception; sold separately. Zune HD AV Dock sold separately.)

Includes AC adapter, HDMI cable, and AV output cable.

Compatible with: Zune HD (32 & 16), Zune 120, Zune 80, Zune 16, Zune 8, Zune 4.

I have a 160GB Classic, as I thought I needed it. But with a 32GB iPhone, I end up leaving my iPod at home, even when traveling. I once had a fantasy that I'd sync a ton of video to it, to serve up. That fantasy was never realized, though, because these days it easy to just plug your laptop into a TV. I like having an iPod Touch in the house, however, because when my kid wants to watch videos, I'd rather give her that than my own phone. Besides, some apps like Sonos' controller and Apple's Remote are better suited to a device that lives in the living room. An iPod Touch with a camera makes sense, getting a step closer to the iPhone; it's an equally intuitive device for people who want to keep clear of AT&T.

Put a camera in the Nano, and the opposite occurs: It becomes a mystery object, something unlike all other products in the universe, and not in a good way. It would be something to learn, with even more buried mystery functions than it has right now.

Let's be honest, the Nano is built to play music. Video playback on that tiny screen is a joke, accelerometer or not, and I have never met a soul who actually stores calendars and contacts, or uses any other mini-app or game. Putting still more tech into the Nano is a mistake that companies other than Apple would make—sure, it will be "neat," but it's impractical and a waste of development.

The Classic is a different story, one of diminishing demand. Hard drive players are almost nowhere to be found, and there's discussion of late that the 1.8" hard drive is headed for extinction, because flash memory is finally cheap. I think Apple will still sell a Classic, at least until they can pop out 64GB flash iPod Touches for under $400, but I don't think they'll do anything to modify the current Classic in any meaningful way, and they certainly aren't going to go all the way to 240GB, even though it's possible.

If the Classic is justifiable for music library owners like me, but mostly a non-starter, the Nano's raison d'etre is being a "value" option. It's cheaper than the iPod Touch, which hovers at the $230 only to distance itself from the 16GB Nano, at $200. If Apple dipped that iTouch to $199, they'd sell fewer Nanos than they are selling now.

Screw the camera—what Apple should do is lower the Nano price even more. Samsung and SanDisk sell 8GB players for less than $100 now, and you can even find a few 16GB players in the $130 range. That's $50 to $70 lower than what Apple charges, and nowadays, most of those devices will play anything you buy from iTunes—little or no manipulation required. Meanwhile, almost all PMP development from other companies is geared to building a cheap iTouch replacement, not a Nano clone.

As Apple itself declared during their earnings call, "We expect traditional MP3 players to decline over time as we cannibalize ourselves" with iPhone and iPod Touch. They readily admit that iPod Touches sell like hotcakes while demand for clickwheel iPods has slackened. It's just a puzzle that when these devices should be on life-support, Apple seems to be want to push them further. [iPod/iTunes]

For now, the device is only listed on Cowon's Korean site, and there's no official word regarding when, or if, it'll be released in the US, although I'd point to English language marketing materials and, more convincingly, FCC badging as clues that it eventually will. [Pocketables via Engadget]

From the patent, we can see that the Zii is a wi-fi-equipped touchscreen media player, fitted with an "HD" camera, Bluetooth, and, well, that's about all we know. The presence of a developer version, called the Zii Egg, seems to promise some kind of app support, though it'd be a mistake to immediately jump to the conclusion that the Zii will therefore have an app store; it could just be a dev platform for third parties who could be developing stock apps for the device.

Oooooooor, as Engadget plausibly suggests, this could be a part of the first wave of Android PMPs, which would, like any Android phone, have root-access developer units. In that case, Creative has what could be an interesting product: a touchscreen, connected PMP with a decent camera and a worthwhile app store, making it a more direct competitor to the iPod Touch than we've ever seen before. For now, though, questions! Like what was up with the strange language in your "Zii Stemcell" announcement, and how closely are these two things connected? In due time, I guess. In due time. [FCC via Engadget]

So now, in addition to listening to music, viewing photos, checking email, emulating games and watching TV shows, DVDs and other streaming sources, you can stream Netflix inside this app, which bears resemblance to Front Row. And it has no shortage of support as CrunchGear swears by it. Check it out for yourself at the Plex site. [Plex via CrunchGear]

DoubleTwist was created by the famous DVD copy-protection reverse-engineer who calls himself DVD Jon, so you know it's friendly to the budget-minded poweruser. So far, it's been a joy to use, but it's still in beta and has some flaws. Here's what it does now, and what it should do:

What doubleTwist Does:

Manages Photos, Music and Video on Your Computer
It watches your Music, Photos and Movies folders, and lets you drag and drop any other folders into its media browser. There's also a Spotlight-esque search function to check your folders. Music is organized in sortable list form, while photos and videos are displayed as tiles.

Lets You Maintain an Online "Feed" and Send/Receive Media To/From Other doubleTwist Users
DoubleTwist has a built in social-networking aspect that lets you create an account, add friends and shoot files back and forth. You can post video, photos and music to a "feed," which is basically a media-rich version of the Facebook wall, and it gets syndicated to all your friends.

They say you can send any type of file back and forth on doubleTwist, which seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. We haven't yet had the chance to fully test this feature, but they remain pretty vague on its limits . And for those who aren't signed up, you can send them an email link to the doubleTwist servers, where they can view/watch/hear the content you want them to receive.

Connects to a Variety of Phones and Devices
DoubleTwist is really touting its ability to connect with devices here, especially BlackBerry and Android phones. (Not surprisingly, you can't yet sync with Apple products.) When you plug in your device, it shows up under its model name, and doubleTwist organizes media files in the same way it does for your computer. You can drag and drop freely between the two devices. (see top photo)

Auto-Converts Files to Provide Compatibility With Your Device
Because it only works with devices it knows, doubleTwist autoconverts media files as necessary. So if you have a .mp4 video file that your phone doesn't support, doubleTwist will detect this before uploading and convert appropriately. (We'll be testing this to see how long a movie in the wrong format might take.)

Connects to Your iTunes Library for Access to Playlists and Other Stuff
Like other media devices and apps, doubleTwist can read your iTunes Library XML file, which provides access to playlists and podcasts, in addition to the the rest of your library. Most of the crap that pops up in the left column of iTunes will show up here.

Uploads Photos and Videos to Online Services
With Flickr and Facebook integration, you can drag, drop and tag your photos, then upload them with a click, and without exiting doubleTwist. The same thing goes for sending videos to YouTube.

WHAT DOUBLETWIST SHOULD DO
iPhone and iPod Support
As we mentioned, there's not a lot of love for iPhone and iPod yet, but the doubleTwist team says this functionality will actually appear in future versions.

AirTunes Support
One of my favorite features of using iTunes with an Airport Express is the AirTunes streaming feature. There are 3rd-party apps, such as AirFoil, that take advantage of this feature, so it shouldn't be too hard to work this into future versions.

Native Playlist Support and Streaming Libraries
For now, there is no way to import or create music playlists, aside from what's already in iTunes. You also can't connect to other people's libraries or an iTunes Music Server on your network. This means you'll still be using iTunes for some stuff.

Advanced File Categorization/Organization
Right now, the categorization and organization of media files are a bit rudimentary. Music shows up in a list view, but the only sortable categories are Title, Artist, and Time. Photos and Videos only show up as tiles, with no other view or sort options, except adjusting thumbnail size.

For people with tons of files, this doesn't quite cut it.

I also don't really like that when you play a song, it launches a second window which compiles the list of songs played while the app has been open. But there's no way to remove songs from the list aside from closing the app, nor can you keep playback all in one window. It's not major, but kinda bleh.

BOTTOM LINE
DoubleTwist is an extremely promising app that really could become the de facto standard for media players if they continue to develop and improve on this beta. The idea of not having to use iPhoto ever again (I hate it), or getting more functionality than what VLC offers for videos is pretty exciting.g. [doubleTwist via MacRumors]

The 16-gigabyte NWZ-X1050B will cost £214 (~$300) and 32-gigabyte NWZ-X1060B will cost £283 (~$400). Looking forward to the X1000 making a stateside appearance sometime soon. [Amazon UK via OLED-Display via Engadget]

The Free Agent Theater HD Media Player uses composite, S-Video and component video inputs, coaxial out for Dolby Digital surround sound. Its integrated dock is for the FreeAgent Go, what Seagate says is the world's thinnest external HDD, but there's a USB port for other storage devices, in case you're fresh out of FreeAgents. Its on-screen interface can display either file/folder trees or previews and thumbnails. And because of the Theater HD's dual-channel video converter, you can upconvert all your video files to 720p or 1080i. There's no 1080p support, and besides, there's no HDMI, though Seagate says something like that will come along later this year.

As for the on-screen UI and accompanying remote, there are also easy one-touch buttons that will allow you to perform simple tasks automatically, such as starting a slideshow of photos and music, simultaneously, with just one button. Even DVD files, ripped onto your external hard drive, can be played simply by going to the DVD's folder and clicking the play or menu button on the remote, without having to hunt for the actual video file. Seagate says the system supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats, and DIVX files with video resolutions for NTSC, PAL and HD up to 1080i, and that it even supports subtitles. It does not, however, handle H.264.

From what I can tell, this is mostly a device for mainstream users who don't need a ton of advanced features, but rather an easy, out of the box experience. Available on March 4, the Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD will sell for $130. You can also purchase it bundled with a 250GB FreeAgent Go drive for $230, or better still, a 500GB model for $280. [Seagate FreeAgent Theater]