There’s a new Portable Media Device in town (well, a few, actually) but you might not recognize it (them). No screen? Well, the screen isn’t part of the portable equation, you see. The portable part only applies to the media itself, and quite a lot of it at that: up to 400GB on some of these which, for something roughly the size of an external hard drive enclosure, isn’t bad. In fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking these were just bulky USB 2.0 drives until you saw the myriad of connectors on the back panel, including at least RCA audio and video outs—S-Video and SPDIF adorn the higher class models. These relatively small players (compared to a Media Center PC, for example) are made possible by Sigma Designs media processors, which have started appearing in products with increasing frequency.
MobileMag claims these ‘next-gen’ high capacity, smallish players are available from their manufacturers, but I had a hard time finding purchase links. Regardless, they’re sure to become more widely available before long.
New Category of PMDs Announced [MobileMag]
Related
Sigma Designs Media Processor Product Guide [SigmaDesigns]
