It ain’t too much different than the E50 and E150, but considering that iriver felt it necessary to label it a score less than the former, it’s new to us. Introduced today over in the Far East, this pocket-friendly PMP touts a 1.8-inch color display (220 x 176), a user-customizable equalizer and support for MP3, WMA, WAV, APE, FLAC and MJPEG files. Oh, and it can purportedly keep the tunes flowing for 52 frickin’ hours without needing a recharge, so those with trouble locating AC outlets should certainly take notice. There’s no mention of a price or release date, but both of those tidbits should become crystal clear soon. Very soon.
Archive for the ‘Music Players’ category
iriver E30 shows love for the lossless, long-winded
August 13th, 2009Logitech dishes two new iPod / iPhone speaker docks, one of them rechargeable
August 13th, 2009
Not quite sure if you’ve noticed, but Logitech has been on a tear for the ages here recently. As the torrent of new gear continues, we’re now faced with another pair of iPod sound systems desperately attempting to knock the “me-too” status and contribute something positive to the world. The Rechargeable Speaker S315i is the larger of the two, boasting a rechargeable battery that’s supposedly good for up to 20 hours of listening. The unit is fully compatible with dock-connecting iPods and iPhones, and there’s even an auxiliary input for those who aren’t down with Cupertino’s wares. The smaller Portable Speaker S125i plays and charges any iPod model and can be powered by an AC adapter, four AA cells or 8.43 tablespoons of Jobs’ favorite fairy dust. Check ‘em out this month and next for $129.99 and $69.99, respectively.
Onkyo TX-NR807 and TX-SR707 receivers keep the updates rolling
August 11th, 2009
More than a few people have been interested in Onkyo’s x07 receiver updates, and now the newness has come to the TX-SR707 and TX-NR807 models. The outgoing TX-SR706 and TX-SR806 models are well-specced to begin with, and thankfully Onkyo didn’t mess with that formula. As you can guess from the “NR” designation, the $1,099 TX-NR807 adds in network streaming (including Pandora, Rhapsody, DLNA and Windows 7) to the 135-Watt/channel output. If you can do without the networking and only need 100-Watts, the TX-SR707 will save you a couple hundred bucks. Both models are THX Select2 badged, Faroudja scaling, and let you pick how to use your rear surround outputs by including both Dolby ProLogic IIz and Audyssey DSX processing. Like we said, Onkyo knows how to fill up the spec list, so head past the break for the full PR details.
New Archos 2 Vision PMP pictured, priced, and predictably short on battery life
August 9th, 2009
Meeting what we’d call the bare minimum for being able to say there’s “touch capabilities,” the new Archos 2 Vision PMP has quietly stepped out of the shadows and onto UK retailer MyMemory’s website. Just under the 2-inch, 220 x 176 resolution display is a tactile slider for menu navigation and volume control. The credit card-sized player also sports a FM tuner and recorder, a microSD slot in addition to internal memory, and support for MP3 / WMA audio and AVI video — nothing too fancy here. Battery life is a depressing 10 hours for audio and 4 for video, which at €60 / $85 for 8GB and €99 / $140 for 16GB models, it’s just a tinge south of acceptable in our book. Europeans still intrigued can pick one up now, while US consumers will either need to pay a premium for import or just wait patiently.
Blu-ray support coming with iTunes 9?
August 9th, 2009
Take this rumor with a fairly large grain of salt and please hold your “bag of hurt” comments until the end. Boy Genius claims he’s got it on word from a “pretty reliable source” that the next big iTunes revision will include better organization options for your iPhone / iPod touch apps, something vague concerning integration with Twitter, Facebook, and Last.fm, and… Blu-ray support. To be fair, the HD disc format wars are all but over at this point, and the most recent Final Cut Pro actually lets you burn video directly to a third-party BD drive, only to have to play the discs on another, non-Mac device. This is all pretty sketch at the moment, and we doubt the boys in Cupertino will be showing their hands until just after the eleventh hour — let’s not forget, also, that iTunes is also available for Windows which does have other third-party Blu-ray playback software. In possibly related whispers, AppleInsider has offered some none-too-descriptive hints at possible iMac refresh with some improvements catering to the “semi-professional audio / video crowd.” Between this and talk about a tablet, we can’t wait for the next Apple press conference, if only to subside all the rumors for a few months.
Update: Our resident HD expert Ben Drawbaugh has chimed in on the matter, hypothesizing that this might be referring to support for Managed Copy, a digitized (and DRM restricted) copy of the film that you would save onto your local hard drive. But in that scenario, it still doesn’t behoove Apple to add that to iTunes unless it was looking to put Blu-ray drives on its own machines, which makes this (still very faint) rumor all the more interesting.
