Posts Tagged ‘travel’

The popularity of portable devices has spread far and wide. With more areas being covered by WiFi (wireless Internet access), portable devices become even more attractive. Portable devices include laptops, netbooks or the Ultra Mobile PC and portable media players. There are special softwares that can easily convert audio and video into the digital format for use in these portable devices. They are becoming indispensable gadgets at work, leisure and entertainment. The portable gadgets include digital audio players, digital video recorders, portable video players and personal digital assistant.

A portable media player (PMP) is an electronic device that can store and play digital media. It is a digital audio player that can also display images as well as play videos. Cell phones which have these capabilities are also called portable media player. The first widely sold portable media player was Archos in 2002. Almost all portable media players come with MP3 audio format while some also support the Windows Media Audio (WMA), WAV and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC).

Usually the images are displayed using LCD or OLED screen. Some players can record video using accessories. JPEG format is compatible on all players for display of images. Other file formats such as TIFF, PNG and GIF are compatible on some players such as the iPod series. Most of these players support MPEG-4 video format while some others are compatible with Windows Media Video (WMV) and AVI. Most players are able to transfer files between the player and the computer. Many electronic companies have been fast to bring out portable devices. Archos, a French company, for instance offers digital audio players, portable video players, digital video recorders and personal digital assistant. In 2007, the company released Archos Generation 5, a series of portable media players including Archos 705 160GB portable media player.

The hard drive, flash memory or microdrive is used to store the data. There has been a steady increase in the storage capacity going up to 320 GB in the case of the hard drive PMPs and up to 32 GB for the flash memory based PMPs. The storage capacity of PMPs can also be enhanced. Content transfer can be done using Secure Digital card, CompactFlash and Memory Sticks directly from external devices. The screen size of the display screen has risen to 7 inches. Resolutions vary from player to player and may go up to WVGA. The color depth ranges from 16-bit, which is normal, to 24-bit in some players. After the launch of the Touch Screen technology, many PMPs have integrated this feature into their players. Even more new features were integrated into the PMPs in the recent past such as the editors, game emulation, the simple camera and text readers.