The Zune's competition has arrived

[mzkhadir]

Creative Vision W

 

[michaels]

Nice

 

[arod]

i do wish this was running pmc (portable media center). but yeah it looks pretty sweet.

 

[Spineshank]

nice.

 

[Parrotheader]

There's actually a lot of great Ipod alternatives out there now even before the Zune enters the market. The Clix and the Sansa are great alternatives to the Nano (the Sansa is actually getting a lot of aftermarket support now too, one thing virtually no non-Ipod has had before.) And then you've got some of Creative's nice higher-end players like this at the other end of the spectrum. Then you can have to start factoring cell phones into the equation. It's getting to be a pretty crowded market.

 

[everman]

Looks a lot better than Zune if a portable video player is what you want.

 

[Paratus]

Meh

My PALM LifeDrive has a 3in 480x320 screen and with TCPMP, will play native MP4, H.264, MP2, MP3, Ogg, etc. Throw in PocketTunes and I get protected WMAs and internet ShoutCast stations through wifi.
It's got a 4GB hard drive with room for a 4GB SD card so the storage is not as nice but its more than adequate for 12+ hours of video. Battery life is more than long enough for a complete movie and it does so much more than a media player.

 

[pontifex]

wow, that looks nice.
so where do i hand in my arm and leg in exchange for one?

 

[ForumMaster]

first, this was posted several times already. but since the search sucks, what can you do about it? my main gripe with this player is the low rez. for a 5" screen, (srry. 4.7") i expect atleast 640x400.

 

[lobbyone]

my laptop will destroy both the nano and zune!! haha...j/k, had too much coffee today
love the looks of that player, might cost a bit much though?

 

[mzkhadir]

Originally posted by: lobbyone
my laptop will destroy both the nano and zune!! haha...j/k, had too much coffee today
love the looks of that player, might cost a bit much though?

Pricing:

The same day Microsoft details its Zune Product Line, Creative decides to launch its widescreen version of the Zen player in North America. The widescreen is at a 16:9 ratio and gives the player the W in its name. The Zen Vision:W was launched in Korea two weeks ago but North America will get it now. Transfer of media can take place via USB 2.0 cable or via the W?s built-in Compact Flash memory reader.

Other than MP3 songs and JPEG images, the widescreen will be put to use primarily for videos. They are to be encoded using MPEG-4 Simple Profile (SP) at 500 Kbps throughput. This is supposed to be sufficient for a low-resolution display. The W will support multiple codecs: MPEG-1, -2, and -4 SP, along with DivX 4 and 5, XviD, as well as TiVoToGo. There is no DRM limitation in place. Creative made sure the new Zen is fully compatible with Amazon's Unbox video download service which currently provides content from Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros.

The Zen Vision:W will be available in 2 sizes:
30 GB edition ($299.99 USD)
60 GB edition ($399.99 USD)

 

[jpeyton]

Zune's big draw is WiFi and it's network capabilities.

This doesn't have it.