Microsoft's Portable Media Center platform finds its first commercial outlet in Creative's new Zen PMC, now shipping and featuring a 3.8" colour display for video playback.
Click here to read infoSync World's review of the Creative Zen PMC-120.
Digital entertainment mainstay Creative today announced the commercial availability of its
Zen Portable Media Center (PMC), the first device to hit shelves based on Microsoft's Portable Media Center platform. Featuring a 3.8" colour display as well as audio and video playback capabilities, the new device has beat upcoming offerings from Samsung and iRiver to the punch.
As Creative's top model in its Zen series, which also comprises other products, the Zen PMC offers a sizeable 20 GB HDD, which Creative claims is capable of storing up to 85 hours of video. The device, which claims up to 7 hours of video playback and up to 22 hours of audio playback courtesy of its exchangeable and rechargeable battery, also features USB 2.0 and is capable of viewing pictures.
The Auto Sync feature in Windows Media Player 10, which was made available my Microsoft today, will provide content synchronization with the PC. Users can watch TV shows downloaded from any Microsoft XP-based PC with a TV tuner card, home movies transferred from the PC, or movies and other video content downloaded from the Internet.
To share music, movies or video, the Zen PMC also includes a built-in speaker and a TV-out jack with audio compatible with NTSC and PAL formats, in addition to a headphone jack for individual use. Supported audio formats include MP3 and WMA, whilst for video the alternatives include Microsoft's own WMV format, DVR-MS (Media Center TV files), ASF, AVI and MPEG and MPEG2 files - the latter two of which must be converted.
The Creative Zen Portable Media Center is available from today in the US, and will be available from mid-September in the UK and Nordics. Other countries will follow in a phased launch by Creative in the Christmas quarter, with the device retailing for $499.99 USD in the US and £369.99 GBP in the UK.
An additional high resolution image of the Creative Zen Portable Media Center is available on the following page.
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