No big secret this existed, but Toshiba has officially premiered its new V Series Portable Media Player a scant few months after releasing the S Series.
The V is geared more to the movie watcher than the music listener despite performing both functions. Sporting a large 3.5" screen, TFT LCD display with 320 x 240 resolution, and an alleged 8 hours of video playback capability before needing a charge, I'd say Toshiba succeded at catering to the video fan. That is assuming, they are accurate with their claim of 8 hours of battery life which sounds ambitious.
With a larger screen, built in speaker, longer battery life, and revamped design the Gigabeat V looks like a nice follow up to the S series.
The Gigabeat V will run you $399.99 and will is available for pre-orders exclusively through Amazon and Crutchfield starting today.
Our chums over at Engadget have been drooling as much as we have over the forthcoming (is it out yet or not?) Toshiba Gigabeat S personal media player, dubbed by some as an "iPod killer".
The video-capable device works in conjunction with Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center Edition to synchronize content for playing on the move, and looks set to shake up the PMP market, with the iPod firmly in its sights.
If you fancy a look at the interface in action, there's a nice free video on Google's video service that takes you through the nifty Portable Windows Media Center operating system -- including a very nice alphabetized function that highlights the letter of the tracks you're scrolling through in the background.
As we stated last week, no one from PVR Wire was able to attend
CES 2006, although the Weblogs Inc. Network was there in force in the shape of the mighty Engadget team, and myself and
Todd did our best to keep track of all the latest PVR-related developments at the gadget expo.
It's no real
surprise that the big news at CES this year centered around video, and in particular PVR devices, both for use in the
"digital living room" and on the move. For us, the most significant news centered around four main things:
the Toshiba Gigabit S, Google's Video Store, the BSkyB-Microsoft deal and the sneak preview of the Series 3 TiVo.
Here's a roundup of everything we blogged over the course of the event, in case you missed any of it:
Well, our chums at Engadget nabbed John Starkweather of Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded
Devices division and he gave them a quick demonstration of the tiny personal media player, with some details on prices
and a release schedule.
It runs on Microsoft's Portable Media Center software and seems to be both
lightweight and slim. According to Peter, video seems to be very refined on the 320 x 240 resolution, and switching
between landscape and portrait modes is simple. You can download recorded TV shows from a TiVo Series2, a Windows Media
Center Edition PC or movies from official partner web sites, and then watch them on the device or output the signal to a
regular TV.
It also has an FM radio tuner, 20 hours of audio battery life and up to five hours of battery
life for video. Synchronization is via USB.
The retail price will be around $300 for the 30GB version and
$400 for a 60GB version.
If Steve Jobs wasn't worried before, he should be now.
Not all of the units listed feature reviews, but they've given some basic feature highlights and rated each unit with a useful test report that gives some technical details, such as hard drive size, output formats, inputs and outputs.
You can also find out a bit more about Pioneer's high-end DVR-930H-S HDD DVD recorder -- which has a 400 GB hard drive and can record more than 700 hours of video.
And there's also an entry on the new range of Toshiba home networked HDD recorders, which are only available in Japan at the moment, but feature 250 GB and 400 GB drives.
If you've been waiting for a good deal on a TiVo box, your wait might be over. Best Buy is currently promoting some on-line only offers on various TiVo boxes. Several manufacturers are represented in the special; namely Humax, Toshiba, and of course, TiVo themselves.
Aside from the reasonable sale prices, once you activate any of these TiVo boxes, you get two months of TiVo service for free. Prices for a Series2 40-hour box start at $99 and increase based on capacity and functionality. All of the units from TiVo have a $100 instant rebate, while units from other manufacturers reflect other promotional pricing.
No big secret this existed, but Toshiba has officially premiered its new V Series Portable Media Player a scant few months after releasing the S Series.
As we stated last week, no one from PVR Wire was able to attend
CES 2006, although the Weblogs Inc. Network was there in force in the shape of the mighty Engadget team, and myself and
Todd did our best to keep track of all the latest PVR-related developments at the gadget expo.
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