Handheld Glory

Forget anal analog and dodgy discs. For quality social exclusion, try these personal video players.

HK Magazine Archive

HK Magazine

Published: 4:00pm, 12 Jan 2006

Why you can trust SCMP

Shinco PMP 1700

Supported Media: AVI, MPEG, MPG, WMA, MP3, OGG, JPEG, DivX
Battery Life: 3 hours
Memory Capacity: 40GB
Dimensions: 195mm x 143mm x 27mm
Weight: 690g
Price: $2,998
Extras: Remote control and a cigarette lighter charger.
Pros: The Shinco is sleek and nicely made, with a simple user interface that's a breeze to use. It supports a wide variety of formats that other models often fail to play.
Cons: The screen. The colors are good but photographs lack crispness. The biggest problem is it will only show photos in widescreen, which stretches your snaps and leaves them looking very strange. It also has no facility to rotate photos.

Archos Portable Media Player AV 4100

Supported Media: MP3, AVI, WMA, WAV, JPEG, BMP
Battery Life: 16 hours
Memory Capacity: 100GB
Dimensions: 125mm x 78mm x 26mm
Weight: 320g
Price: $4,380
Extras: Comes with a multifunction remote control and voice recorder.
Pros: You can set it to record television programs while you’re out.
Cons: The speaker is poor and sometimes distorts the sound.

iPod

Supported Media: JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PSD (Mac only), PNG, H.264 video, MPEG-4, mp4, m4v
Battery Life: Up to 20 hours of music playback; up to four hours of slideshows with music; up to three hours of video playback
Memory Capacity: 60GB
Dimensions: 10.4mm x 6.1mm x 1.4mm
Weight: 156g
Price: $3,200
Extras: Earbud headphones, USB cable, dock adapter, case
Pros: It’s an iPod. And its large memory capacity means you can have everything on the go. Integrating with iTunes, it features the world’s biggest music catalog and a new video store. Choose from a range of cool accessories to top it up.
Cons: It doesn’t come with any extras such as a dock, a power adaptor or A/V cables. Poor battery life for video. Note that you can't buy music or videos from iTunes with a Hong Kong credit card because of copyright issues.

JNC SSF-M50

Supported Media: MPEG4, AVI, MP3, WMA, WAV, JPEG
Battery Life: 18 hours
Memory Capacity: 512MB (with card slot for additional 1GB)
Dimensions: 90mm x 60mm x 17.6mm
Weight: 80g
Price: $1,190
Extras: Supporting NTSC and PAL cables
Pros: With a petite 260,000-color 2.5-inch screen, it's one of the smallest on the market.
Cons: Although you can add more memory, it's still only slightly more than 1GB.

Zen Portable Media Center

Supported Media: WMV, ASF, WMA, MP3, JPG, JFIF, WAV, MPEG, AVI
Battery Life: 22 hours
Memory Capacity: 20GB
Dimensions: 144mm x 80.7mm x 27mm
Weight: 340g
Price: $3,698
Extras: Comes with the handy systematic Media Center PC guide
Pros: The additional software includes a Digital Media Mall with links to online stores such as Wal-Mart, CinemaNow, Musicmatch, MusicNow, Napster and MSN Music.
Cons: While it can play a wide variety of formats, these all have to be converted to Windows Media Player format.

Movies To Go

While you may not want to go jogging while watching your favorite TV show, you can now carry full-length movies and sitcoms around with you in your pocket. Imagine watching every episode of "The Simpsons" or Lonely Planet’s "Globe Trekker" on the plane. You can even download one-minute Jamie Oliver recipe clips. Most portable media devices can record directly from television, or you can purchase videos from sites such as www.cinemanow.com and www.movielink.com.

DIRECTIONS

All models available at Broadway.
G-1/F, Hang Lung Centre, Paterson St., Causeway Bay, 3427-9819.

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