press releasesPortalPlayer Pioneers New Consumer Electronics Category- Personal Media Players"Personal Media Players" will let you bring your digital content everywhere Las Vegas, Nev., January 8, 2004—PortalPlayer, Inc., the company that enabled the fast-growing music jukebox market, today outlined its vision for creating the next generation of portable computer and consumer electronics devices - the "Personal Media Player." PortalPlayer is pioneering this new product category, which will allow users to carry all of their favorite digital content with them including music, audiobooks, photos, videos, movies and more, and enjoy it everywhere. Just as PortalPlayer enabled the large and growing market for music jukeboxes, the company will deliver the silicon and software required to develop personal media players. In a separate announcement, also issued today, the company introduced the first in a series of development platforms that will move the industry further down the path toward delivering a range of personal media players that will appeal to a broader and more diverse set of people and lifestyles. "PortalPlayer was one of the first companies to anticipate the demand for downloadable, portable music jukeboxes," said Gary Johnson, president and CEO of PortalPlayer. "The five-fold increase in music jukebox sales over the last three years proves the strong desire from consumers for a device that allows them to carry all of their music in their pockets. Over the next several years, PortalPlayer will deliver the core technologies that allow consumers to enjoy all of their digital entertainment wherever they are, including music, photos, and their favorite videos or recorded TV shows." The advent of high-capacity disk drives makes it possible to store large amounts of data in devices the size of a small stack of business cards. With capacity expected to grow from more than 30 gigabytes in 2003 to over 120 gigabytes in 2006 , consumers could store up to 30,000 songs or 38,000 high-resolution photos, or up to 240 hours of video on one small portable device. By 2006, portable hard disk drives will have nearly twice the capacity of today's mainstream personal video recorders (PVRs) with even more functionality. Portable Digital Photography - The Logical Next Step Significant competition in the digital camera business is lowering the price and dramatically increasing the image quality with a resultant larger file size. With the inclusion of cameras in cell phones, their use is becoming nearly as pervasive as the phone itself. A new study from InfoTrends Research Group projects that worldwide unit sales of consumer digital cameras will reach nearly 53 million in 2004, and are expected to experience a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 15 percent over the next four years, reaching 82 million units in 2008. According to In-Stat, the number of phones shipped with cameras to take pictures is projected to increase from 43 million in 2003 to 366 million in 2008. For every digital camera sold, there is a user with a growing need to better manage and store the huge numbers of photos that will be captured with their cameras.To fulfill this demand, PortalPlayer today unveiled the Personal Media Player: Photo Edition development platform. In a separate announcement, PortalPlayer described how this new platform includes a system-on-chip (SOC), Firmware Development Kit (FDK) and Software Development Kit (SDK) for customers to quickly bring to market personal media players. These battery-powered, hard-disk-drive-based devices will allow end users to capture, store, play and display their entire music, album art, and photo collections on a single device that fits in their pockets. According to Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies and a leading consumer electronics expert, "Mobile entertainment is the holy grail of consumer electronics, and PortalPlayer is focusing on the most viable part of that market - digital photography and music." About the Personal Media Player The personal media player is expected to become the primary way
for people to get, move and use their personal audio, photo, image
and video collections. As a companion for every digital camera and
cell phone camera, it will allow users to conveniently copy photos
from a camera's temporary flash memory card. The personal media player's small size will enable it to be easily enjoyed in the home, in the car, or on the go. It will easily link to a home audio/video receiver without the interoperability complications of complex home networks or digital media adapters. In fact, a simple docking cradle with AC power and stereo audio out jacks will be the only technologies necessary to "sneaker net" the content throughout the home or take it along in the car or on vacation. Additionally, some models, like today's Rio Karma audio jukebox, will have built-in wired or wireless networking for those who want to share the content among different PCs in the household. A small onboard display will minimize cost, and users will be able to leverage TV and PC displays for viewing and control. Consumer infrared (IR) remotes will be supported for remote transport control. Portable video will be driven by the availability of popular video content from download video service providers. Using the TV tuner and hardware encoder in a Microsoft® Windows® Media Center PC, for example, users will be able to record their favorite TV shows and transfer these to the Personal Media Player for viewing on the LCD display, or to a TV elsewhere in the home or on the road. The timing of mainstream portable video adoption will depend upon: sufficient availability of popular download content; installed base of Media Center PCs and their connection to a cable, satellite or antenna feed; support for a limited number of compression standards; and digital rights management (DRM) standards to enable sophisticated protection of the intellectual property rights of the owners. As a result, PortalPlayer expects that consumers will ultimately carry two types of portable devices in their pockets - personal media players that store all of their personal digital content; and communications devices that operate as mobile, cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) combined. The types of devices that comprise the personal media player segment will be diverse. PortalPlayer believes personal media players will feature CD- quality (lossless) and multichannel audio playback. In addition, they will have a broad range of photo and video capture, store and playback, and incorporate digital camcorder and digital still camera functionality. Finally, they will offer a broad range of wired and wireless functionality including: wireless headsets, wireless output to multiple display types, and networked functionality with other devices through a variety of standardized connectivity options. While the number and types of devices will proliferate, they will all be used as the primary storage and playback device for personal content, and will incorporate a small form factor high-capacity hard disk drive.
# # # PortalPlayer, the PortalPlayer logo and PP5020 are trademarks of PortalPlayer, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
|
 |
|
|
