Creative announces Android-based PMP platform, goes head to head with Apple’s iPod touch

Steve O'Hear — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:36:49 +0000

This is pretty interesting on the surface but misses a trick.

Creative, who has its roots in MP3 players and other portable media devices, have announced an Android-based media player platform. I say platform because the company may never release a consumer-facing device itself, but instead is touting its own reference design, software development kit and media processor to OEMs and developers.

Hardware-wise, the device known as the Zii EGG (to be re-branded by those that bring it to market), has impressive media-centric specs that include:

High Definition 1080p Output
3.5” 320×480 (16 million colors) LCD
Capacitive 10-Point Multi-Gesture Touchscreen Display
SD card slot
3D Hardware Graphics Acceleration for OpenGL ES
32GB Internal Memory
256MB Mobile DDR RAM
X-Fi Audio Processing
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
GPS Receiver
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
3-axis Accelerometer
HD and VGA Dual Cameras

In all areas the Zii EGG matches or beats Apple’s iPod touch, the product it’s clearly designed to compete with. What’s interesting is that Creative have decided to do this with the help of OEMs rather than going it alone. The wounds inflicted on Creative during the MP3 player wars must still be sore. High-def output is a key selling point of the Zii EGG and iPod touch beater (for now) as is expandable storage, GPS and front and rear facing cameras (a feature thought to be in the next-gen iPod touch too).

Where Creative is missing a trick, aside from the decision to not go it alone, is that software will likely be the key differentiator on any Android-based PMP or Internet tablet or whatever. And so again it seems odd to leave this part of the user experience to third-parties (based on the video below). It’s almost as if Google is providing the generic OS/UI and Creative the generic hardware design (albeit one that is impressive).

Perhaps that’s the best way to look at it: Creative taking the heavy lifting out of building hardware, just as Google has done with building the OS. Either way, as a strategy on Creative’s part, it leaves me scratching my head.

(via CNet)

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BBC iPlayer and the Creative Zen X-Fi

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:06:03 +0000

BBC iPlayer on the Creative Zen X-Fi

Yesterday, I was out tech shopping with a friend and a simple brief. Purchase a 4-8 GB flash-based MP3 player, and one that wasn’t an iPod. What we came away with was the Creative Zen X-Fi, which isn’t the newest of players but has its fair share of iPod-trumping features nonetheless. Top of the list is the ability to ’side load’ content downloaded from the BBC’s TV catch-up service, iPlayer. That’s because the Zen supports Windows Media DRM, needed because of the way the BBC licenses content for download so that it will only be playable seven days after broadcast. (Obviously, you’ll need to be a Windows user in the first place, which is far from ideal.) The advantage of downloading rather than streaming iPlayer, of course, is that you don’t need to be connected to the Internet while viewing the content.

A couple of other features that I really like about the Zen X-Fi is the external speaker for communal viewing, the SD card slot so that the storage capability can be expanded, and that music, pictures and videos can be drag ‘n’ dropped both ways – to and from a PC via USB – while in mass storage mode. Take that iPod/iTunes.

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Creative announces Android-based PMP platform, goes head to head with Apple’s iPod touch

BBC iPlayer and the Creative Zen X-Fi