Epson Rio PhotoPC Player

[Janak Parekh]

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0304/0...2epsonp1000.asp

This is a really neat-looking device. It's a compact device including a 640x480 3.8" transflective screen, 10GB hard drive, and a CF slot -- to support photo viewing and organization. It's such a disappointment, therefore, that they didn't integrate full multimedia into the device -- could you imagine a CE solution built on top of this?



If you read Japanese, the specs are here.

[Janak Parekh]

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0304/0...2epsonp1000.asp

This is a really neat-looking device. It's a compact device including a 640x480 3.8" transflective screen, 10GB hard drive, and a CF slot -- to support photo viewing and organization. It's such a disappointment, therefore, that they didn't integrate full multimedia into the device -- could you imagine a CE solution built on top of this?



If you read Japanese, the specs are here.

[ricksfiona]

Just wait a couple of years.... They'll have 10GB SD cards..

[michael]

Looks strangely like a Media2Go prototype shown at CeBit

[Sheynk]

Originally Posted by Michael

Looks strangely like a Media2Go prototype shown at CeBit

I have to agree with the fact that this device almost screams "Media2go" with the specs presented

[David C]

It's a compact device including a 640x480 3.8" transflective screen

Take that screen, and build a Pocket PC around it. Common, where have the manufacture's brain been? Are we still going to be using 240x320 10 years from now?

[billb]

There is only ONE reason Epson is interested in bringing a device like this to market and that is to sell more Ink Jet Printers so that they can ultimatley sell more high-margin ink. The only way they can accomplish this is to increase the size of their market (ie increase the rate of conversion of film to digitial) which today is constrained by the requirement to own a PC for storage. Personally I think their marketing/strategy with the device is spot on.

This however, does not mean that I wouldn't love to see HP take this form factor and turn it into a PocketPC with a 10GB hard drive. Just keep in mind that such a device as a PocketPC would cost at least $1000 imo given the different margin requirements that HP would have for a PPC as they aren't selling ink jet printers/ink cartridges with a PPC that might make up the margin difference.

-Bill

[Jafar]

Hmm, a pocketpc platform with a large screen and that's a bit bigger than today's pocketpc's. Wait a sec, I got it. Isn't that what an HPC is? :P. I hve an intermec 6651 that has now been discontinued. Problem with $1000 pda's is people would rather spend $1000 on a notebook or subnotebook than a PDA. Don't get me wrong, I know an HPC has a keyboard but this particular unit that I'm using folds over into tablet form and is quite small. Oh well, let's hope the next round of HPC like devices make it.

Jafar

[PhatCohiba]

Originally Posted by David C

Take that screen, and build a Pocket PC around it. Common, where have the manufacture's brain been? Are we still going to be using 240x320 10 years from now?

Don't they realize how much better web browsing would be with pocket ie 5.5 and 640x480.

I mean way better. And how about word & Excel.

[felixdd]

As of today the only HPC's on the market are the Intermec (non-consumer targetted devices) and the NEC's. Personally I think NEC's move to the ARM processor will be their downfall (not much ARM software for HPC's compared to the old MIPS and SH3 processors -- since people don't make new programs anymore).

What's the battery life on the Epson -- that's what I'm curious about

[kidA]

i've been hoping for oh, a year and a half now (since the ipod came out) for someone to make a PPC with a built-in HD of at least 2 or 3 GB. HDs come pretty small these days so you could get one in a pretty reasonable form factor, and it would finally make multimedia use on a PDA useful.