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Which Digital Audio Player should I get? Since the launch of the first portable Digital Audio Player (commonly referred to these days as an MP3 player) in 1997, manufacturers from all over the world have come up with better players with new features such as radio broadcast playing, voice recording, image file displaying, text displaying and games playing. The most notable feature that they have included in their portable Digital Audio Players is the ability to play video files, which essentially turned their machines into a real portable multimedia device. MP3 players became universally very popular because they are very relatively light and compact. An ordinary 1GB flash-based player could contain up to 250 MP3 songs almost without loss of sound quality. This compares very favourably with a portable CD player that could is 5 times bigger which could only contain about 15 songs. MP3 players that could display video files are commonly referred these days as MP4 players irregardless of whether they could directly play the .MP4 format files or not. Most of these players include conversion programs that could transcode popular format video files like MOV,DAT,AVI,WMV as well as the MP4 format videos files to a video format file that is directly playable on their devices. There are 2 main types of portable MP4 players in the market these days: the flash-based MP4 players and the hard-drive-based MP4 players. Flash-based MP4 playersFlash-based MP4 players are cheaper, have lower-storage capacities and normally have smaller-screen sizes than hard-drive based MP4 players. Most of them have between 1.5" to 1.8" screens. Most do not have audio/video output jacks and are limited to viewing on the device screens. However they are lighter and more compact than hard-drive based MP4 players. Hard-drive based MP4 players Hard-Drive based MP4 players typically have at least 30GB of storage space for storing a respectable no of video and audio files. It is not uncommon to find video files of 1GB per movie so a 30GB player is good for 20 to 30 full-length movies. Most hard-drive based MP4 players have at least a 2.5" screen that is considered by many people as minimum-size for comfortable viewing. Most also are able to directly play the MP4 format video files and hence they are also referred as the real MP4 players. Many also include audio/video output jacks for connecting to TVs for more comfortable larger-screen viewings. So should I get an MP3 player or an MP4 player? This is the question that is in the minds of people who are considering getting a new MP4 player. It really depends on what you are really going for....As a rule of thumb, you should: a) Get a flash-based MP3 player if you are going only for music since they are cheaper, more compact and more durable than MP4 players which have video screens that are likely to break if dropped. b) Get a flash-based MP4 player if you need mostly music from your next digital audio player and but may need it for occasional music-video or movie viewing. They are cheaper, lighter, more compact and more durable (because of fragile hard-drive) than hard-drive based MP4 players. c) Get a hard-drive based MP4 player which could store a huge collection of video files if you would be mostly using it for video viewing. The extra-storage would give you the convenience of not having to swap files from your hard-drive to player too often which is a con of flash-based MP4 players unless they are equipped with the SD/MMC slot. Most hard-drive based MP4 players also have output video ports for viewing on larger TV screens. To be continued....(look out for our next article: Some tips on how to select an MP4 player) |