Compressed And Compact, Technologies In Your Palm
Portable gadgets have anyway become popular. With the expanding coverage of WiFi (wireless Internet access), portable gadgets are become even more popular. Portable gadgets include laptops, portable media players, netbooks or the Ultra Mobile PC. It has become easy to download content from the Internet. Conversion to digital formats, for instance DVD or VCD movies, has become easy with special software. The portable devices have become not only travel companions, but also a part of the work and day to day functions. The portable devices include digital audio players, portable video players, digital video recorders and personal digital assistant.
An electronic gadget, the portable media player stores and plays digital media. Though essentially a digital audio player, the portable media player can play videos and display images. There are also mobile phones that have these functions and are also known as portable media player. Archos was the first portable media player to be widely sold. This was in 2002. Most of the portable media players accommodate MP3 audio format. Some of them also support Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Windows Media Audio (WMA) and WAV.
Usually the images are displayed using LCD or OLED screen. Some players can record video using accessories. JPEG format is compatible on all players for display of images. Other file formats such as TIFF, PNG and GIF are compatible on some players such as the iPod series. Most of these players support MPEG-4 video format while some others are compatible with Windows Media Video (WMV) and AVI. Most players are able to transfer files between the player and the computer. Many electronic companies have been fast to bring out portable devices. Archos, a French company, for instance offers digital audio players, portable video players, digital video recorders and personal digital assistant. In 2007, the company released Archos Generation 5, a series of portable media players including Archos 705 160GB portable media player.
The data is stored in the microdrive, flash memory or hard drive. The storage capacity has increased to 320 GB for the hard drive based PMPs and 32 GB for flash memory PMPs. It is also possible to increase the capacity of PMPs’ storage. CompactFlash, Secure Digital card and Memory Sticks are used to transfer contents directly from external devices. The size of the screen is as much as 7 inches. Resolutions differ within players and go up to WVGA. Though the color depth is 16-bit, it could go up to 24-bit in some players. With the introduction of Touch Screens many PMPs increasingly sport this feature. Many more new features have been introduced in the PMPs in recent years such as text readers, the simple camera, game emulation and editors.