New OLED portable media player

Ovideon, an Illinois-based manufacturer of flat-panel LCDs, announced today their new portable media player with an OLED screen. Wow, who knew there were companies like this in Illinois?

First, let's talk about OLED. It stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode, and we can summarize by saying it's about the best way a manufacturer can make a small screen look really bright and beautiful. Some cell phones and car stereos are using OLED technologies to create nice-looking displays, but this is definitely a vision of the future. Dan Zubic, Executive Vice President of Ovideon says “you will never want to watch video on an LCD player ever again!”

Some facts:

The screen is an odd-sized 512x218 pixels (this is odd as computer screens are typically 640x480, and TV screens are about 500x350), but I'm sure they have their reasons.

It has a built-in cable TV tuner as well as audio/video inputs

The device can record video, like a TiVo

An internal 1-inch hard-disk drive is included to store video (and other media files) - interestingly, the company forgot to mention how much storage was provided in the drive!

Playback of many video formats is supported, including: MP3, AVI, WMA, WMV, DIVx, and JPEG. I'm sure there are a variety of incompatibilities, but even so, this is a pretty impressive list.

Total weight is 5.1 ounces, and it "fits in your shirt pocket or purse" - sounds nice, but maybe they should keep in mind that most of the MEN who will buy this unit (outside of Illinois) don't usually carry a purse around...

Sounds interesting, I have to say. I am still NOT a fan of portable video players, but this one might just make me look twice. Although $599 is not a cheap way to get started!

Interesting links
Ld thoughts on PVPs Ovideon home page More about OLED