Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Special > Miscellaneous > The Year in Review: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Portable Music and Video Players Need More Innovation and Less Me-To

03:21 - Friday 8 December 2006 by Barry Gerber

Music and video players are fantastic. You can listen to and watch stuff anywhere. But if I see another "new" player that really isn't, I'm gonna scream.

There's nothing new about Microsoft's Zune except for its WiFi capability and that it's the first MP3, photo and video player from Microsoft. That might motivate some to get into Zuning, but, if sales so far are an indicator, it appears to be too little too late to make the Zune an iPod killer. And, I don't think Microsoft's effort to market the Zune as a community builder because of its WiFi capability and the company's vague almost edge-of-illegal digital rights management stance is going to fly with the young crowd it's after. Apple might get away with such fluff, but not stodgy old Microsoft.

Beyond the Zune, as far as the eye can see is a fairly uniform band of marching music and video players. The parade is led, of course, by Apple's iPods, which haven't changed much since at least the introduction of the Nano. I like the tiny new Shuffle as a piece of design smarts, but there's really nothing new under the hood.

There is one area where there's been a bit of creativity in the iPod camp, the iccessories market. I'll bet if you counted all those fancy plug-your-iPod-in audio receivers and speakers and the cases and other stuff out there for the iPod, there would be a unique product for each and every iPod sold since the first one in 2001. That's a joke, but isn't it amazing how many companies are offering one kind of thingy or another for the iPod?

The SanDisk Sansa e270 and Creative Zen V

So, where is there room for innovation in the portable audio and video player market? Well someone could perfect wireless headphones and make them as common to these devices as they are to phones. Bluetooth can be a big drain on battery, but eliminating the headphone cord that's constantly getting tangled in itself, the buttons on my shirts and my hair would be a real blessing. I envy all those folks, mostly female, who seem able to sit for hours with perfect posture and composure while wearing those dreaded wired headphones.

Other areas for innovation include lots more storage and to go with it lots more battery life. I'm sick of watching the same short news, TV show and music clips I can see on my phone. I want to see the whole thing and I need the storage space and battery life to do so. And, don't make the device any larger either. Hee, hee, hee, what fun!

Finally, I would love a few personal information management capabilities on my audio/video device. At least give me email and instant messaging. I know that would force the installation of some kind of networking capability like WiFi or WiMax and that would draw more battery juice yet. But, with voice over IP phone capability thrown in, I could dump my cell phone and get along with a single device. Alphanumeric keys could be nothing more than an image on a touch sensitive screen. Hmm, maybe I'm asking for too much in one device. Maybe not.

Conclusions? Not This Time

I thought about writing a Conclusions section for this article, but every time I tried I failed. I think it's because there's no finality in my mind about technologies. The year will soon be over, but the technologies will go on, with some playing out whole new scenarios in the months to come. And then there's the new stuff that's sure to show up. All through next year, I'll be here watching what happens intently and picking my favourite new products to explore and possibly begin using myself. I guess it's the unending nature of technological development that draws me to it. In all the years I've been a tech enthusiast, I can't remember ever being bored. And I can't remember not looking forward to each tomorrow. That's enough. Conclusions make no sense here.