First Portable Media Center hits store shelves

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Sep. 02, 2004

After months of speculation and hype, the first Portable Media Center based on Microsoft's "Windows Mobile software for Portable Media Centers" has finally hit store shelves. The Zen Portable Media Center, from Creative Labs, is now available at Best Buy and Fry's Electronics, priced under $500.

(Click here for a larger, slightly different image of the Zen PMC)

What's a PMC?

The Portable Media Center (PMC) concept, initially known as "Media2Go", was first unveiled by Bill Gates at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Last October, Microsoft productized and renamed Media2Go, and announced a number of manufacturing partners for PMC devices. In his keynote address at this year's CES, Gates showed off a revamped PMC prototype (from Creative) as an example of how Microsoft's vision for "seamless computing" will enhance the digital entertainment applications of mobile embedded technology.

PMC devices are intended to allow users to take digital media content from their Windows XP PCs with them for playback anytime, anywhere. Supported multimedia content types include digital music and videos, digitally recorded television shows, and digital photos. The PMC software platform, based on Microsoft's Windows CE embedded OS, provides support for both Microsoft's Windows Media Series audio and video formats and for MP3. Microsoft says the high quality and smaller size of Windows Media Audio and Video files enhances the effective content capacity of PMC devices.

Creative's Zen

Creative says its Zen PMC, which was showcased earlier this year by Bill Gates during his CES keynote, features a 3.8-inch color LCD screen and an "ultra-fast" USB 2.0 port to transfer video, music or digital photos from a PC to the internal 20 GB hard drive. According to Creative, the Auto Sync feature in Windows Media Player 10 provides seamless content synchronization with the PC. On average, transfer from the PC to the Portable Media Center using Auto Sync will take less than 60 seconds for a 30-minute clip and less than three minutes for a two-hour movie.

Creative's pocket-sized Zen Portable Media Center
"We were the first to bring the Portable Media Center to the world, and no MP3 player on the market today compares to it," commented Sim Wong Hoo, Creative's chairman and CEO. "We added a color screen to our pocket-sized player so people can share digital photos, slide shows, movies and music wherever they go. The Zen Portable Media Center is super easy and fun to use from the moment you turn it on because the interface is simple yet it offers the user so many options."

The Zen PMC is also available directly from Creative's website.

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