In the battle for computer-based portable tech entertainment, there are two major players: Microsoft and Apple. As Microsoft pushes forward in its fight with Apple for control of the portable entertainment industry, the company recently took the necessary steps to catch up with its competitor.

Since Apple’s April 2003 launch of the iTunes music store along with its tight integration with the iTunes software and the iPod, Microsoft’s Windows Media Player and its loose collection of third-party portable devices and music services has been lagging. So much so that Apple had time to cross the lines and add Windows compatibility to its iTunes software and its iPod products.

However, with the September 2004 release of Windows Media Player 10, Microsoft made a dramatic run from behind and beefed up its software warrior with integrated music stores, the MSN Music store and other online stores via the Digital Media Mall, and improved support for portable devices with its PlaysForSure logo program. At the same time, Microsoft moved to the forefront when it announced its new category of handheld digital entertainment devices called Portable Media Centers. These devices are specifically designed to work with Windows Media Player 10, and they let you take digital video, as well as music and photos, with you wherever you go.

At the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft’s Bill Gates made three announcements in his keynote regarding services designed to enhance the entertainment value of the Portable Media Centers. He mentioned that Microsoft’s MSN site is going to feature more video clips in the sports, news, and entertainment categories, all of which are specifically designed for downloading and viewing on the Portable Media Center devices. His second announcement was about how Microsoft has partnered with MTV Networks, which will begin offering content from its programming (either for free or a subscription-based model) that is formatted for downloading and playing on Portable Media Center players. In his third announcement, Gates said Microsoft has partnered with TiVo and will work with the company on its TiVoToGo initiative, which is designed to offer mobile versions of TiVo-recorded programs. In this case, TiVo users will be able to transfer recorded programs to a Windows XP PC and then move those programs to a Portable Media Center via Windows Media Player 10. Other services, namely the online movie site CinemaNow and Major League Baseball online source MLB.com, are also providing video services designed specifically for Portable Media Center devices.

For their part, Apple has not yet entered the portable video player market. In fact, when asked about the possibility of a video iPod, Steve Jobs has stated on several occasions that he doesn’t believe there is a compelling reason to put video on the iPod, saying that there isn’t enough content for the format and that the screen is too small. He then goes on to say that the iPod is all about music, which people can listen to as a background activity as opposed to watching video, which is a foreground activity. And while Jobs emphasizes that the main focus of the iPod will remain on music, Apple has indeed released the iPod Photo, which adds digital photo capabilities to the iPod’s musical abilities.

The Creative Zen Portable Media Center was the first device on the market when Microsoft announced the new category of handheld digital entertainment devices.

Other industry players, such as RCA and Archos, which are not specifically tied to the Microsoft-Apple battle, are actively promoting their own portable video player devices, so it would be hard to imagine that Apple would completely opt out of the market. After all, Apple’s iPod and iTunes essentially revolutionized the portable entertainment industry, and the company will surely have an appropriate response to Microsoft’s Windows-based Portable Media Center devices. One could speculate that maybe Apple does have a portable video player in the works, it just might not be in the iPod format, which could account for Jobs’ responses.

As you ponder that thought, let’s take a closer look at the features, or armament if you would, that the Windows Portable Media Center brings into the battle. As we do, we’ll focus on one of the first Portable Media Center devices on the market. We’ll then shift our attention to the current battlefield and investigate some of the more standard Windows-based portable music and photo players and see how they stack up against Apple’s similar line
of iPods.

Windows Portable Media Center

Unlike Apple, which develops the software and hardware for its technologies, Microsoft partners with third-party manufacturers to develop hardware that works with its software. Although there are exceptions to this rule, Microsoft manufactures its own mice, keyboards, and wireless networking devices, for example; the company traditionally works with hardware industry leaders in the areas in which their software is targeting. Such is the case with Windows Media Player 10 and its video capabilities.

When Microsoft announced the Windows Portable Media Center, it announced that Creative Labs would be the first company to begin offering a device to the public. As such, we’ll use the Creative Zen for our example as we explore the Windows Portable Media Center. We should point out that at the time of this writing, Portable Media Center devices are also available from Samsung Electronics (Yepp YH-999) and iRiver International (PMC-120); others are sure to follow. (You can explore each of these devices on Microsoft’s Device Demo page [www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/portablemediacenter
/devices.mspx].)

The Creative Zen, which carries a suggested retail price of $499.99, is about the size of a wallet, measuring 5.67 x 3.2 x 1 inches (HxWxD) and weighing 12 ounces. It sports a 3.8-inch color backlit LCD (liquid-crystal display) screen that produces a 320- x 240-pixel resolution picture. The Zen and all other Windows Portable Media Center devices display a main menu similar to the Startup menu in Windows XP Media Center. This simple yet familiar menu is designed to be extremely easy to navigate using the device’s navigation button.

Apple’s iPod Photo
followed closely on the heels of the Portable Media Center.

Transferring music, video, and pictures from your computer to your Portable Media Center is a snap. Just connect the device to any WinXP-based computer running Windows Media Player 10 via a USB (Universal Serial Bus) 2.0 cable, and the software will automatically establish a communication link with the device and begin synchronizing all your digital media content.

The Portable Media Center supports all popular formats including WMV (Windows Media Video), WMA (Windows Media Audio), MP3, and JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). If the files are not in a format or size that the device can recognize, Windows Media Player automatically converts the file types.

To protect copyrighted material, Windows Media Player’s improved DRM (Digital Rights Management) features will prevent users from transferring specific types of content, such as the contents of commercial DVDs.

The Zen comes with a 20GB hard drive that lets you store a lot of music, photo, and video files. For example, a 20GB drive can hold approximately 5,000 songs, 80 hours of video, or thousands of pictures. Of course, the typical user would store a variety of media and so, as they say, your mileage may vary. To ensure that you can enjoy all of your digital entertainment, the Zen comes with a rechargeable Li-Ion battery that has enough strength to support as much as seven hours of continuous video playback for as much as 22 hours of continuous music listening.

Portable Photo Devices

As we mentioned previously, the Portable Media Center has the capability of displaying digital photographs you download from a WinXP-based computer running Windows Media Player 10. And even though Microsoft’s release last September of its Windows Media Player 10 essentially beat Apple to market with this digital photo capability, Apple followed suit very quickly and introduced its iPod Photo, which it released a month later.

The Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox offers comparable features to the iPod Photo.

In addition to displaying digital photos on its 2-inch, 220 x 176 resolution color LCD in 65,536 colors, the iPod Photo can also store and play music, which makes for a very entertaining combination. The iPod Photo comes in 40GB and 60GB models, and its rechargeable battery can provide you with as much as 15 hours of continuous music or five hours of continuous slideshows along with music.

More in the line of a direct comparison with the iPod Photo, the Windows side of the battlefield has as one of its members the Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox, which is designed to work with Windows Media Player 10. This device features a 1.6-inch, 128 x 128 resolution color LCD, and a 4GB hard drive.

In comparing the iPod Photo to the Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox, it’s clear that the Apple version offers a better picture. However, when comparing the iPod Photo to the photo features of the Creative Zen Portable Media Center, the Zen’s larger screen and higher resolution provides the better picture.

Size Matters

Although video and photo capabilities are the up-and-coming hot categories in the battle for portable tech entertainment, the strictly digital music area of portable tech entertainment is still going strong on both the Apple and Microsoft fronts. The original iPod, now in its fourth generation, is still doing extremely well, as are many of the original Windows-based MP3 players, including the Creative Nomad and the Dell Digital Jukebox. Of course, these devices have evolved over the years and provide more advanced features than their predecessors.

Standard-sized
digital music
devices are still
extremely popular.

What we find interesting is that as these original devices have evolved, they pretty much stayed within the original form factor. However, a parallel evolution in size, or more specifically a downsizing, has occurred. In other words, the devices are getting smaller. Of course, this miniaturization is emblematic of today’s technological devices across the board as circuitry becomes more compact and more efficient.

As such, it isn’t surprising that at the 2005 MacWorld Expo, Apple released the iPod shuffle, a display-less, flash memory-based iPod that looks and works like a USB thumb drive. The big innovation here is that in lieu of using a display to select and control music, this device incorporates iPod’s shuffle feature, which lets you randomly select songs from the music library or playlists at the touch of a button.

Although the size of this device, along with the fact that it uses flash memory rather than a hard drive, isn’t revolutionary, similar miniature Windows–based devices, such as the iRiver iFP and the Rio Fuse, pre-existed the iPod shuffle. And the fact that the iPod shuffle uses an alternative mechanism and doesn’t make you squint at a miniature display to control your music selections is a very avant-garde feature.

The Rio Fuse is similar in size and function to the iPod Shuffle, but contains a miniature display.

The iPod shuffle also allows Apple to take another significant jab at Microsoft and its hardware partners—the device is formatted as an MS-DOS volume. This means that you can plug the iPod shuffle into the USB port on a Windows system, as well as on a Mac. This capability along with an affordable price tag ($99 for the 512MB version and $149 for the 1GB version) may make the iPod shuffle an attractive option for Windows users.

The Battle Rages On

So, with Windows Media Player 10, Microsoft offers a significant counter move to iTunes and the integration of the online music store. At the same time, Microsoft has thrown down the gauntlet in the portable video arena with Windows Media Player 10’s support for video and the Portable Media Center along with an impressive array of content partners. So as we watch the battle from the sidelines, we look to the future of portable entertainment devices and wait for Apple’s response.

by Greg Shultz