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CeBIT 2005: Keian's vicious PMP attack!
comment: 3 | Saturday, March 19 (2005) 11:52AM | Posted by Robert Sinke
Wooha, certainly one of the surprises of last week's CeBIT was a company called "Keian". They had gathered a whole new series of portable multimedia players, most of which looked remarkeably... weird. Quite a sum-up, so prepare.

Let's start off with the PF0713 - "Picture Frame" for friends. This clean, white unit comes with a fiberglass rest so that it can act as a... picture frame, indeed. There's a rather formidable 7-inch 480x234px full color screen. Supported formats include: MP3, WMA, JPEG, MPEG1,2 & 4, DivX, (S)VCD and HDCD - not bad, huh? Oh, and it also has TV-out (NTSC and PAL), of course.

Also, the PF comes with SD/MMC, MS, SmartMedia, MicroDrive, CF and XD card slots; good job on that one, Keian. Now for the dimensions, not sure if the advertised figures are right: 243 x 110 x 83 (= picture frame's rest) mm. That's more like a 1878 steam kettle and I can't remember it being that big. But given the fact that it's a 7-incher, who knows.
A variation on the above-mentioned PF0713 is the PM0710. Also equiped with a voluptuous 7-inch screen, this thing has a built-in 20 or 40GB hard drive (not sure if the same goes for the PF) and supports the same formats as its white-colored sibling.

A few card formats were scratched from the list, which is why the PM only supports SD/MMC and CF cards.

The PM0710 has a typical USB2.0-Host interface and is said to measure 201 x 105 x 30mm. Quite a fatty bastard, still - and battery life is awful on this one as well. A mere 2 hours of continuous video playback? we've seen better.
Now approaching less-ludicrous screen size range - the PM0310 comes with a 3.5-inch screen, while still measuring 150 x 85 x 26mm. Brightness of the LCD was scaled down to 250cd/m2, in contrast with the 7-inchers' 350cd/m2 values.

Same battery life (2 hours, which is absolutely ridiculous), no CF slot (still able to read SD/MMC cards, though) and equiped with a 1.8-inch 20GB hard drive. The other specs are basically identical to those of the formerly-mentioned units.
Keian probably ran out of cool PFRGHL-0170-kind-of names, because this white PMP is simply called "PMP". No dimensions are known for this product, but it looked pretty compact (most compact one in the entire range, if I recall correctly) albeit a bit thick. The PMP doesn't support SVCD (while VCD is still accepted), the USB-Host speed was limited to 1.1 speeds (normal USB interface is still 2.0-compatible) and video output was composed according to the CVBS standard (whatever that might be).

However, the PMP does support video recording - not known which formats act as output files, though. A different kind of power source was also introduced: li-ion instead of li-polymer. No idea if that did any good for the power consumption rate, but it can't be much worse than previously-mentioned levels.
Ok, that concluded the "official" part of Keian's spectrum. We saw some other weird units, though. The red unit you see on the right is dubbed "PMP AB1" and obviously has a CF slot, as well as space for your SD/MMC-based memory cards.

We also suspect that the "rec" button isn't there for nothing - seems like another video recording player(PVR). Furthermore, it seems to have a 3.5-inch screen built-in. No information was available on the AB1, so we'll wait and see what happens to it.
Jeez Louise! Talk about an abundance of buttons! This blue player, PM0310 SB-1 (whatever), will require some getting-used-to for sure. Seperate buttons for up, down, left and right presumably mean that the player's always open to menu navigation - even while playing back video or audio.

As you can imagine, there are also seperate buttons for volume control; which is always a good thing. We wonder if we'll ever see anything like this appear on Western markets, though.
Remember that movie "Unbreakable"? With Samuel L jackson as Elijah Price aka "mr Glass" in his ultra-padded car?

Well, looks as if the PMP SC was made for that guy. It has this weird, cushion-like telephone-dial interface. That's pretty much all we can tell about it, since it doesn't seem to exist officially. Let's just add that it was somewhat humungous in size.
And finally, plus the most interesting of the whole lot, there was the Keian... eh... absolutely-no-clue-what-it's-called-like. This PMP comes with a swivel-type camera module, that interestingly enough can fall back on built-in flash light module. Haven't seen that too often on camera-enabled units. Could also prove to be equiped with AV-in. Again, little to nothing was known about the unlisted models, among which was this particular player.

Controls seem rather uncomplicated, screen's probably 3.5-inch in size. We actually encountered a few rebrands of this particular player while walking across CeBIT's main halls.
Comments

Austin Vaughan
Location: Lenexa, KS
Comments: 770
 		Mar 19 (2005) 03:22PM  

biggest newspost ever. Congradulations, good sir.



Robert Sinke

Comments: 1221
 		Mar 19 (2005) 09:12PM  

It's one way to come up with "BIG" news. Not sure if anyone cares though, as with many things in life. Maybe we'll need to add some random explosions and a few buckets of money to get people to interact.



mudlouse

Comments: 66
 		Mar 20 (2005) 12:49AM  

the first one looks like a microwave.

the second looks like a large tv.

3rd and 6th, a GBA and PSP.

the 5th (red one) actually looks quite good.

the last one seems very sony-esque, which couldn't be all bad



Cassiopeia

Comments: 188
 		Mar 20 (2005) 02:09PM  

I agree with mudlouse, it looks like a microwave..



mudlouse

Comments: 66
 		Mar 21 (2005) 10:07PM  

although... a pocket microwave would be very useful



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Step666
Apple, perhaps, is a bad example for the reason Pondy points out.

But the point in general stands, most people don't want to carry round multiple devices, especially not two that are near-identical in terms of features.


In other news, the Eels are amazing live.

Pondlife
largely=larger

See atrocious.

Pondlife
cab=can.

Damn my typing sucks atm.

Pondlife
Well that was partly in what I said

But the Touch comes in largely capacities too doesn't it?

For the touch and iphone I think we cab assume a fair amount of ibuyanythingfromapplesyndrome.

bloodycape
From what I can tell from visiting mac forums, there are quite a few users with the Touch, and the iPhone. Partially for the reason Pondlife said. Not to mention it the case of Apple the Touch cost less for more space(v. iPhone).

Pondlife
So you only have to deal with the one interface but have a music back up on your phone for when mp3 player battery goes. Cheaper than buying two phones.

Well hopefully.

Step666
You wouldn't buy a Touch if you had an iPhone though, would you?

So, if you have a high-end Android handset (which a number of people here either do or are looking at getting), why would you then buy a second device that gives you the same functionality sans the phone element?

bloodycape
It is partially the same reason why the Touch is doing well.

TheDarkSide
Not everyone wants a phone, so what's so hard for some of you to comprehend?

Step666
I don't see why you'd buy either of them over a Galaxy S (or one of it's sister devices).


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