At the end of another tiresome day, we decided to perform the old zig-zag manoeuvre and stumbled into some random Commodore artifacts, we were very glad to spot a booth that's actually quite useful to our cause (dominating the world through providing information DAPs). Brainic, undoubtedly the big surprise of last CES, had arranged for another mid-sized stand to show off their very innovative stuff.


We already got to see the micro-hdd based multimedia player, the Morphe D5 (still a little rough around the slick-looking edges, but at least they're considering to upgrade it from 4.4GB to 8GB; see picture above). Same goes for the egg-shaped EggE players, the most advanced version of which (EC-600) has been software-technically upgraded; it currently supports video playback as well. They even thought of a "flip-the-screen" button.


The "Vitwave" however definately would have to be the weirdest player we've come across so far. If you're struggling for "innovation" then you should try grasping the concept of actually... err... feeling... your music. That's right - the Vitwave range (VW-500 and 600) produces little shockwaves (Brainic calls it "Beat Sonic Vibration") that can be felt in the back of your hand. It's really not that easy to explain in terms of words... but after a day filled with the most generic genericness on the face of this planet, something like this made us feel all happy and hopeful again. Sure, it's utterly pointless to feel your music vibrate to the beats of your preferred tunes... but somehow, it still kind of rocks.


The whole concept is still under heavy developement right now (currently only running for 30 minutes when trying to penetrate your precious little hands) but they've got some nifty features up and running already. The screen does look pretty nice, for instance - as does the actual part that's supposed to go around your hand and the (not-yet-functional) touch keypad thing produces a nice robotic-evil kind of red glow. We'd say "We can't wait to get our hands on this one" but obviously we already have (lame pun intended).

Specs, you ask? Sure, why not.

• Supports MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, AVI, JPEG
  
• 96 x 64, 0.95-inch, 65k color OLED screen
  
• Capacity: 512MB/1GB (flash memory)
  
• Total size (including armband-thingy): 65 x 45 x 32mm
  
• Weight: 33.3 grams
  
• Li-polymer, 3.7V built-in battery
  
• USB2.0 compatible
  
• UTP/UMS compatible
  
• Janus DRM/Ogg vorbis compatible (also plays MP3/WMA)