One little known surprise at this years CES was a new player coming out from AOL and Haier. Not exactly a pair known for making DAP's but this new player doesn't sound too bad. The player is currently known as the "Smartscreens Media Device" (but hopefully not for long). The SMD as I will call it has a nice set of features. Two that stand out are the built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. With Wi-Fi, the player will provide you with suggestions of similar songs and artists retrieved from the net while playing back music. You can also purchase tracks on the go from various services, as well as listen to streaming Internet radio.

The 30GB player has a pretty nice looking interface, and the metal body of the player should be pretty durable. The player is also capable of video playback with support for MPEG4 and WMV. Last but not least, the SMD is running on a Linux system that will allow users to add on to the player. The director of market development at AOL, Joe DeAngelis states "The Smartscreens platform is a framework that allows the flexible incorporation of different applications... so both enthusiastic programmers and formal partners may be able to add applications to the gadget. After all, it's running Linux."

via, Digital Music and TMCnet

Thanks, davinp