Someone just submitted news on this player and I have to say, I'm blown away. Not by how great it is, but by the nerves of this so-called DAP maker. We've all seen iPod clones before, but this one takes the cake. First they cloned a DAP brand name, calling themselves "Eye River". You might assume this player comes from China, but this one actually comes from Tibet. Just check out the color combination and you can see the Tibetan Monk influence. According to their website, "Eye River" is a "meditative state of enlightenment". Oh great, now they're stealing Creative's whole "Zen" image too.

On top of the obvious trademark thefts above, they've also taken the design of the wildly popular Microsoft Zune. Going further, you'll notice they replaced the Zune's D-pad, with a scroll wheel from the Sandisk Sansa e200. Still not convinced that this is the king of all clones? Just look at that spiffy looking interface. Look familiar? It ought to, as it's taken from a Microsoft Mobile skin clone of Apple's upcoming iPhone. They cloned a clone!

So now that I've got you all infuriated with Eye River's gall, let's talk about the features. The player has 16GB's of flash memory expandable with an SDHC slot, MP3, Ogg, FLAC, AAC, and TBT (some sort of weird proprietary Tibetan format). Video support for AVI, Divx, H.264, and TBT-HD. It also has an FM Tuner, transmitter, and recorder, plays games, text support, phone, calculator, etc.. Did I mention that it's gapless?

The ER-M as it's called will retail for $299, but they are also offering a $50 Buddhist Conversion Rebate. Not sure how their rebate center will validate that one though...

LINK

Thanks, AFD07