Digital Media Thoughts – Digital Media News & Views Jason Dunn is out with his thoughts on the New Zen Vision portable player by Creative Labs, also a Portable Media Center manufacturer. The Zen Vision is like the PMC except that rather than use the Media Center OS it uses it’s own based on Linux.
“From a hardware perspective, the new Zen Vision looks like it was meant for the Portable Media Center OS – but Creative didn’t go that route, which to me spells trouble for the PMC. With only three partners making the hardware (Samsung, iRiver, Creative), the PMC platform wasn’t exactly on strong footing to begin with. And now, a key partner releases a killer media device that’s not running the PMC OS. Where does that leave the PMC? Unless we see a new release of PMC hardware before the end of 2005, unfortunately I think that leaves the PMC dead in the water.”
I have yet to fully understand the allure of the PMC. Much of this is probably personal preference. For music I have my Audiovox Scoblephone with a 1 gig memory chip and for video I have the much larger screen on my laptop which pretty much comes with me everywhere.
While I could see where a PMC might be a nice hybrid for some, it doesn’t work for me.