Microsoft lifts curtain on Portable Media Center

Microsoft yesterday unveiled the mobile entertainment devices that it hopes will give cooler cousins such as Apple's iPod a run for their money.

Based on the Windows Mobile platform, the players are designed to allow mobile access to all the digital entertainment stored on a PC, including recorded TV, movies, pictures and music.

Creative Labs' Creative Zen Portable Media Center, the first commercially available Portable Media Center product, features a 20GB hard drive which can hold 85 hours of video, 9,000 songs and tens of thousands of photos.

The units also boast a replaceable, rechargeable battery capable of seven hours of continuous video playback and 22 hours of continuous audio playback, and a 3.8in TFT LCD screen.

UK customers will have to wait until the middle of September to get hold of one. The estimated UK retail price will be £369.99. By comparison, the iPod has no screen and costs around £219.

Sim Wong Hoo, chief executive of Creative Technology, a subsidiary of Creative Labs, said in a statement: "These devices will let people not only enjoy their favourite music, but recorded TV, video and photos all on one small device."

Portable Media Centers from Samsung Electronics and iRiver International will be available later this autumn, Microsoft said.

The software giant also unveiled Windows Media Player 10 designed to improve the way in which consumers can play and transport digital media around the home, on the PC or on portable devices.

Support for Windows Media DRM 10, and the ability to play back digitally protected Windows Media Audio and Video files, is also provided together with fast content transfer using Windows Media Player 10 and Auto Sync.

"Portable Media Centers are vanguard devices that will change the way we think about digital entertainment on the go," said Todd Warren, corporate vice president at Microsoft, in a statement.

"Today we're seeing just the tip of the iceberg in how content companies are envisioning a future where people can take their digital entertainment wherever they go."