Creative has unveiled its Zen Vision portable media player which can play music, show movies and display digital pictures. 

The device comes with a 640 x 480 pixel colour screen, and a 30GB hard drive which the vendor claims can hold 120 hours of video or 15,000 songs.

The Zen Vision's battery provides up to 4.5 hours of video playback and 13 hours of music, depending on file format and energy settings. A double capacity battery is available as an accessory.

Creative is positioning the device as a competitor to Apple's iPod. Although it is slightly larger and heavier than the 60GB Apple iPod Photo, the two devices both cost $399.

But the addition of video playback puts the Zen Vision ahead of the iPod, which is not expected to offer such a function until 2006. 

The Zen Vision is not compatible with tracks from Apple's iTunes music store, but does support Napster, MSN Music and Yahoo Music.

It also offers an address book, to-do list and calendar that can be synchronised with Microsoft Outlook.

The Creative player supports MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 encoded video, allowing consumers to play DivX, WMV and MJPEG formats.

Consumers in the US can pre-order the Zen Vision through the company's website  for $399. It is slated for release in Europe and Asia at a later date.