Nagase TRANSGEAR HMP-100 features local Gracenote DB
Say hello to the TRANSGEAR HMP-100, a portable audio player from a Japanese company called Nagase Industrial Corporation. It comes stocked with Gracenote's "MusicID" database — a database of song, genre, artist, and other information for roughly 3.5 million songs. Users connect their audio source to the player via analog audio input, and the player compares 15 seconds of waveform data with its internal "FingerPrints" database, matching the song up with its corresponding information from MusicID. Pretty slick if you ask us. But the fun doesn't stop; the player even interfaces with a mobile phone so it can connect directly to the entire Gracenote database of 40 million songs, and retrieve information that doesn't appear in its internal database. The player supports direct MP3 encoding at up to 192kbps, has a 6GB hard drive, 1.8-inch monochrome screen, and a rapid recharging battery that gets to 80% capacity in an hour and a half. Nagase plans to license this technology to other companies, so don't be surprised if you see it turn up in someone else's player.
