Feature-packed Cowon D2 to hit Korean market

Hot on the heels of the substandard (in Cowon terms, that is) iAudio D1, the company best known for feature-packed portable media players is back to its old self again with the fully loaded D2. Foregoing the sleek, skinny look for a more Archos-esque appearance, Cowon's latest PMP rocks a 2.5-inch 320 x 240 resolution touchscreen, built-in DMB, support for WMV, MPEG4, MP3, OGG, WMA, and FLAC, "30fps movie playback," video output, FM radio, "voice / line-in recording" function, and a snazzy "transparent overlay" GUI. While initial reports suggest a 2GB internal capacity, the unit will sport an SD slot for your expansion needs, and those fortunate enough to reside in South Korea can pick up this properly-spec'd player in November for an undisclosed price.

[Via DAPReview]

[Scott @ Oct 28th 2006 10:18PM]

Beautiful Device

[rockintom99 @ Oct 28th 2006 10:33PM]

I think, for a device like this (or the touchscreen iPod rummored for ages), a touchscreen is a bad idea, really. Changing songs works a lot better with tactile feedback, so you can know how many songs you skip. Most people would smudge up their screens, as I cant see people taking out a stylus every time they want to change a song, or the volume level.

[tekdroid @ Oct 29th 2006 12:00AM]

definitely agree wtih rockintom99:
touchscreen is a very bad idea.

But otherwise, the SD card addon is a nice feature that I'd like to see in most flash-based portable audio devices; internal, embedded flash is a bad idea, IMO. 2GB of internal flash should ideally be zero; I prefer all the flash to be external (flash can fail and has limited writes so the unit itself has to be sent back in case of failure).

Cowon's codec support has traditionally been fantastic, and the FLAC ( http://flac.sourceforge.net ) support is a big plus for truly CD-identical quality audio. If the battery were removable like Sony's mylo, it would be far better than an embedded battery. 500 charges and it's useful life is over...

[Uno Technology @ Oct 29th 2006 1:37AM]

I just think gadgets like this are cliche. Plus the fact that they're hard to bring around since they're touchscreen makes them a lil' more complicated.

-
Uno Technology
http://unoph.com
http://unoph.com/uno

[Matt @ Oct 29th 2006 4:29AM]

I agree, touchscreen would annoy an obsessive compulsive guy like me to death because of the finger prints getting in the way of the picture. I have the iRiver Clix and love the size, interface and sound quality. By clicking on the sides of the screen you don't have the prints on the picture. I wonder if apple will copy iRiver and do the clicking idea with their video ipod....

[lol @ Oct 29th 2006 5:14AM]

Good.
It is wide-screen, may be good to read E-book.

[kevin @ Oct 29th 2006 11:02AM]

I love COWON, and I love other companies who are trying to think out of the box (evil, being the lapboys of the RIAA and having limited support for codecs), but honestly, instead of spewing out 10000 models, can you please just focus on perfecting one? Why do you think Apple gets away with it? Their consumer market is dominated with slack-jawed yokels who aren't audiophiles or just want to look trendy and in reality, is all they know, but that's where Apple gets away with it with KISS. Keep it simple stupid. COWON has tons of dupe models where they've either given it a new name or redesigned it and made it better--so why not just release the original good one and do some more testing in the labs ahead of time?

[Zach @ Oct 29th 2006 10:36PM]

Whats the point of a video-capable 2Gb player? Even SD goes up to what? 8GB?

really, i don't understand why Koreans are so hyped up about getting these flash PMP players when it can hold only a few movies at a time. Granted, its nice that SD is changeable on the fly, unlike the Ipod where you have to be at a certain PC. but ideally, only a few gigs is weak sauce.

[Josh Warner @ Oct 29th 2006 1:23AM]

One reason for flash video players: Battery life. Reading flash is FAR cheaper in terms of power than spinning a hard drive constantly. Also, flash has potentially faster transfer speeds than hard drives (see Vista + hybrid hard drive) so there aren't read bottlenecks.

I do agree with you on one point though: 2GB just ain't enough. However, given that flash capacity has been doubling approximately yearly for the same price, in 3 years these players could be ranging from 16 to 64 gigs, instead of 2 to 8. Perhaps that's idealistic, but the way I see it hard drives are hopeless for portable video - their battery lives are always going to be toast.

[larry @ Dec 10th 2006 3:55PM]

at last !
I mean a pmp without conversion for xp users, wmv etc."flash" memory ,good screen,long batteries life,sd card ,(pictures,music),maybee 2.5" it's a bit too little,but....,the perfection does'nt exist, I want this !