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I don’t get excited about portable media players anymore (read Portable Media Players). But the DVX-POD 7010 is worth discussing because it actually seems like the company that designed it wants to release a usable product. It’s the first media player that has been announced that even has screen I wouldn’t mind spending 2 hours watching… it’s 7 inches. This will be handy when traveling… who wants to watch a movie on a 3″ screen? This also means you’re not limited to crappy 320×240 resolution seen on other Portable Media Players, and at 720×480 (the same size as DVDs) this little player should be perfect for connecting to LCDs in your car or even the hotel TV. Sure, you could do that with any other media player with a video out, but your still watching a 320×240 asset, the DVX-POD stores the same resolution as a DVD, which means better quality. If that’s not enough, they go and add PVR recording capabilities. So if you want to transfer your DVDs to the device, just plug it in to your DVD player’s video out and hit record… you’ll be able to record the movie in real-time with it’s hardware based MPEG-4 encoder. It would have been nice if the also supported MPEG-2, so we don’t need to mess with transcoding. Transcoding sucks… a reason why Sony’s “iPod Killer” (NW-HD-1) sucks, as well as any other device that makes you take an asset and convert to a format it likes. Ah, well… it’s not perfect… but I think it’s 1000x better than a Portable Media Center and worth checking out, if it ever comes to the states. No details on pricing or when it will be available.

– More information about the DVX-POD 7010

[ Via our friends at Quente Cafe ]