Portable Video Players.....

Back in the 80s, the idea of carrying moving pictures around would be almost unheard of.

Back in the 90s, VHS is god. Everyone tapes the things they don't want to miss, and pass the tapes around. Tapes can be reused, and passed around.

Just a few years back, everyone would be recording shows on DVD drives, or onto their Hard Drives, increasing the life which the shows can remain.

Now, comes the portable Video Players.

Namely, PSP, Creative Zen Vision:M and the new Ipod.

And of course, with them, our screens shrink from 42 inch, to...uh...2.5 inch (Ipod/Creative Zen Vision:M).

Really, what can we watch on a 2.5 inch? Subtitles would be non-existant, since the scale down has to be insane. On top of that, your eyes would be squinting in order to see the finer details on the screen.

On top of that, we still want our Portable media players to be smaller, slimmer, to be able to fit into any hole we could think of when we heard out (Coin pockets, for instance). With the invention of the new Ipod and Zen Vision:M, the era of handphones trying to outdo each other to see who's smaller is officially over. The Zen Vision:M is 104 x 62 x 18.6mm, while the Ipod is 10.4 x 6.1 x 1.1cm. Obviously, the Ipod is slimmer, which somehow makes it more marketable. As if the extra 8.6mm will really be a bother to us in our pockets, assuming we place that thing there in the first place. Obviously, PSP fails in this aspect, but hey, we all know that PSP isn't really a Portable Media Player, more of a lot of stuff combined into one, just like the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

However, what surprises me is that we have to squint our eyes in front of a 2.5inch (6.35cm) screen, watching...say, CSI, on the hard seats on a MRT, instead of in front of our 35 inch TV (I wish I had one...XD), lazying around in the comfort of our soft sofa, while a gust of Air conditioned wind carasses our cheek. Are our lifes so fast paced, that if we sit down to watch a show that's worth an hour, our lives are ruined forever, our future turned from one that is bright and sunny to one that is bleak and gloomy?

No. That won't happen.

Which is why I'm baffled as to why mp3 players become portable media players now. First, they allowed you to show photos (Wow. I'm...impressed. Well, could be useful for people with business to attend to, but for a general user like me...no.), and now, they have moved on to playing videos.

Hence, the question pops up: Are all the ideas for a MP3 player exhausted? Other than expanding the memory from 32mb that are insanely expensive in the market 4 years ago, to one that is over 100gb? One that allows us to stall all sorts of songs, even though we listen to a little over 10% of it?

Perhaps, the answer is yes. It's just like Handphones, which used to be as huge as a bottle of mineral water just 10 years ago, and can only make calls. Now, it can play MP3s, MMS, blue-tooth, wireless, play Java games, and god-knows-what-else-it-does.

Now, short of handphones that can flip open, or slide around, there isn't much difference in the newest handphones.

Perhaps, that's the fate of the MP3 players too. Unless, something new can be injected, such as hologram projection, or pdf file readers (Which actually brings us back to the point of this topic. Reading books on a 2.5inch screen? MY EYES. THEY BURN), MP3 players are going to follow the road of handphones.

Seeing who is more.. "Chic"...