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Product of the Week: Logitec dvdjuke Pod (Week 47)
Posted on Nov 22, 2004 - 08:44 AM by zmcnulty
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Posted on Nov 22, 2004 - 08:44 AM by zmcnulty
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Another slow week here at TechJapan, as my semester comes to a close. Expect to see a lot of changes here at TechJapan in the month of December -- once the semester actually ends, I plan on making things around here run much smoother.
Our product of the week for this past week is Logitec's "dvdjuke Pod."
Product Name
Logitec dvdjuke Pod
Product Image(s)
Product Code
LAV-DJP80U2, LAV-DJP40U2
Vendor
Logitec
Release Date
Early December, 2004
Price
44,100 yen for 80GB model, 32,970 yen for 40GB model
Overview
Logitec's new "dvdjuke Pod" is a portable hard drive with TV output. It sounds simple, and that's because it is -- not only does it serve as an external hard drive for your PC, but it serves as a "media center" on its own. By simply connecting the device to your TV and audio system using its included interfaces, it can play media files stored on the hard drive itself. So, it's like a DVD player, though much smaller, and requires no discs.
Also, it supports playback of compressed formats, such as MPEG-1/2, DivX, and XviD.
Reasoning
The dvdjuke Pod struck me as one of the first fully featured "external hard drives that also serves as a media player." We've seen other hard drive/media players come through here, but they had always been missing some key feature; it seemed to me that the dvdjuke Pod finally approaches a product that I'd actually be willing to purchase.
It has a lot of what I wanted -- an up to 80GB capacity, DivX AND XviD playback (most products seem to have a "one or the other" complex), S-Video output, and optical audio output. In fact, the only thing that I find missing from the dvdjuke Pod is network support, whether that be in the form of 802.11b/g wireless or even wired LAN. Also, there's no WMV playback, but I'm willing to live without it. Apart from these two complaints, the dvdjuke Pod appears to offer everything that I've wanted in a device of this class.
Official Product Site
http://www.logitec.co.jp/products/mplay/lavdjpu2.html
Related TechJapan Coverage
Logitec portable HDD with TV output (November 15th, 2004)
Also in Product of the Week: | Also in Logitec: |
| Comments (must be registered to post) | |
| Anonymous
28.11.04, 08:10 |
80GB is not enough, especially for Video storage. But iit is definetly the right idea. It's inspiration from the iPod is clearly evident: A simple design that is true to itself. I imagine that the Logitec people are trying to pre-empt an Apple device. But, their problem is that they do not have the whole ecology. Why can't I have an online store where I order Movies that are downloaded over my broadband connection? Using Apple's MP4 Type 10 coming with OS X Tiger will alllow for high quality yet highly compressed video. I think the writing is on the way what the next digital lifestyle device will be from Apple. |
| zmcnulty
28.11.04, 17:41 |
Didn't Sony try some sort of movie-over-broadband service and it failed? |
