Here's a new digital audio player from Hitachi, and it looks to be decent. It's cheap, has an SD card slot, and 256MB of built in memory. And it's small. I mean...small.

Hitachi Living Supply Corporation will release the "HMP-1" digital audio player that supports the playback of MP3, WMA, and WAV, in early March. Though listed at Open Price, indicators suggest it should cost around 15,000 yen. Black and White color variations will be available.

The HMP-1 is a portable silicon audio player that is "half the size of a business card" (Hitachi), with dimensions of 56.3 x 45.3 x 13.3mm (W x H x T), and weighs about 30g. It contains 256MB of internal memory, but also offers an SD card slot.

Supported bitrates for MP3 are 32 - 320kbps, and for WMA, 48 - 192kbps. Also, it features world-band FM tuner, internal microphone, can record voice, and record FM broadcasts. Recordings are stored in the WAV format.

On the front of the unit is a backlit LCD capable of displaying Japanese, English, and Chinese. 6 presets are available o­n its equalizer: normal, classic, jazz, pop, bass, anc rock. In addition to "standard" playback mode, it can also do single song repeat, all-song repeat, random, and random repeat.

Connection with a PC is done by USB 2.0, through the USB Storage class. Audio files can also be transferred using drag and drop. Supported OSes are Windows ME, 2000, and XP.

Up to 13 hours of continuous playback are possible from a single AAA battery. Neckstrap earphones, a USB cable, a AAA battery, pouch, etc. are included.



Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20050203/hitachi.htm

Press Release:
http://www.hitachi.co.jp/New/cnews/month/2005/02/hl_0203.html