You can have the freedom to take your audio, video and digital photos with you on the road and enjoy your digital content on the go, thanks to portable media players.

A portable media player and a hard drive based MP3 player are not dissimilar; however, a media player also allows you to watch movies in addition to listening to audio files. Usually, it comes with a built in color LCD screen which facilitates file navigation as well as watching video content. You can also use these devices to view digital images or to store data from your computer. Various players have different sizes and features, while some are equipped with expansion slots for media cards akin to the ones in digital cameras.

These are not so portable as to allow you to carry them around in your pocket. If the screen is too small, you won't be able to watch videos on it. Thus, screen size impacts the overall size of the player. Battery requirements are affected, too, and these players come equipped with a battery for video playback. The weight and size of the device is determined by the larger screen and battery with adequate power. However, they are twice the size and weight of hard drive-based MP3 players and come with a screen size of 3 to 4 inches.

Ordinarily, we expect the weight of a portable multimedia system to be less than a kilo. It hould have sufficient storage and a fair -sized screen (anything above 4" is acceptable). People who are constantly traveling are likely to appreciate such a device provided it has sufficient storage for over a hundred hours of video, capable of being played on the built-in 4.3" LCD color screen. The player hould also be able to play a variety of video files including MPEG-4, WMV and protected WMV.

Slow motion, adjustable screen size, video editing and even a video book-marking function are among the other functionalities we expect from a good multimedia player.

Usually, if you buy an optional DVR station, the device is transformed into a Digital Video Recorder, capable of recording from TV and most video sources such as VCR, DVD player or camcorder in MPEG-4 format, and satellite/ cable box. You should be able to create a DVR station, by connecting the device to an external video source, and schedule recordings or record instantaneously by using an infrared receiver which controls the external video sources.

You should also be able to transfer your photos, while on the move, from a PC or mass storage device, using a docking adapter and with the help of a USB 2.0 interface or directly from a digital camera.

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Richard J. Runion is the President of Geostar Richard J. Runion is the President of Geostar Publishing & Services LLC. Rich loves net research & blogging. His new blog on Portable multimedia player is fast becoming popular.