The popularity of portable gadgets is sky rocketing. Wireless Internet access (WiFi) has increased its area of coverage. The portable gadgets are becoming even handier with this development. Portable gadgets include portable media players, laptops, the Ultra Mobile PC or netbooks. Contents can now be easily downloaded from the Internet. VCD or DVD movies, for instance, can be easily converted into digital formats with special software. Portable devices have become a part of work and lifestyle, and a personal travel companion. Portable devices include portable video players, digital audio players, personal digital assistant and digital video recorders.
An electronic gadget, the portable media player stores and plays digital media. Though essentially a digital audio player, the portable media player can play videos and display images. There are also mobile phones that have these functions and are also known as portable media player. Archos was the first portable media player to be widely sold. This was in 2002. Most of the portable media players accommodate MP3 audio format. Some of them also support Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Windows Media Audio (WMA) and WAV.
OELD or LCD is usually used to display images. With the help of accessories, some of these players can also record video. JPEG format for display of images is used in all the players. File formats including PNG, TIFF and GIF are compatible with some players like the iPod series. MPEG-4 video format is supported by most of the players. Some others support the AVI and Windows Media Video (WMV). Transfer of files between the computer and players is possible with most players. These portable devices are manufactured and marketed by many electronic firms. For instance a French company, Archos, offers portable video players, digital audio players, personal digital assistant and digital video recorders. Archos released its Generation 5 series of portable media players in 2007. The series included Archos 705 WiFi 160GB .
The hard drive, flash memory or microdrive is used to store the data. There has been a steady increase in the storage capacity going up to 320 GB in the case of the hard drive PMPs and up to 32 GB for the flash memory based PMPs. The storage capacity of PMPs can also be enhanced. Content transfer can be done using Secure Digital card, CompactFlash and Memory Sticks directly from external devices. The screen size of the display screen has risen to 7 inches. Resolutions vary from player to player and may go up to WVGA. The color depth ranges from 16-bit, which is normal, to 24-bit in some players. After the launch of the Touch Screen technology, many PMPs have integrated this feature into their players. Even more new features were integrated into the PMPs in the recent past such as the editors, game emulation, the simple camera and text readers.