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First of Microsoft's media handhelds set for August sales

By Kim Peterson
Seattle Times technology reporter

Microsoft's Portable Media Center will soon be available in models by two manufacturers. This one is by Creative.

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A model made by Singapore-based Creative is scheduled to become available in late August, and a version by Samsung is expected a month later. Both players will have 20 gigabytes of storage, which Microsoft says is enough to play 80 hours of video or 5,000 songs.

Microsoft also said that Major League Baseball has agreed to make its game footage available to download onto the devices, either on a pay-per-view basis or via subscription. The pricing for the games has not been announced.

	Samsung is making the other model. The cost will be $499, with enough memory to play 80 hours of video.

With the announcement, Microsoft is jumping into a portable media-player business that has been focused on music and is dominated by Apple's iPod music player. The iPod doesn't play video — and Apple hasn't said whether future versions will — but handheld video players from other companies are starting to hit the market.

The Portable Media Centers also take Microsoft a step further to creating an all-encompassing home-entertainment system built on its technology. The company has said it wants to be a leader in the home-entertainment business, with its Windows Media Center computer as the central hub for digital music and video.

Users can transfer music, photos and video from their computers to the Portable Media Center, as long as the computers are running the Windows XP operating system and have Microsoft's Windows Media Player 10 software installed.

It's hard to imagine that customers will stampede to stores for a $499 device. James Bernard, a Microsoft product manager, said the company expects the Portable Media Center to be a hot item among the early adopter crowd. As more content for the devices becomes available, he said, they will gain more mainstream appeal.

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research, said consumers have to become more familiar with the devices first. Only about 5 percent of online households in the United States even have a digital music player, he said.

"These aren't for enthusiasts," he said. "These are for the enthusiasts of the enthusiasts, the people who install operating systems as a form of social entertainment."

The price needs to come down for the devices to hit the mainstream, he said, and more video content must become available.

Right now, the only video content partners Microsoft has announced for the players are Major League Baseball and online movie service CinemaNow, which will rent and sell movies for playback on the devices. Users can transfer other video to the players, however, such as television programs that have been recorded to a personal computer.

All of the content must first be downloaded to a personal computer and then transferred to the Portable Media Center.

The Portable Media Centers play films and other programs in Microsoft's Windows Media format. The company has not asked manufacturers to make the devices play video in other formats, such as the MPEG-4 industry standard. That decision is up to the manufacturers, Bernard said.

Irvine, Calif.-based Archos sells a competing pocket-sized digital video recorder that can play MPEG-4 video. Unlike the Portable Media Center, the Archos player can record programs directly from a television or videocassette recorder. It can also record music and display digital photos transferred from a personal computer.

An Archos player with a 20-gigabyte capacity costs $550 and the 80-gigabyte version costs $800.

Mike McGuire, a research director with GartnerG2, said it will be interesting to see how people react to the Portable Media Center's price tag and concept.

"There are a whole bunch of portable media centers that are out there in the market already," he said. "They're notebook computers."

The Portable Media Centers are available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

Kim Peterson: 206-464-2360 or kpeterson@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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