Portable Media Player Reviews

The iubi Blue portable media player plays movies, music tracks and supports direct AV recording using its internal MPEG4 encoder. Record straight into MPEG4 (640 x 480 30fps) from your TV, DVD player or VHS player, allowing up to 75 hours of video footage. The iubi Blue supports virtually every video codec under the sun including MPEG 1, 2, 4 DivX 3.X, DivX 4.X, DivX 5.X, Svid, WMV9, H.264, AVI, OGM, WMV 7, 8, MOV and Real video (transcoding is required to play back WMV 7,8, MOV, and Real Video files). Videos and movies run at an ultra smooth 30 frames per second with support for 720 x 480 pixel playback (8Mbps). Along with multi-codec support (MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, L- Pcm), the player also features a stereo loudspeaker which allows you to listen to audio without the need for earphones.

A review of the Iubi Blue digital media player has been posted over at the Register Hardware. ‘The controls are something of a mish-mash. A four-way navigation pad surrounds a central key labelled 'M' which you think intuitively would be the action key, given its location. Not so, to make something happen you actually press the Play/Pause key below the pad, while the Stop key is also the 'back' button. What the M key actually does is take you to other parts of whichever menu is on display. Maybe that doesn't sound too difficult to master, but when combined with a less than crystal clear on-screen menu structure you can quite often find yourself wondering just how the heck you get it to perform certain tasks. Once you are used to it, things get easier, but even so...’