The Convergence And Miniaturized Integration Of Technologies In Media Players
An MP3 player is also called a digital audio player. It is a consumer electronics device. The device stores audio files, organizes and plays them. Portable media players are also digital audio players (DAPs). But these, in addition, support image-viewing. Some of them also support video-playing. The first mass produced DAP was MPMan player manufactured by SaeHan Information Systems in 1997. The first hard drive based DAP was brought out by Compaq in 1998. It has a capacity of 4.8 GB. Later in 2001 Apple unveiled its first generation 5 GB hard drive iPod. Apple’s second generation update was released in the next year. But it was the iPod series that emerged as the market leader and it included microdrive and flash players.
Archos introduced Archos Jukebox Multimedia in 2002. This was the first portable media player to be launched. Viewing images and playing videos were introduced later. It was in 2003 that MP3 players were first installed into mobile phones in South Korea. Soon enough by 2005 the other major mobile phone companies such as Motorola, Nokia, LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson introduced musicphones globally. Apple followed with their iPhone. Over half the mobile phones in the world now are musicphones.
The capacity of flash-based players ranges as much as 32 GB. The extent of battery power usage is low. There are also no moving parts. Tens of thousands of songs can be stored in the hard drive-based players which has a higher capacity of as much as 250 GB. Some MP3 CD portable players also play MP3 audio files which are stored on CDs. The WiFi network is used to connect networked audio players to the Internet for receiving and playing audio files. iFM radio tuners are installed in some DAPs. Built-in microphone is there in DAPs such as Sandisk Sansa M250 2GB
In 2003 the iTunes Store began to sell albums and songs in the downloadable digital format. Along with the Internet and software programs that can easily transfer files, unauthorized sharing of files too has become quite widespread. Music in the digital format also began to be sold extensively by many companies. The popularity of the digital audio player increased phenomenally as they are also compact.
