It would appear that someone was paying more attention in their high school shop class than myself. Captain Odegard of the anything but ipod forums has managed to create a zen stone… out of a felled tree. Made out of pine, the good captain shaped and molded the Zen and then Burned the lettering and control buttons in with a hot knife.

Coming in at 8.25 X 5.5 X 2 inches the device most certainly won’t fit in your pocket, but i would imagine it attracts more attention than its little brother. And as a side note to Creative, sorry gentlemen the internal components are not that of the zen stone due to the steep price in Norway. The wood stone tries to make up for it’s size by providing four times the memory of it’s plastic counterpart via a 4GB SD …

Trekstor is gearing up to show off some new media players at the IFA show in Berlin in about a week with one of the more impressive ones being the i.Beat blaxx. Measuring only 34mm tall and 8mm thin, this sleek looking player sports a 1.3″ TFT color display at 128 x 160 resolution, provides up to 15 hours of continuous playback from one charge and comes in capacities of either 2 or 4GB. The blaxx supports some standard audio file types including MP3, WMA, Ogg, and WAV as well as SMV video. It also has a built-in FM tuner, line in recording and transfers files via USB. You can get the i.Beat blaxx for 119.99 (2GB) or 149.99 (4GB) and both come with Sennheiser earphones.

i.Beat blaxx via DAPreview

UPDATE: German based Trekstor has announced that they are changing the name of …

The new X2 AIO portable media player from Viliv comes completely packed with cool features all viewable through it’s 4.3-inch display. It carries the ability to playback pictures, music and videos, and has a built-in digital TV tuner (T-DMB). It even supports picture-in-picture letting you use things like its GPS capabilities or its on-board dictionary while watching a live television program in the corner.

The Viliv X2 AIO comes in two versions: a 30GB costing $585 and a 60GB at about $640. If the T-DMB support wasn’t clue enough, unfortunately we had to convert these prices from Korean Won’s since that’s where this player will be available.

via AkihabaraNews

You may not have heard of Venzero before but this is the 8th player the company has released, this one called the Venzero LINQ. Just like the name sounds this little media player is packing WiFi to allow streaming media from your PC via Windows Media player 11. It also supports wirelessly playing internet radio stations which will likely bring more attention to this player compared to its predecessors.

On top of the WiFi connection the LINQ player houses some of the more standard features found in a portable media player these days including an FM tuner, voice recording and supports multiple file formats including MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG, and WAV audio’s along with video support for AVI’s and MPEG-4′s. Media is stored on 4GB of internal flash memory and there’s also …

Klegg Electronics, another on the fringes electronics company trying to eek a living out of the iPod dominated portable audio player market, announced earlier this week an updated version of its Mini MP3 player. This model is available in three body colors for around $60.

The Klegg Mini MP3 player offers up 1GB of storage, which is enough to hold between 300 to 500 songs as well as lots of digital images. This player has a small color display on the front side and is itself a small device, measuring 1.8-inches x 1.5-inches x 0.6-inches. You also get a built-in FM radio with the ability to record FM broadcasts.

Hmmm…does this portable media player design seem familiar? It’s not who you think it is – a company by the name of Scotty Media Players surfaced on our radar today announcing a “fifth generation” of MP3/MP4 players. These look to be available now at $79 for 4GB, $99 for 8GB and $159 for 60GB.

Let’s focus on the 60GB model (note though as well on the company’s Web site the smaller players). Interesting design similarities aside we find this Scotty Media Player to be pretty well loaded with features. It’s designed to sync with your music and movies through Windows Media Player. It has a touch sensitive “click wheel” for navigation and a 1.8-inch OLED display. This PMP is compatible with AMV, MP2, MP3, WMA, WMV, ASF, WAV, AVI, DivX, ASF, MPEG, QuickTime and RealMedia and offers a reported 55 hours of battery life.

iRiver has released some more detailed specs about the GPS device/media player formerly known as the M10, but now would like to be called the iRiver NV.

The NV has some cool features in a nice looking package which helps it stand out of the crowd a little bit. It’s a SIRF Star III GPS device along with a audio and video media player and houses DMB-T and FM tuners. According to MobileWhack the iRiver NV supports an impressive list of media formats: “AVI (Divx, Xvid, MPEG-4 720×480 @ 30fps) /H.264 (352×288 @30fps), ASF, WMV, MPG, MPEG, DAT, MP3, WMA, OGG, AC3, BSAC”. It even has a GPS tagging 1.3 megapixel camera built in.

Aside from not yet knowing what this thing will retail for the only real bad side we see to this nice list of features is that the NV is only shipping in Korea …

X-Micro has another media player its throwing into the market, this one called the X-Micro X-VDO F510. The basic feature rundown for the F510 includes the ability to play MP3/WMA, video, FM radio, still images, ebooks and work as a voice recorder and mass storage device through the USB connection.

The gadget comes in capacities of 512MB, 1GB, 2GB and 4GB with a 1.8″ TFT screen for watching videos and photos. The FM radio has 20 station presets and not only can the device record voice but it can also record directly from the FM tuner. X-Micro is claiming up to 15 hours of continuous music playback through the X-VDO F510, and there is no built-in speaker but you can still share you music with one other with the dual headphone jacks.

No info yet on pricing or when this MP4 player will be available …

Check out this portable CD player concept by Yong-Seong Kim we found over at Yanko Designs. The device looks a little longer than the radius of a CD and can store and play MP3′s just like a normal portable MP3 player might. If you have a CD that for some odd reason you haven’t ripped to MP3′s (maybe you want that original, old-school CD quality sound) you can spread out the arms of the MP3 player, slide in a CD and play away. It would also be really cool if you could use it to read data from a CD or rip your CD’s directly to the device.

via RGS

The Commodore name is making a comeback with this Gravel C200 handheld playing its part. The C200 media player features a 1.8″, 65k color OLED display, houses a speaker, WiFi and comes in capacities of 512MB, 1GB or 2GB. The device supports a nice broad range of media including MP3, WAV, WMA, MPEG 2, MPEG 4, DivX, XviD, WMV, JPEG, BMP, GIF and SRT & SUB subtitling.

The dimensions are 45mm x 80mm x 13mm and is available in one lonely color of grey, which seems fitting for its overall features. Data transfers happen via USB 2.0 and the battery promises to provide up to 18 hours of music playback or 2 hours of video and the whole thing retails for around $183 if you can find one at a location in Europe.

C200 Product Page via TechDigest

Creative has recently rolled out with another capacity increase with the Zen V Plus, this time bringing it up to a whopping 16GB of Flash memory. The player itself doesn’t appear to have changed but this increased storage brings this already impressive media player a little further up in the world with twice the storage space available in an iPod. Currently the Zen V Plus at its 16GB capacity is only available in the Singapore area and is retailing for about $260, but like the previous versions we hope to see it in the North America area soon.

The Zen V Plus also comes in capacities of 1GB, 2GB and 4GB and measures only 2.7 x 1.7 x 0.6 inches, which is similar to the size of a Tic Tacs container. With its small size it still manages to support …

Transcend has a new player out going by the name of T.sonic 840, which boasts some pretty cool multimedia features along with a nice, solid look.

The player measures just 82mm long with a 1.8″ color TFT-LCD screen and sports a mirrored surface on a metal frame to give it a clean and sharp appearance. It supports a nice array of media types as well including MTV, JPG, BMP, MP3, WMA, WMA-DRM10, and WAV files. Music playback can be enhanced with an equalizer that has some presets or can be set custom and a full battery charge will bring you up to 30 continuous hours of playback time.

The T.sonic 840 also supports reading ebooks and houses an FM tuner and recording capabilities for both voice and the FM signal. It supports 13 different languages and has an A-B repeat feature commonly used …

We’ve seen a number of waterproof MP3 players come across our desks but a waterproof video player has been a little harder to come by. Chinavasion now has a Waterproof MP4 player (for lack of a better name) on the way that allows you to watch your videos in the tub, pool, lake or any other body of water you would like and keeps the video playing up to 3 meters under.

The LCD is a little on the small side at 1.8″ with a resolution of only 128×128. But in an effort to keep our glass half-full, the modest 1GB of memory can probably hold a decent amount of video at this resolution. Not only can you watch underwater but the Waterproof video player also comes with waterproof earphones to listen, too.

It also comes packaged with an armband and neckstrap, and …

Samsung has launched the i85 digital camera marking the 3rd model they’ve put out that not only lets you view the photos you’ve taken but can play back music and video media. The Samsung i85 is an 8 megapixel shooter with a large 3″ LCD screen to view a variety of media files including WAV, MP3, MPEG, AVI, MOV, WMV and ASF, however you can’t transfer these files directly and play them.

You’ll need to do a little conversion using some included software before they’ll actually play on the camera. The screen to watch the media stays fixed unlike the i85′s predecessor, and you can listen to your media through built-in stereo speakers or a standard headphone jack.

The physical size of this camera is something to take note of as well. At only .8″ thick it packs in a 5x …

There really isn’t too much information available about this latest mobile device from a Chinese company named Hacha, but it sure can hold its own compared to all the other iPhone copycats as of late. The super slim frame at 7.7mm and big 3 inch screen look great but we’d really like to know more about whats on the inside. The lack of buttons on the front lead us to believe it must be a touchscreen but we’ll just have to wait until Hacha makes an official release to find out more about the PC20. One more picture after the jump.