Last weekend Best Buy made a quiet release of their latest line of the budget-minded Insignia media players, one of which being the 4GB Insignia Pilot. The Insignia players have always been somewhat in the background, offering decent “Best-Buy brand” players at affordable prices, but this latest release has some competitive features at a very competitive price which should give a lot of more popular brands a run for their money.

The player supports playback of MP3, WMA, WMA Lossless, WMA DRM, WMA Pro, OGG, WAV and Audible audio files along with MPEG4 (30 fps) and WMV (30 fps) for video. It will also support viewing JPEG still images. Users can watch video and view images on a nice-sized 2.4″ widescreen LCD and it offers up to 25 hours of audio playback on a single charge.

Along with yesterday’s release of the new video Walkman’s from Sony, they also released a smaller, non-video line of Walkmans which were somewhat overshadowed in the announcement. Although the new NWZ-B100 series do not have video, they do have a 3-line color LCD display to show functions and tracks playing.

The small Walkman supports playing MP3 and WMA audio files and is compatible with Microsoft’s PlayForSure music service. It also has a FM tuner with the ability to set as many as 30 preset stations, and it can record the radio broadcast directly to the player as MP3′s. It also has a microphone built-in should you want to record your own, personally sung songs to the player for future easy-listening.

As you might notice by the additional little logo on the front, Panasonic has upgraded its D-Snap MP3 player to now include Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity. The new D-Snap SV-SD950N has also added a couple buttons on the front to let its player hook up wirelessly with your Bluetooth phone, hands-free car unit or a Bluetooth stereo headset.

Aside from the added connectivity the D-Snap appears to be the same, still featuring its special noise canceling and comes packaged with a 1GB SD card. The only other changes, which are not quite as cool, are a decreased battery life due to the Bluetooth running and an increased price. The D-Snap SV-SD950N is expected to hit shelves in Japan on September 21.

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Two new additions to Samsung’s line of digital media players have made their introduction to the world. The YP-P2 and YP-T10 are ultra-slim (0.3 for the first, 0.4 inches for the latter) and both have built-in Bluetooth 2.0 capability so you can listen via wireless Bluetooth 2.0 headphones or speakers.

The T10 is the lesser spec’ed of the pair with a 16:9 2.0-inch display screen (240 x 320), battery life for up to 30 hours of music listening or 4 hours of watching a movie and 4 GB of NAND flash memory. The P2 can be picked up in either a 4 GB or 8 GB size and squeezes another 5 hours of music listening/1 hour of video from its batteries, has a 3-inch wide screen (480 x 272) and has a sleep timer and auto-off feature not found in its sibling.

Both …

While it may not be as eco-friendly as a MP3 player that comes with rechargeable batteries the NHC Ecolong does an amazing job on just a single AAA battery. How amazing? Try up to 85 hours of delivering the tunes. That’s like over two full weeks of work of sonic disruption for your ears!

Coming in either camouflages green or ivory white the Ecolong measures 78 x 36.6 x 18.5mm and weighs 36 grams. While the storage capacity is 1 GB and it plays less file formats than other more expensive DMPs out there (it does handle the more popular MP3/WMA files) it’s priced smartly for Asian customers at around ¥5980 (or $50 USD, give or take a few dimes on the day’s exchange rate via an online retailer.)

And hey, if you’re a green consumer and …

How tiny is the Sansa Clip, SanDisk’s latest MP3 player? That photo above doesn’t lie: the Clip is double the height of a quarter or almost the same size as your average golf ball. The Sansa Clip plays just MP3 and WMA formats but it does have a nice selection of features including a built-in FM radio, voice recorder, OLED screen and a 15-hour battery life.

It will come in four colors (black, pink, red and blue) and arrive in stores next month in either 1 GB ($40) or 2 GB ($60) models, and its trim size may do a lot to take away some sales from a certain company that is named after a red fruit. With a device this small you may need to pick up a couple of them just in case you leave one in your pants …

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 …

Wal-Mart is jumping on the DRM-free bandwagon by announcing today it is making available MP3s for purchase without license restrictions. These tracks should be available starting now.

The new DRM-free tracks and albums are available major record labels such as Universal and EMI Music. The tunes will be available at 94 cents per track and $9.22 per album. Wal-Mart will continue to offer its existing WMA-format music downloads as well.

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.

Creative has quietly brought to American shores a Zen MP3 player which has built-in speakers. The Zen Wav is on sale through Wal-Mart in 2GB and 4GB sizes.

The Creative Zen Wav, announced earlier this year, lets you play your standard MP3 and WMA music files as well as view AVI files and digital images on its 1.5-inch color display. The player gets up to 30 hours of playtime through headphones or 20 hours through its speakers before needing the battery recharged. You also get a FM radio to entertain you when really bored.

This carabiner-style MP3 player and radio tuner from Highgear sports a special clip that allows you to attach your MP3 player to just about anything with the assurance that its going to stay there, whether it be your belt loop, back pack or along outdoors with your climbing gear. A little rain won’t hurt you either with its splashproof design.

The entire player with clip measures 5.5″ long and has 512MB of internal storage that can be transferred to and from via USB. It supports MP3, WMA and ADPCM file formats as well as plays the radio with a built-in FM tuner. You can have it remember up to 12 preset stations and tweak the sound with an on-board equalizer. The carabiner mp3 player comes with a battery included out of the box and retails for $49.99.

The SPO MP3 player from Korean company SAFA features a sporty look with a rubberized case and short lanyard giving it a good grip for using during running or other outdoor activities. It’s powered by one AAA battery which gives is 10 hours of continuous playback time.

It comes in a 1GB capacity with a standard set of features including a color OLED display, FM radio tuner and voice recording through a built-in microphone. It also connects to your computer via USB to transfer files or to simply act as a portable storage device. The SAFA SPO MP3 player retails in Korea for 49,000 won, or about $54. Even if you’re not interested in the MP3 player you should at least check out SAFA’s interesting website.

via Aving

These little MP3 players from Greenhouse Japan have a very familiar, iPod Shuffle-like look and feel to them with dimensions only slightly larger and a price tag that’s slightly smaller.

The Kansa SD MP3 player is about 2.2 inches at it’s widest point compared to the 1.62 inch width of the Shuffle. It has no display and has a similar circle-shaped navigation control on the front to run play, pause, volume and to go forward and back in tracks.

The player’s price tag is only $18 which is a great price for an MP3 player of this size but the catch is that it comes with no internal memory. In order to load and save any files you will need to get your own SD/SDHC card (up to 8GB) to keep all your media. This might be perceived as kind of a pain …

Sony has announced the Walkman NWD-B100 series of MP3 players that feature a direct USB connection to your computer to transfer music and files without the need for any cables. The stick-style MP3 player comes in sized of 1GB and 2GB adn has software that can scan through your directories looking for music files to grab, and monitors folders for new files added in.

The new Walkman can also connect directly to an audio system with a USB connection to record and encode music directly to the player. It also includes a built-in FM tuner and supports voice recording which are both are becoming very commonplace in MP3 players these days.

The NWD-B100 series Walkman’s come in colors of black or white with an LCD display that allows for navigation and song search by folder navigation or by the album, artist or song …