Yeah, what a mouthful of a title eh? Wait till you see the product’s name! I actually stumbled upon this last week, but thought it was an old offer, but obviously not, as a print advertisement for it appeared in today’s Star newspaper, page S60. It’s for the Imation “Digital Multimedia Link Pro” media player, and as a pre-launching promotional offer of RM 539, Imation’s authorised distributor in Malaysia is bundling it with the Imation 2.5″ portable external hard disk of 320GB capacity. A quick check online shows that a “branded” portable external hard disk of this capacity should retail for around RM 220 or thereabouts, so the “nett” price of the media player is around RM 319.
According to the Imation product page, the “Digital Multimedia Link Pro” has the following specifications, amongst others:
FULL HD MEDIA CONTENTS PLAYBACK
Support Full HD media contents playback on TV. Plays video, audio and image files from connected USB devices on your TV in HD resolutions including 720i, 720p, 1080i and 1080p.Support HDMI, composite and component output ensuring the compatibility with all kinds of TV or HDTV.
Compatible with MPEG1/2/4 (up to 720p/1080p), AVI (MPEG4, AVC H.264), MOV, MKV, RM/RMVB (up to 720p), VOB, TS, FLV, WMV, DTS, Dolby Digital AC3 5.1, AC3, AAC, WMA, MP3, OGG, LPCM, WAV, BMP, JPEG, HD JPEG.
Full HD (1080p, 24Hz) uses a higher video compression bit rate, which enables better video quality when capturing scenery with vibrant colors and fine details.
The reason why I was interested is because I’ve been looking for a media player that can support the Matroska container format (MKV), a highly compressed video format, which means that instead of having to download 350MB or so per each TV series episode, I only download around 150MB or thereabouts, halving my download time, allowing me to watch more American TV rubbish. The other media players capable of supporting the MKV format have been selling north of RM 350, and even those are the less known branded ones from China/Taiwan, whereas Imation is, of course, a US brand.
And to top it off, the “Digital Multimedia Link Pro” has a LAN port. What this LAN port is for eludes me for the moment, but I’m sure someone will come in and tell me. So, can anyone tell me of a cheaper media player that has all these specifications and sells for a cheaper price? Anyone? Or will Imation claim the title of the “cheapest HD all-codecs-under-the-sun-supporting media player king” in Malaysia? The package even comes with a free HDMI cable – top that! And it can play downloaded Flash videos from YouTube! And it comes with 2 free AAA sized batteries! Buy, buy, BUY!! Just don’t start a stampede doing it, now…




