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December 8, 2005 at 04:13:00 PM | more stories by this author
Today's release of the new Zen Vision: M, which bears a striking resemblance from the latest iPod, comes with some pointed words from company boss about its patented interface.
Faced with a competitor that has almost completely overshadowed it in the portable media player market, Creative Technologies looks like it's fixin' for a legal battle with rival Apple.
Singapore-based Creative released its newest player today, the Zen Vision: M, and it bears a startling resemblance to the video-enabled iPod that Apple unveiled in October.
The Vision: M has a 30GB hard drive and 2.5-inch color screen, and touch control system below the screen, all identical features with the latest iPod except that the Vision: M opts for an oval scroll bar instead of the iPod's round one.
Apple, which owns 80 percent of the digital music player market, has yet to issue a statement about the striking similarities of the new player, but Creative boss Sim Wong Hoo appears ready for a legal showdown on a different piece of the competing devices.
He told the BBC News he plans to "pursue aggressively" a US patent the company garnered in August on a system used to navigate music on digital players. The US patent is for the interface within which songs are organized and navigated on a music player using a hierarchical system of three or more screens.
In London for the Vision: M launch, Sim didn't mention Apple specifically in the statement.
"We will pursue all manufacturers that use the same navigation system," he said. "This is something we will pursue aggressively. Hopefully this will be friendly, but people have to respect intellectual property."
He did take a few verbal jabs at the Apple juggernaut.
"We are focused on the technology. This is the key difference between a technology company and a branding company," he said. Sim also took a shot at Apple's use of its proprietary Fair Play digital rights management (DRM) technology, which restricts transfers of song files to non-Apple devices.
"We offer people the freedom to choose their video in a variety of different formats, and to get subscription music or download tracks from a number of different sites to their player," Sim said.
When Creative won the interface patent in August, it said it would apply to several competing products that use similar navigation systems, including Apple's line of iPods. The company had applied for the patent in January 2001.
9 Comments
Oldest First | Newest First1. The music mangagement seems to be very slow, when browsing though songs. When browsing and pressing the scroll button rapidly, the vision will freeze, and lock up. (Removing the battery is the only remedy) 2. When viewing photos, transferd from a camera, the vision will freeze, also when scrolling though lots of photos.
3. When playing music, the vision freezes when pressing play or pause too many times, advanceing to next track too many times. The Random tracks.... really is not random at all, as the same track can be heard in one sitting, as well as a majority or only one artist. When playing video the vision has many problems, due to specific codec support, and bitrate resoulution capibilities that are not found any where in documentation. This seems to be a (hit and miss)issue. When playing a video, and pausing or playing the Vision will lock up, and freeze, as well as scrolling (FF and REW). The Connection between the USB and the computer seems to work sometimes, and sometimes it wont recognize it.
These problems cannnot only be seen on my device. One has to only check the disscussion forums on your website. There are hundreds of comments posted about the very same issues I have mentioned. A promised firmware update by the end of december 2005 never happend. Saddly the things mentioned above, keep me from enjoying the Creative Zen Vision.
Yep, to me it has features that absolutely rape on the ipods in every way (obviously, look at something on the vision m besides this), but its only 30 gig. If I was looking at the 30 gig range, id buy this in a second. It even beats ipods at videos, better screen, longer battery life, support for a lot of formats. But, no 60 gig...