NEC announces a nice looking and compact portable media player dubbed VOTOL.

The NEC VOTOL Media player measures 123×61×18mm and weighs 188g. It features a 2.7 inch QVGA screen.

NEC VOTOL features some interesting user interface ideas. For instance an animated water level shows the battery charge status. The cap on top can be twisted to switch between functions. The NEC video player supports MPEG2 and MPEG4 (SP/ASP) and WMV9 (DRM10 support). On the audio side the VOTOL player supports MP3 and WMA (DRM10 support), WAV, Ogg Vorbis and AAC.
The built-in photo viewer can display images in JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP formats.
A SD card slot is also present in the new NEC media player.
The NEC VOTOL media player joins the Creative Vision:M and Toshiba Gigabeat S in competing with the Apple iPod. It remains to be seen if NEC is bringing the VOTOL to the United States and Europe. The NEC VOTOL 30GB media player will go on sale in March in Japan for 39,900 Yen (~$332).
More details in this NEC press-release (Japanese). Via NewLaunches.



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