| Traveling to your office, doing household chores, driving | | | | MP4 players are even more advanced. They can play |
| your car, working on the computer, or at any other | | | | audio as well as video files. Apart from the MP3 and |
| place, people are hooked on to their MP3 and MP4 | | | | MP4 formats these players have capability to play |
| music and video players. If you are traveling in an | | | | WMA/PlaysForSure (from Microsoft), AAC (from |
| airplane or a bus you will find over 50% of the people | | | | Apple) and ATRAC (from Sony), AVI, ATV, ACT, |
| having small headphones stuck into their ears. | | | | SMV, MPEG4, MTV, DMV, MPV and AMV, etc. |
| What has made these small devices enter our lives so | | | | Most MP4 players can also open in JPEG and GIF |
| quickly that everybody, young or old, is now hooked on | | | | formats. They play videos in AMV or MTV formats |
| to it? MP3 music format, first introduced in 1993, | | | | that are converted easily through conversion software |
| started the era of compressed internet audio format. | | | | from other popular formats. These MP4 players also |
| With the advent of broadband connectivity people | | | | support plain text viewer (ASCII format) so that you |
| freely uploaded and downloaded music from the web. | | | | can read e-books. A lot of enhancements like FM |
| This gave rise to pocket MP3 players. | | | | radio player, phone books, camera and voice |
| There are two types of MP3 players or digital audio | | | | recorders, video games, etc. are also coming today to |
| devices: flash-based players and digital hard | | | | make it a complete digital device. |
| drive-based players. Flash-based players hold files in | | | | There are many brands available in the portable audio |
| the internal memory or external memory cards, and so | | | | video player market but the market leader is Apple |
| they can hold up to 8 GB of files. While the hard | | | | iPod. All major brands like Sony, Panasonic, Philips, |
| drive-based players can connect to a hard drive that | | | | Olympus, etc., have made their own versions of MP3 |
| can hold up to 160 GB of audio and video files based | | | | and MP4 players. These players are available in |
| on the hard drive technology. This means that you can | | | | various shapes, sizes, colors, storage space, battery |
| store your entire music collection in your pocket! | | | | life, and more. |
| MP3 players became very popular with the | | | | If you are looking to buy an MP3 or MP4 player check |
| introduction of iPod, a convenient MP3 player with long | | | | for all the features mentioned above. The most |
| battery life and storage space. The best part was that | | | | important attribute is the battery life as these portable |
| iPod can be connected to your computer and you can | | | | players are mostly used on the move, so it would be |
| transfer your music directly from it. You can even | | | | difficult to charge them. iPod boasts the highest battery |
| make play lists, favorite folders, and arrange your files | | | | life among all other players. There are a lot of |
| in many ways according to your convenience. Being | | | | accessories that you can purchase along with your |
| among the pioneers, the iPod brand name has | | | | MP3 or MP4 player. Though all the brands provide |
| become synonymous with MP3 or MP4 digital players. | | | | headphones along with the player, it`s a good idea to |
| MP3 players are so well-liked that people have found | | | | buy the ones that you like. |
| many other uses for it. The most popular use is for | | | | This article is under GNU FDL license and can be |
| podcasting. Podcasting lets the user automatically | | | | distributed without any previous authorization from the |
| download radio-like programs, or TV-like video feeds, | | | | author. However the author´s name and all the |
| and other audio inputs, etc., directly from the net into | | | | URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and |
| the device. These could be downloaded and played at | | | | biography must be kept. |
| the owners` convenience. | | | | |