Gearfuse

Please excuse me if I’m gushing, but when a geeky collectible becomes mixed with another tech medium, this is time for me to praise the heavens for blessing us with all this cool shit to talk about. The Pez MP3 player has a 512 MB capacity, which is nothing to really jump for joy about, but hey, it’s a fricken Pez MP3 player!

Sadly, the first edition of the player made, which of there were only 1500 produced, have sold out at their price of $99. You bet your ass we’re going to be scouting eBay to get our hands on one of these. The player also comes pre-packed with a collection of Indie bands music, and we’re not talking The Arcade Fire. We’re talking real independant bands. Also cool is that, unlike the iPod, it plays MP3s and WMA/WMA-DRM files, but not Apple’s m4p. Bummer. — Andrew Dobrow

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Victor-JVC Japan is introducing a new MP3 player to their “health and healing” line of products, what’s so unconventional about this funny looking audio player is that it actually floats in your tub and plays music right next to your rubber duck duck. Wouldn’t water get into those holes? Good question, and Victor-JVC has it solved by using a NXT flat-panel speaker technology with water proof capability up to IPX7 standard; the down side would be that the MP3 player only has a mono-channel output as opposed to stereo conventionally.

This device weighs 260g and measures 12cm in diameter and 8.7cm in height. It runs on AA alkaline batteries, plays MP3 and WMA including those protected by DRM, however the internal memory is merely 256MB. This MP3 player is available now in Japan at $170, the first batch is limited to 1000 units only, be quick. –Sam Chan

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The Chinese are among the heaviest commuters in the world, and we know that commuters just love to watch themselves some movies. The Chinese-made HaCha R280S media player features a 16 million color 2.83-inch LTPS LCD display with a clear resolution of 320 x 240. The HaCha has around 4 hour playback for video, supporting WMA and AVI files, along with WAV and MP3 files for music and JPEG images.

Measuring in at 85.5 x 55 x 9.8 mm, the HaCha is expected to be available in 1 GB, 2 GB, and 4 GB models with miniSD card support on each. Weighing in at 57.1g, the R280S is proof that good things come in small packages. Simple, sleek, and useful is how we like ‘em.

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Look at those screens and realize that they aren’t nearly as small as your iPod Nanos. Comparatively, the new LG FM37 digital media player packs either a 1/2/4 GB flash drive and supports MP3, WMA, and OGG audio playback. On the concept of thin, this player is only 10.4mm thin (about 1cm). Those screens are touchscreens and are 2.4″ LCDs. iPhone is a tad late here. At first glance, these look almost like an iRiver S10 of sorts, but it also looks like it ties in with the Chocolate line. Too bad this isn’t a USA player. So whatelse can this tiny piece of hardware sqeeze out? 24 hours of audio, 3 hours of video (unspecified), and it will only cost $159, $192, or $256 for the 1/2/4GB capacities, respectively. Looking like quite a catch. — Nik Gomez

LG’s FM37 touch-screen MP3 player (and others) outted in Korea [Engadget]

Just when we think the digital audio player (DAP) market is saturated, Victor updated their Alneo C-series audio players. They added in the K2 Technology which is supposed to extrapolate digital data to increase sound quality lost during compression. What’s unusual is that they can record sounds with 2 channels (stereo) in PCM and WMA formats; however we really doubt the difference as the 2 microphones are placed so closely together. On top of stereo recording, these DAPs also support USB streaming of WMA-DRM music, this is different from the usual iTrip or bluetooth because USB streaming will be of a much higher quality (digital vs analogue and digital vs digital recompressed). With these new features, their sizes are still kept small (86×44x11.7mm 49g). These players will support MP3, WAV and AAC files, a FM tuner is also built in. Victor claims that the battery can last for 19.5 hours, charging can be done via USB or AC. The new C-series will come in 2GB, 1GB and 512Mb (white, black, silver) models priced between $200 to $300, expect to find them in Japan early February. — Sam Chan

Press release [Victor/JVC Japan]