Hauppauge Digital Announce New PMP – Name it the Hauppauge pMP (Dull Name, Dull Styling)

Hauppauge Digital have chosen this years CeBIT event to announce a
series of new products including their new Portable Media Player, which
not only boasts a highly imaginative name that must have taken sheer
factions of a second to conjure - Hauppauge - but the sort of aesthetic
styling that makes your run-of-the-mill house brick appear positively
striking if not wholly innovative.

We're not quite sure why Hauppauge decided to call their new PMP device
the but we suspect it's in a somewhat misguided attempt to make the
device sound trendy (surely it should be ) but, whatever the reason, it
simply doesn't work. It's just silly.

Unfortunately, this very much sets the tone as far as the device is
concerned generally as, certainly from a design perspective, their new
PMP (sorry, pMP - insert curious street style hand gesture here) appears
to be an overtly uninspiring affair wholly devoid of any sense of style
and, as a direct consequence, wholly void of and sense of desirability.
I mean, let's be frank here, China Vasion even comes up with gadgets
that are more visually inspiring - and, on that note, we'll move swiftly on.

From a technical standpoint, Hauppauge Digital's new PMP, which
measures in at 120 x 78 x 20 mm, offers a 3.5'� 320 x 240 resolution
display, USB connectivity, SD/MMC memory card based storage, and boasts
MP3, WAV and MPEG4, VOB and AVI file format compatibility with XviD and
DivX decoding and integrated Freeview capabilities allowing for
standalone TV recording, though the device also offers Media PC and
Vista compatibility via the aforementioned USB port.

Seemingly a solid all-rounder that offers what is a reasonable degree of
functionality that, like the design (no, we won't let it drop) does
little to help the device stand out from its competitors, the Hauppauge
pMP will at least retail at a competitive price point - a mere 149 /
pound sterling115 - which, all said and done, is probably just as well.

Sorry Hauppauge, but when it comes to trying to part consumers from
their hard earned money, offering up gadgets with such insipid styling
is just something that gets our heckles up.

[via]