DMC Unveils 256MB Flash Player and FM Transmitter

Just hitting the airwaves today, Digital Mind Corporation has announced two new additions to its product line: the DMC Flash Player and the Air-Wave FM Transmitter.

The DMC Flash Player, an overseas player known as the ‘Clicker’ or ‘Pocki-MP3′, is a nice small package at just 1.5 oz and 3.6″ x 1.5″ x 0.8″ (comparable to the ). Given the size, it is amazing the features that are crammed in: 256MB of flash storage (USB mass storage compatible), an SD/MMC slot for further expansion, built-in FM tuner, voice recording, runs on AAA batteries (a single AAA NiMH battery is included), six equalizer presets, a 128x64 dot matrix screen, and built-in USB plug for direct USB 1.1 connection (no cables required – like a regular flash pendrive). And you’ve got your choice of two colors, white or blue.

All of that, and the Flash Player only costs $99.95, direct from DMC. That’s a decent price for a 256MB unit with expansion, FM tuning, and voice recording. There are a few downsides we see: it is USB1.1 (which we could overlook, since an SD card could be used via a USB2.0 reader on your PC), it has a below-average 6 hour battery life (current-gen pocket players are breaking 20 hours), and support for only MP3 music files (most players support at least WAV and WMA additionally). One thing we’ve read that might alleviate some of that, but we can’t yet confirm, is that the unit might be able to recharge the battery when plugged in via USB.

The second new product is the DMC Air-Wave FM Transmitter, yet another entry into the crowded FM transmitter market. The Air-Wave has a standard stereo mini-jack cable for plugging into any portable audio player and transmitting the audio over FM waves to a nearby FM receiver – typically for in-car use, but also good for home stereo or boombox. It features a backlit LCD display for channel readout and signal meter, digital tuning in 1 or 0.1 MHz steps, full FM band coverage (listed as 98.0 to 108.0, which might be incorrect since such devices usually start at 88.0), and operates on a standard AAA battery. DMC claims an effective range of up to 15 feet. At $29.95, this sounds like a pretty good unit for the price – but again it’s up against a lot of competition, including the recent and the .

Until we can get units in for review, feel free to browse the for more details, or to purchase.