VWB Intros MediaREADY Flyboy Personal Media Player

Well, with CES coming up, we’re sure this is only the first PMP announcement in the wings.

The new MediaREADY Flyboy won’t be available until early 2005, but when it hits, it’s going to make some waves – especially at just $349 MSRP. Running a custom Linux operating system, the Flyboy is not just a portable media player, but a portable video recorder as well, with MPEG4 being the core format (playing or recording). Looks from the picture like it’s the ‘RealOne’ player we’ve seen pix of before (US Modular sells/OEMs such a device), which I’d assume means it’ll handle most Real media formats too.

With a 40GB hard drive, USB2.0 for fast transfers, a 3.5″ color LCD, built-in speakers or headphone jack for audio, it sounds like the start of a nice package. Then, add support for playing video files on the run, all your MP3 music files, and digital photo viewing (including a zoom function), plus output for watching it all on a television when you’ve got a big screen, and we’re starting to drool. Throw in voice recording on top of it, and you’ve got a feature-packed little unit for the price. We’ll just have to get our hands on one! 

Read on for the full press release.