Creative announced the new Zen Wav MP3 player. The Creaive Zen Wav MP3 player has 2 GB of capacity and it supports MP3, WMA, WAV playback, as well as transcoded AVI video and JPEG images.

Zen Wav music player offers up to 30 hours of continuous playback with the embedded battery, as Creative promise. Zen Wav measures 85.0 x 42.0 x 12.5 mm and weights 49g.

Creative unveiled its new $39.99 ZEN Stone. ZEN Stone is a tiny 1GB MP3 player can hold up to 250 songs and can operate for 10 hours on a single charge (12 hours for the iPod Shuffle). A wide palette of colors is also available: black, blue, green, pink, red and white.

“The Creative ZEN Stone, at just $39.99, opens up a huge new market for MP3 players,” said Creative chairman and CEO Sim Wong Hoo. “This is an incredible price for everyone to get a superior quality MP3 player capable of holding up to 250 songs. Whether it’s your only player or a second player to take with you anywhere, the low price lets you think of MP3 players in a whole new way. You can loan it to a friend just like you would a CD or a mix tape and not have to worry about it, but you’ll like it so much that you’ll want another, so you always have one with you.”

The ZEN Stone will also come to market with the $39.99 Creative TravelSound ZEN Stone which turns the MP3 player into a portable speaker system. The TravelSound ZEN Stone will be available in black or white and can operate for 20 hours with two AAA batteries.

The ZEN Stone and the TravelSound ZEN Stone will be available at online retailers and in B&M stores on May 14.

Apple Computer will pay around $100 millions to Creative for a paid-up licence to use the company’s patent in all Apple products. It’s a final of MP3 patent technology war with Creative Technology. Creative had confirmed that Apple’s MP3 players infringed upon its MP3 patents.

“We’re very pleased to have reached an amicable settlement with Apple and to have opened up significant new opportunities for Creative,” said Sim Wong Hoo, CEO of Creative.

Creative has announced a new ZEN Neeon 2 MP3 player. The new MP3 player have a new colour screen and changeable creative Stik-On covers.

Measuring 81mm x 42mm x 12.5mm and weighing only 50g, this player will come in either 4GB, 2GB or 1GB of memory capacities, and feature a built-in FM tuner, voice recorder, line in recording and a 1.5-inch colour display for users to view both photos and videos.

Creative has shown a new MP3 player called Zen V. Available in 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB capacities, the Zen V have a 1.5-inch, photo-capable OLED display, feature a line-in jack for direct-from-disc recording, support PlaysForSure subscription services, and offer a claimed 15 hours of battery life before recharging becomes an issue. The Zen V will be available in July for $120, $150, or $200, depending on capacity.

Apple Computer has filed a second copyright lawsuit and a trade complaint in the US against Creative Technology.
This is the latest in a string of legal challenges and counter challenges between the two rival makers of portable media devices.
In its latest lawsuit, Apple claims Creative is infringing three patents relating to using icons, and displaying and editing data.
It is asking for cash damages and a court order to stop Creative from further breaches.

At the same time, Apple wants the International Trade Commission in Washington to block imports of Creative’s music players.

Creative Technologies recently anounced new MP3 player with video playback capabilities. Its alternative to Apple’s video iPod.

The new MP3 player, called Vision:M, has music, video and photo capabilities. Vision:M packs a 30GB hard drive and a large, 2.5in, 262,144-colour, 320 x 240 LCD screen into its diminutive 10.4 x 6.2 x 1.9cm proportions and weighs about 166g. Black, white or green colours available.

Rechargeable battery can play video for 4 hours (Apple’s iPod – 2 hours only) and music for 14 hours. It’s audio support MP3 , Windows Media Audio (WMA) and WAV audio, DRM-protected tracks are also supported. The new MP3 player Vision:M play MPEG 1, 2 and 4, WMV 9, Motion JPEG, DivX 4 and 5, and XviD video files and display photos saved in the JPEG format only.

The Vision:M will go on sale in Japan at Christmas-time and will cost $329. It will come in either black white or green.

Creative Technology has announced the updated ZEN NEEON series with three flash memory-based models of 512MB, 1GB and 2GB

The Neeon mp3 player weighs in at 55g (iPod Nano mp3 player – 42g), and the statistics are 8 x 4.7 x 1.6cm and 8.8 x 5.6 x 0.7cm, respectively. Creative claims a 32-hour playback period (Nano – 14 hours) for on a single charge.

The Neeon sports a two-colour, 128 x 64 OLED screen. The Neeon mp3 player connects to a host PC using USB 1.1 or USB 2.0, and according to Creative, operates as a USB Mass Storage device, so there’s no need to install file-transfer software. It should also connect up to Mac and Linux-based systems.

3700 Creative Zen Neeon mp3 players were shipped to Japan with the Wullik.b worm, a mass-mailed worm of 2003 vintage which makes copies of itself in random locations on machines it infects.

However, the worm won’t infect connected PCs unless the user browses the file system and clicks on the infected file. Also, anyone with up to date virus protection should be safe as, once plugged in, the PC would treat the Neon like a USB drive and scan it.

Creative is reporting that the worm affects players with serial numbers between 1230528000001 and 1230533001680 and is recalling those devices. Further shipments have been halted while the problem, which Creative describes as an ‘annoyance’ to customers is resolved

Creative Technology today said it has been awarded a U.S. patent covering the way it organizes music on portable media players, an approach that it says is used on competing devices such as the market-leading Apple iPod and iPod mini.

The patent covers the interface the company has used since its earliest digital music players, such as the Nomad Jukebox. Based in Singapore, Creative Technology has a U.S. division in Milpitas, Creative Labs. It organizes the music on the portable player by broad categories, allowing the listener to select a general heading, such as “artist,” and navigate through successive screens to find a particular song.

Creative Labs President Craig McHugh said the company will aggressively protect its intellectual property, and is exploring both legal and licensing options involving other companies — Apple in particular — that use the same music menu on their MP3 players.

“The patent application was to protect our invention,” said McHugh. “As you can see … the invention is significant.”

McHugh went out of his way, in a conference call with reporters, to portray Apple as a late-comer to the digital music scene, even though the popular iPod line dominates the U.S. market for portable players with a 70 percent share.

He said Creative shipped its Nomad Jukebox MP3 player in November 2000, fully 12 months before Apple introduced the iPod in October 2001. He said Creative applied for its patent on Jan. 5, 2001, significantly earlier than Apple’s application in October 2002.

Creative also makes the Zen digital music player.

“When you look at those screens, they do look awfully familiar,” said Phil Leigh, president of Inside Digital Media in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Last month, patent officials rejected an Apple Computer application to patent its iPod digital-music player because rival Microsoft had filed a similar application five months earlier. Apple plans to appeal, however, so it will not be required to pay royalties to Microsoft for every iPod sale.

mercurynews.com