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 ‘pMP’ - 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 ‘pMP’ but we suspect it’s in a somewhat misguided attempt to make the device sound trendy (surely it should be ‘PMp’?) 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 / £115 – 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]