Nike Philips hard disk MP3 for sporty types

Philips has been treating journos, dealers and assorted hangers on to a few days in a converted palace in the mountains between Rome and Naples. However, before you get too jealous, the gathered hacks have been forced to quaff triple shot Espressos in a bid to keep up with the huge amount of product the company has pencilled in for 2005.

One highlight is the world’s first hard disk player aimed at sporty types. Set to debut under the Philips Nike banner the PSA610 features some very clever technology which ensures that it is only the player’s owner who jogs and not the on board hard disk. The player uses a buffer system to sample the user’s music choice which it then stores, leaving the hard disk to power down.

Philips claims the whole process takes around thirty seconds. The benefits of the hard disk are much more storage than rival flash players, 3 Gigabytes in this instance, yet a retail price of just £180. Battery life is ten hours and the model will spin both MP3 and WMA (including DRM downloads) files.

With its circular shape it alos looks very different from the flash mob too. The bad news is it won’t be on sale until the summer.