Philips has launched the wallet-friendly MP3 (et al) player known as the GoGear Opus. We saw a little something of the 8GB/16GB device – well Zara did – out in Lisbon and now we hear it allows you to pay downloaded BBC iPlayer content too. Nice touch.

The news since then is that it’ll cost £99 or £129 depending which model you go for and it supports MP3, WMA, AAC (non-DRM) and FLAC (hurray!) for audio and MPEG4, WMV and SMV on the video side. Fear not, though, AVI, MOV, RM, WMV and DVDs can be converted by the software included. Make sure you factor in the time for that.

It measures 107mm x 11mm x 57mm and sports a 320 x 240-pixel, 2.8″ LCD capable of 262,000 colours. Not exactly mind blowing stuff here certainly good for the money.

You get the ever-reasonable free Philips headphones backed up by the ever-dividing FullSound upscaling technology with 30 hours of audio and 6 of video battery life to consider you point of view.

There’s some hook-you-in 30-day trials of Napster, if you wish, or you can go and get your music like a real (wo)man instead.

All in all, a pretty good package from Philips. Perfect for downscaling those iPod Touch birthday present requests without the bad taste in the mouth.

Philips