Smart and Digital

MP3 players can also be organized by the type of removable flash media used. The SD, or Smart Digital, pavilion showed off some of the prettiest portable music devices at CES. These weren't just prototypes, but actual production units. Most were only available in Japan, at least for now. The smart in Smart Digital refers to an encryption scheme that thwarts music piracy.

Smart Digital cards are currently available in sizes up to 64MB, but larger capacities are in the queue. Products from Panasonic and Toshiba highlighted the exhibit. Integration was big, as MP3 players were being added to phones and picture viewers.

This one runs on a single AAA battery	MP3 player integrated into headphones
Toshiba MP3 devices	Toshiba, SD, and MP3
Tape sized Toshiba MP3 player	More Toshiba SD devices
Pretty enough to wear	Sanyo MP3 player

Other MP3 devices

CD-R based MP3 players were also big, but most of these devices were not very portable, except for one. Instead of standard 5 inch CDs, this device uses 3 inch CDs making for a more portable device with cheap storage.

Bring on the Mini-CDs

LG's series of MP3 players

Headphone and MP3 player in one

Yepp, that's right

Samsung expanded its Yepp line of portable music devices to include some very nice products, some of which included wired remotes, similar to Sony's better portable CD players and many MiniDisc players.

Yepp #1	Yepp #2
Yepp #3	Yepp #4

Yepp #5

In addition, to just playing MP3's, Samsung had some Yepps that acted as portable movie players and one MP3 phone.

The End? Not Yet	Want to watch a movie? Yepp!
MP3 player and phone	But Samsung had much more than MP3 players, with this Dick Tracy like watch phone.

DataPlay Media

DataPlay discs are 500MB discs that are the same size as a compact flash card or a PocketZip disc. Imation showed DataPlay disks and some prototype MP3 players.

That's 1.5GB of storage

DataPlay enabled MP3 player