Music services

The iTunes Store is the digital equivalent of a music shop. You buy individual songs or albums and own them thereafter, with some restrictions on their use. But several other services, such as RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo Music Unlimited, take a different approach. They charge a monthly fee that entitles you to stream or download an unlimited number of songs. In effect, you’re renting these songs, typically for $10 or $15 a month. Some music lovers prefer this system, since it makes it easier to experiment with new artists and genres, and cheaper to fill a portable player, even though the songs can’t be used on an iPod.

Now Microsoft has joined the battle against iTunes with Zune Marketplace, its own online music service that offers both subscription plans and iTunes-style individual song purchases. Music from the Zune Marketplace will work only on Microsoft’s new iPod competitor, the Zune player.

There is another notable online music service: eMusic. It’s a sort of hybrid. You get to download and own tracks, as with iTunes, but you’re charged a monthly fee instead of paying by the song. The upside of eMusic is that its music is in the plain, unprotected MP3 format, meaning it will play on any portable music player including the iPod, and on every music-playing software program on Windows and Macintosh computers. The downside: eMusic offers songs only from independent record labels. It has none of the catalogs of the majors and tends to be nichey, not mainstream.

Music players

Companies like Creative, Samsung and iRiver offer many models that match up well in price and features against the various versions of the iPod. At one time their hardware and software designs were much clumsier than Apple’s, but they have improved a lot. They still trail the iPod in overall elegance. But many have features Apple gadgets lack, such as built-in FM radio, microphones, longer battery life and even transmitters for beaming music through car radios.

These non-iPod players have suffered because they use a Microsoft-developed system called “PlaysForSure” that supposedly allows smooth, iPod-like synchronization between players and Windows PCs. Unfortunately, PlaysForSure often behaves more like “PlaysMaybe,” with sync problems being common.

SanDisk, a company best known for its flash-memory chips, has roared into a distant second behind Apple, with a series of handsome flash-based players under the Sansa brand. These devices, roughly comparable to iPod’s Nano and Shuffle models, mostly use the PlaysForSure system. But recently, SanDisk debuted the Sansa Rhapsody, which uses RealNetworks technology and is tied closely to Real’s Rhapsody subscription service.

Certainly, the biggest news for iPod haters is the introduction of Microsoft’s Zune music player, an iPod competitor with plenty of marketing muscle behind it. The Zune holds 30 gigabytes of music, the same as the smallest full-size iPod, and costs the same $250.

But the Zune abandons PlaysForSure in favor of an Apple-style, tightly controlled, integrated approach. It works exclusively with Zune software, and the only encrypted songs it will play are those bought at Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace.

As for design, the Zune is bigger and somewhat clunkier than the iPod. But it has three things the iPod lacks: a bigger screen, an FM radio and built-in wireless capability. The latter can be used to send songs to nearby Zune players, where they can be played three times before expiring.

But as slick as it is, Apple’s latest baby isn’t the only path to portable digital video available to consumers. Others got there first. All, including the new iPod, suffer from a dearth of legal downloadable content, but that has begun to change as Hollywood and the television networks seem willing, suddenly, to sell individual episodes of television series.

Here’s a quick guide to some leading portable video devices.

Old reliables: All the new video gadgets should be measured against portable DVD players and laptops with DVD drives. The portable players combine relatively large screens with thin, light designs and low prices. The laptops are larger and pricier, but their advantage is that many people carry them anyway for other purposes. And both have a vast library of cheap content to draw from: DVDs. The downside is that you have to lug along a selection of disks.

Portable media centers: These are gadgets that are smaller than a laptop, but larger than an iPod. They use Microsoft software that mimics the nice user interface in its Media Center version of Windows. Leading examples are the Samsung Yepp PMC and the Creative Zen PMC, both of which cost $500, which is more than even the priciest video iPod. They have larger screens than the iPod, but smaller storage capacity. Little legally downloadable content is available for the PMCs, but users can transfer to them TV programs they have recorded on high-end Media Center PCs.

Sony: The new PSP, or PlayStation Portable, from Sony, has a large, bright screen that does a great job showing videos, even though it is primarily a game machine. This slick, black $250 gadget is handsome, but unlike the iPod, it’s too large to carry in a pocket. Also, getting video into the PSP is clumsy and expensive, mainly because it lacks either a hard disk or a standard DVD drive. You have to buy movies on special, small copy-protected disks. And if you want to transfer videos from a computer, you have to buy a high-capacity memory stick.

Archos: This small company has been a pioneer in handheld video and makes several models, in a wide variety of sizes and capacities, that cost from $500 to $800. In general, Archos buyers have been early-adopter techies and videophiles willing to do what it took to collect video clips and move them onto the Archos gadgets. But the company is now going mainstream, through a deal with EchoStar, the satellite TV firm. EchoStar will sell three Archos models, rebranded as PocketDISH players, that can copy and play back TV shows recorded by EchoStar set-top boxes with digital video recorders inside. The PocketDISH players range from $300 to $600.

iRiver: The Korean maker of portable music players has just introduced a tiny video player, smaller but thicker than the video iPod, called the U10. It’s a handsome gadget with a clever user interface: You select functions by pushing on the edges of the screen. But it has a meager storage capacity, only a gigabyte, in a top-of-the-line model that costs $250, just $50 less than a video iPod with a larger screen and 30 times the storage.

Apple: The video iPod, which Apple calls simply the iPod, comes in two models: a $299 version with 30 gigabytes of storage and a $399 model with 60 gigabytes. Like all iPods, it is beautiful, easy to use, and it’s thinner and lighter than the prior generation. Short videos look great on its screen. Apple is selling episodes of two hit TV shows, Desperate Housewives and Lost, for $1.99 each. Again, content for all these gadgets is sparse today. But as the availability of legal video downloads grows, so will the rationale for buying a portable video player.