For Sale: Exotic bootleg MP4 player

[editor]

I'm offering this for sale here for a week, and if there are no takers, I'll post it on eBay.

This is a KB brand MP4 player. Most Americans aren't familiar with MP4 players -- they're tiny MP3 players sold in China and several of the less-developed Asian nations. The reason they're called "MP4" is because in addition to music, they also play video. The little critters are extremely popular in China since it wasn't until recently that iPods became available, and they're still not ubiquitous. I bought this one in a tiny shop in on Hong Kong island.

This particular MP4 player came out just after the first iPod nano was released, and it's designed to look like it. It's 3.5 inches tall, 1.6 inches wide, and .25 inches deep. It has 256 megs of storage.

On the front are the buttons: Play/Pause, Mode, Volume, Forward, Back.

On the top is a hold switch.

On the bottom is a micro USB port.

On the right side is a miniature headphone jack. You may need an adapter from Radio Shack to use this with your headphones.

MP4 players usually have a lot more features than the average American MP3 player. This one's main menu has:

• Movie (for playing videos)
  
• MP3 (for playing music)
  
• FM Radio (for listening to the radio)
  
• Record (for recording with the built-in microphone)
  
• Record Play (for playing back recordings)
  
• Browpics (for viewing JPEGs)
  
• E-Docs (for viewing text documents)
  
• Setup
  

The screen is a very bright and crisp full-color 128x96 OLED display measuring 1.2 inches by 1.2 inches. It comes with a USB cable that also charges it.

A few tips: To turn it on or off, hold down the Play button. Navigate the menus with the right and left arrow buttons. Select with the Mode button.

To get music, video, text, or image files onto the player, just plug it into your computer (it shows up like a regular USB drive) and drag the files on.

Note that although Chinese MP4 players play standard music MP3's just fine, they do not play back the sort of American MP4 video files that you would get from Quicktime or Windows Media. They have their own codec and require their own programs to convert video files into a format that the MP4 player can display. Free converter software is very easy to find on the internet, just search for "MP4 Player." This MP4 player plays back .amv video files.

That's the big reason I'm no longer interested in this gadget. I mostly used it for the radio feature because I have a Mac, and the software to convert the videos only works under Windows. I did a couple of movies using Virtual PC on my Mac, but it was a nuisance that way.

Anyway, I'm asking $20 for it, plus $5 shipping. It's an unusual piece of knock-off technology, and you or your kid will be the coolest on the block for having this piece of exotic gear.

[editor]

This one is also sold.