Portable Media Players

In this section we define what are media players and explore their present popularity in society.

What??

A portable multimedia player is an electronic device which uses either a hard drive, microdrive or flash memory. Depending on their functions, they can come with a color LCD or OLED screen. As you will soon discover, current day media players differ from music players of the past in that they are capable of storing and playing digital media of different sorts as opposed to only audio files.

Popularity

Media players have enjoyed immense popularity since the 1960s. However, the advent of truly portable and pocket-sized players is what sensationalised this popularity in the 21st century.

Its sleek design, diverse functions and high quality sound, pictures and videos have impressed many people all over the world. This is why nowadays every second person has a media player in their pocket and you can see them everywhere: on the train, bus, road and even at work. This applies to both the young as well as the old. Just yesterday, my teacher, now a retiree who still offers his services to the school, approached me with his new player and asked me what I thought of his songs collection. Of course, having not seen any of his songs in my life, I was lost for words. That is the power of the media players: it can play all forms of music regardless if it was recorded in the 80s, 90s, or today.

However, this has also turned media players into a 'fashion statement' with most youths. In extreme cases, they may even look down on those who do not possess a player, as they consider them as not 'with' it, and labelled as a dull person. On the other hand, such cases are rare, so do not start panicking if you do not own one!

Acknowledgements:

1. Neeku for the image. (28th March 2009)