The latest gadget from China is the PMP/PDA, this is a standard looking personal media player, it can switch into personal digital assistant mode, they call it “switch2pmp”. When in PDA mode you are in a Windows CE OS, not the most exciting OS one could ask for in a PDA, but nonetheless, they are trying. After selecting the “Switch2PMP” icon, a couple seconds pass and the system switches over. PMP mode supports playback of MPEG1, MPEG4 and WMV9, Charbax who picked up the device on a trip through the Beijing electronics markets said, “so far Mpeg-1 and wmv9 seem to not be very smooth, b-frames and bitrates over 1500kbit/s are unstable, cmg and qpel show lots of artifacts. “

The PMP/PDA designed by JJS is called the Ascend PEC-A8, we have never heard of them, and probably never will again, which is not surprising. JJS seems to be on the right track with some ideas, but still lacking in other very essential capabilities, so the 20GB PDA with Switch2PMP could be a hot seller if it evolves properly. On the other hand, it could fade away with many other combo-devices that have tried to create a new class, and remained the only one in that class.

What we know: JJS PEC-A8 runs on the AMD Alchemy 1100 400mhz processor. No built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, no video-output or input and USB is old school 1.1 with CF, SD, MMC slots.

What JJS has to do: Get some Wi-Fi on that thing, speed up the video processing for smoother playback, USB 2.0 goes without saying. If they can get all that together, it could be one badass unit.

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