Creative Debuts Widescreen Zen Player

The same day Microsoft details its Zune Product Line, Creative decides to launch its widescreen version of the Zen player in North America. The widescreen is at a 16:9 ratio and gives the player the W in its name. The Zen Vision:W was launched in Korea two weeks ago but North America will get it now. Transfer of media can take place via USB 2.0 cable or via the W's built-in Compact Flash memory reader.

Other than MP3 songs and JPEG images, the widescreen will be put to use primarily for videos. They are to be encoded using MPEG-4 Simple Profile (SP) at 500 Kbps throughput. This is supposed to be sufficient for a low-resolution display. The W will support multiple codecs: MPEG-1, -2, and -4 SP, along with DivX 4 and 5, XviD, as well as TiVoToGo. There is no DRM limitation in place. Creative made sure the new Zen is fully compatible with Amazon's Unbox video download service which currently provides content from Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros.

The Zen Vision:W will be available in 2 sizes: