What is the difference between iPod and digital media player?

Answer 1

Answer:

As is often the case with nomenclature, what defines a digital media player depends on who you are asking and is often subject to the emerging trend in usage of the term by the general public.

Broadly speaking, a digital media player is any stand-alone device that is designed and used for the main purpose of playing back digital media. By current popular definition, digital media includes video, audio, and photo files. Thus far, the general public has treated ebooks and other mostly text content files as a separate entity and does not generally refer to ebook readers as digital media players - although many ebook readers have the secondary capability of playing back digital media.

Therefore, it can be said that an iPod, any iPod for that matter, is a type of digital media player. However, the general public has typically used other nomenclature to describe iPods and similar portable devices:

MP3 Players: iPods began as strictly music/audio players, and thus when people mention iPod, it is in conjunction with the concept of a MP3 player. Even as many of today's iPod models support video and photo playback their primary purpose is still focused on audio file playback and thus are primarily referred to as MP3 players.

Portable Media Players: As portable devices began gaining video and photo playback capabilities, the usage of PMP to describe these devices increased. In fact, most of iPod's current products, with the exclusion of the shuffle, qualifies as a PMP product. As iPod models gain additional capabilities as well as increasingly robust features, they will start to defy definition by a single name.

In the current market, digital media player is used to refer to a class of products that are designed to playback digital media on a TV or other large external displays. Examples include the Western Digital WD TV series, the Asus O!Play, and popular products by Popcorn Hour. These products are generally not portable in nature and are designed as a general purpose media player that replaces traditional media playback devices such as DVD or BD players. Additional information about this class of products can be found on the Digital Media Player Buyer's Guide at the following URL:

http://content.miccastore.com/digital-media-player-buyers-guide