Portable Players

It used to be that everything was a "walkman". Then came portable CD Players. There were even a few MiniDisc players out there, but all in all, you knew what each of them were, and what to call them. Now, there are Portable Video Players, Portable Media Players, MP3 Players, Digital Audio Players, IPods, some of them play this but not that, some of them need memory cards: it's very hard to keep up with all the terminology and technology.

Digital Audio Player - This is any device that plays audio from a digital source, such as a file on your computer. This term applies to every digital audio player, and not just the portable ones. Some of these may be designed to be added to your home entertainment center, or they may be smaller than your wallet.

Audio Files - WMA, MP3, AAC, OGG, etc These are all examples of different audio file formats. MP3 is probably the most popular format, and allows you unrestricted use. Studios are often a little concerned about formats without Digital Rights Management(A feature of certain file formats that restricts how and where you can access the file), so rather than selling songs in MP3 or Ogg Vorbis(OGG) files, they group up with Microsoft and release them in WMA, or Apple and their AAC files, which have DRM. Chances are good if a player can handle a specific type of DRM file, they can handle MP3s as well. It doesn't always work the other way around.

Portable Video Player - Any device that can play video files falls under this category. Like audio files, there are a number of different formats for video. I won't go into a lot of detail on this, but the most common formats are WMV, AVI, DivX, XviD, and Mpeg-4(MP4).

Portable Media Player - This has multiple functions, often meaning it will handle both Audio and Video files.

IPod - You've head this term, you've seen the commercials. If you still don't know what exactly it is or does, hopefully this will clear things up for you. Ipod is a brand name device, made by Apple. Every one of them will play audio files, and depending on the model, video files as
well. They are easy on the eyes, and generally considered to be the easiest to use of portable players(of any type). They have other features as well, but that's the gist of it.

Now, this all should be considered just a cursory guide to the terms, and not as a suggestion on what to buy. Hopefully now you can at least know what to ask the clerk when shopping around, and maybe even understand his/her answer.