This month, Apple released an upgrade to its iPod line. But amid the hype surrounding its careful marketing and intentional secrecy about the content of the launch, a different truth is emerging: that we are seeing the twilight of the stand-alone digital music player (DMP), a product category little more than 10 years old.

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That does not mean digital music players will vanish. Quite the opposite: the sector is still growing. Increasingly, though, the products have some sort of connectivity — whether wi-fi, mobile phone, Bluetooth or all three.

But if you look closely, signs the stand-alone player is in decline are all around. The first, and most obvious, was Apple's announcement in its latest quarterly results that iPod sales fell year-on-year for the first time since the product's launch in October 2001. As the iPod dominates the market for DMPs, any drop in its sales indicates a fall in the market.

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Apple has unveiled its new iPod range. It includes an iPod nano with basically the same appearance as the previous generation but it has a video camera and the shell is made of polished aluminium making it nice and shiny. It also features a slightly larger screen (2.2") and built in FM radio with Live Pause, an inbuilt pedometer, inbuilt microphone for voice memos and the same Voice Over feature which says the name of the song you are listening to as the iPod shuffle.

Apple also has introduced new colours (including polished steel)  for its iPod Shuffle as well as lowering the price of its iPod touch to AU$268 and introducing a new 64Gb model for A$549 and featuring the same voice control system as the iPhone and including the Apple earphones with the remote and mic attached.

As well as this, the new version of iTunes was announced. It includes an iTunes store redesign and a new feature called iTunes LP which allows artists to include interactive features with albums such as lyrics, album info etc. here is a full list of all the new features:

http://www.apple.com/au/itunes/whats-new/

The capacity of the iPod Classic has been upped to 160GB instead of the 120Gb.

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SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp put its new Zune HD digital music and video player on sale on Thursday, pricing it below comparable Apple Inc iPod devices, in an attempt to claw some market share away from the dominant leader.
The devices, which are available for pre-order but won't hit shelves until September 15, are priced at $219.99 for the 16 gigabyte version and $289.99 for the 32 gigabyte version. Comparable iPod Touch players are priced at $299 and $399 respectively.

A 16-gigabyte player typically holds about 4,000 songs.

Microsoft's new Zune HD is slimmer than previous version and has a touch screen for the first time. The range comes in five colors and has a built-in radio receiver, Wi-Fi, and can display high-definition video to a big screen.

Source: Reuters

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Introduction:
Denon has recently released an iPod dock for all of their products including radios and receivers. This iPod dock not only allows you to listen to music from your iPod but also allows you to view videos and photos. Your iPod can even be controlled with the remote control included with your receiver.

Pros:
-Easy to set up
-Lots of features
-Can watch videos and photos from your iPod
-Can control iPod with Denon remote
-Available in black and white to suit your iPod
-Works with iPhone

Cons:
-Menu system can be difficult to navigate
-Can only listen to music with iPhone
-Expensive

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Overview:
The Denon iPod dock is incredibly easy to set up and it even includes cables! You just plug in everything to the right input and turn the receiver on. You can use the remote to view the menu on the TV screen but the problem is that when you look at songs, all of the podcasts, videos and music are mixed which makes it quite difficult to find your songs. Another problem is that if you have lots of songs, there is no easy way to find them, you just have to scroll through the list of songs.

When the iPod is plugged in, it also gets charged which is a very useful feature and you can see the songs name and how far through you are on the receivers screen. This is far easier than looking at the small iPod screen from far away. The receivers also have a restorer feature which restores sound quality to compressed MP3 files. This works quite well and brings a noticable increase in sound quality.

At times using the remote can be difficult, especially when you have to repeatedly flip the remote over to access various features.

Many people can argue that you can plug you apple dock into the receiver with a cable but the problem with this is that it requires you to go to the iPod to change songs whereas if you have this dock you can navigate the iPod menus with the remote. This makes it very easy to play the music from your iPod.

Conclusion:
Despite the shortfalls of this dock, it makes it incredible easy to play music from your iPod with good quality through your home theatre system speakers or other Denon products. The fact that you can also play videos and photos is quite good and beats watching videos on the iPod screen. If you are willing to spend the AU$249 to buy it, it is worth it.
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