By melvin g. calimag
Japanese printermaker Epson is diversifying its product line with the recent unveiling of a new Multimedia Storage Viewer (MSV) device, the first such product it is introducing in the Philippines.
Company officials previewed the MSV variant, the Epson P-2000, to the local IT media in a recent offsite press conference, but said the new product will only be available by end of May.
The Epson P-2000, which can be mistaken for PSP (Sony Playstation Portable) due to their similar size and appearance, is targeted mainly for professional photographers. Its suggested retail price is
R31,995.00.
Randy Kanapi, head of the marketing division of Epson, said they are eyeing to sell at least 40 to 50 units of per month once the initial shipment of the MSVs arrive later this month.
"We’re very optimistic for this new product because people have been calling our office for the past few months to inquire about this product," said Kanapi, adding that the Epson P-2000 was launched in the US and Japan late last year.
The lightweight MSV has 40 gigabytes of storage space to allow users to store and view hundreds of thousands of images. It comes with a 3.8 inch VGA (640x480) high definition Epson Photo Fine display that offers 3 colors per image pixel, a high density of 212 pixels per inch and a display capacity of up to 262,144 colors.
Company executives stated the Epson P-2000 is an ideal multimedia storage viewer for digital photographers on the move and for professionals who take a lot of photos, work with numerous memory cards or frequently download photos to a computer.
"To serious photographers, the Epson P-2000 gives them the freedom and flexibility to capture as many pictures as they want without having to worry about running out of memory cards," said Kanapi.
Epson said the most striking feature of the new product is its storage capacity of 40 GB that enables users to store thousands of images as large as 17.8 mega pixel. Aside from storing images, users can also organize their files in different folders for easy access and viewing.
The Epson P-2000 is also a portable entertainment device that can play back audio files and movie clips.It supports JPEG and select RAW files, MPEG4 and Motion JPEG video files, plus MP3 and AAC audio.
The MSV comes with built-in memory card slots that facilitate the transfer of images from commonly used digital camera memory types. It offers native support for Compact Flash Type I and II as well as Secure Digital memory cards.
It also features a HiSpeed USB 2.0 interface that transfers photos, video and audio files to and from a computer at a greater speed, and is compatible with both Windows and Mac.
