10. MP3 And Personal Media Players, Continued

Pay-for music download services like Pressplay and MusicNet launched late in 2001; Apple's iTunes Music Store followed in 2003, as did the commercial version of Napster; Sony launched its own music service, Sony Connect, in 2004. Many commercial music services use Microsoft's DRM to protect WMA files. In 2004, Microsoft introduced the PlaysForSure logo to indicate players that can play digital music from any PlaysForSure commercial service.

Also in 2004, Microsoft introduced its Portable Media Centre operating system, which played video as well as music tracks, including TV recorded on a Windows Media Center. The first handheld digital video players were the clamshell PoGo Products Flipster and the 20 GB Archos Jukebox Multimedia 20, both launched in 2002. The Flipster only played WMV and ASF files. The Jukebox 20 played MPEG4 video, but was limited to video with a resolution of 352x288 for the 1.5" screen. Larger screens on later models - like the 2003 40 GB Archos Video AV340 - were much more popular, but many users chose a Pocket PC, Palm PDA or handheld gaming console for watching digital video. Apple introduced a 30 GB iPod that played its own variant of MPEG-4 in 2005.

One of the first portable video players: the Archos Jukebox Multimedia 20.

In November 2006, Microsoft introduced its own portable media player, the Zune, which can send music to Zune players over a wireless connection. In early 2007, SanDisk launched the Sansa Connect, which uses a Wi-Fi connection to download music directly from online services. Wireless connections look set to be the next big thing, with Archos launching a Wi-Fi enabled version of the 604 that can stream content from a PC, and Microsoft getting together with a range of companies to bid for analog TV spectrum for delivering content to wireless media devices in the future.

Microsoft's Zune is the first media player to share content directly with other listeners.

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