Portable Media Center (PMC) is a

portable media player A portable media player (PMP) or digital audio player (DAP) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. Normally they refer to small, Electric battery, batter ...

(PMP) platform developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. Announced at the 2003

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

(CES), and released in early 2004, it was originally positioned as a competitor to Apple's

iPod The iPod is a series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices that were designed and marketed by Apple Inc. from 2001 to 2022. The iPod Classic#1st generation, first version was released on November 10, 2001, about mon ...

. All its

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

-based players use a

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI) modeled after Media Center, a software portal bundled with Windows XP Media Center Edition. Manufacturers of PMC devices included Creative,

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...

, iriver,

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

, and

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

History

The platform was conceived in line with Microsoft's

Windows Media Center Windows Media Center (WMC) is a discontinued digital video recorder and media player created by Microsoft. Media Center was first introduced to Windows in 2002 on Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). It was included in Home Premium and U ...

strategy, where the idea was to have a single media management interface that would be used on both PCs and in consumer devices, including televisions and handhelds. The strategy was developed by Microsoft's Windows Embedded group in partnership with the eHome Division, which formed in February 2001 and started partnerships with companies like Samsung with the goal to "develop new technologies so consumers can enjoy whole-home entertainment, communications and control experiences where, when and however they want them" and "develop an entire ecosystem of PCs, digital devices, intelligent home appliances and services that will easily and cost-effectively transform average households into next-generation digital homes." The Windows Media Center name was created with the release of a Windows XP product edition, Windows XP Media Center Edition, geared towards this ecosystem. Codenamed ''Media2Go'', it was later rebranded as ''Windows Mobile software for Portable Media Centers'', before being named ''Portable Media Center''. The Portable Media Center was succeeded by

Zune Zune was a brand of digital media products and services that was marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until it was discontinued in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, a music subscription service known as Zune Music ...

, and served as the basis for its software. Zune had similar aims to provide a unifying media platform across PCs, devices, and televisions (3-screen strategy).

Software

Its

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

was a specialized version of

Windows CE Windows CE, later known as Windows Embedded CE and Windows Embedded Compact, is a discontinued operating system developed by Microsoft for mobile and embedded devices. It was part of the Windows Embedded family and served as the software foun ...

,. In 2007, Microsoft discontinued licensing the platform. All PMCs are able to play audio files in

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

and display images in

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

. Also, they support Microsoft's proprietary formats:

Windows Media Audio Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. Audio encoded in WMA is stored in a digi ...

(WMA) and

Windows Media Video Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: the original video compression technolog ...

(WMV). Other video formats will either be supported by each individual PMC, or transcoded though

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...

Media Transfer Protocol The Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) is an extension to the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) communications protocol that allows media files to be transferred automatically to and from portable devices. While technically "available" on Windows 10, ...

(MTP) is used for transferring data.

References

External links

Creative Zen Portable Media Centeririver PMC-120Samsung Yepp Portable Media Center
Portable media players Windows CE devices Digital audio players {{compu-mobile-stub

History

Software

See also

References

External links