It's coming...just wait a bit longer.

For those of you that I've told, I'm still working on my review of the Cowon A2: Portable Media Player that I recently acquired.

It's so hard for me to review this thing! I mean, about every two weeks, something that just irked me (like audio codec support, video codec support, etc.) about the thing gets fixed in a firmware update by Cowon. Just today, they released a new firmware update which added FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) support for the A2 in addition to other big improvements (like a new graphical interface, a fix in WAV playback, among other things). You don't know how much I am overjoyed to see this come to fruition seeing as a sizeable chunk of my ripped CDs are encoded in FLAC format! I do have to congratulate Cowon as they are putting so much of their effort and resources into updating and improving their digital audio and video players on a pretty much weekly basis.

And, I've also heard that Cowon is planning to release a new peripheral for the A2: a DMB (Digital Media Broadcast, i.e. TV and HD radio) receiver in Asia, Europe, and Australia (seeing as the US does not seem interested in implementing DMB technology). So, people on these continents will now be able to watch TV in addition to listening to their music (mp3, wav, flac, ogg, wma), watching movies (AVI, ASF, WMV, DivX, XviD, MPEG4, MP@LL), listening to FM radio, viewing pictures from their digital cameras (JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF), and viewing word documents...and don't forget its superb audio and video recording capabilities. Believe me, this thing plays pretty much everything.

I'll have a far more comprehensive review soon detailing its aesthetics, construction, battery life, audio quality, video quality, ease of use, included accessories, and more. Watch for it!




One more thing, Cowon submitted a proposal to the FCC which would bring GPS Navigation to the Cowon A2...::big thumbs up!::