Portable Media Players or Digital Audio Players, which are mostly produced in China, are known as Chinese MP4/MTV Player or MP4 Players. These players can display images and text files and play videos. These players have nothing to do with MP4 or M4A or M4V audio or video file formats. In fact, the previous players were able to play only limited file formats like MTV, DMV, AMV and MPV. But recent MP4 players can also play video files with MPEG4 format. Most of them are a mixture of S1 MP3 Players.

The first MP4 Players were developed by a French Company Archos in the year 2002. Thus, to gain an upper hand in the market, the Chinese Companies made slight enhancement to their MP3 Players and started to market them as MP4 Players and dubbed them as the `Successor of MP3 Players`.

Most of these players were unable to play MPEG4 format video files and even fewer could have played DivX or Xvid format video files. But when more and more companies promoted their players with enhanced video and audio qualities, Chinese companies started a `True MP4 Players Vs False MP4 Player Campaign` and successfully drove the less advanced MP3 players to the MP3 market and hence stabilized and standardized the Chinese MP4 Market.

Most of these MP4 Players contain an image file viewer and you can see a JPG or BMP file. They can also play MP3 and have other audio format`s codecs. Videos are mostly played in MTV or AMV format. Videos are converted to these formats using conversion software. E-books can be read through an ASCII text viewer. Some also have additional enhancements like phone book, voice recorder, FM or AM radio. Thus you can also record FM broadcasts. Some MP4 Players also have video games in them.

These players are available in many types. Most of them are extremely light weighted and have 1.2 screens, while others can be more forceful with screens of 1.5 to 2 inch and also containing two earphone sockets and built in speakers instead of conventional one earphone socket. Some of them have OLED display which is capable of producing brighter images when compared to normal LCD displays, but the picture quality does suffer.

It is extremely easy to operate these players and only few buttons perform multiple actions. many players have extra buttons but most of them have star configuration next to the screen with a joystick in the centre of the star. These players have memory up to 8GB if they are flash based and 100GB for micro hard drive based. Some recent MP4 players also support an external, third party flash memory cards. These players have generally USB 1 and USB 2 support. Earphones are generally offered with the players but they are of inferior quality. Package also contains a USB cable with proper drives and a charger. many also come with a special case.

The battery generally lasts for several hours, but this varies greatly with the model of the player and its usage. The recent batteries can now run for 12 hrs as compared 6 hrs for older batteries. But most of the batteries are of cheap quality and swell abnormally. Thus most new MP4 players support batteries from Nokia Phones and these are highly recommended.

MP4 Players were a part of marketing strategy of the Chinese manufacturers and has gained a lot of popularity over the years. These players are enhanced every day and have rightfully captured the market and have rivaled iPods for a long time. This Chinese version of iPods are also known as ChiPods.

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This article can be accessed in portuguese from the Article section of page: www.polomercantil.com.br/mp4-player.php , www.polomercantil.com.br/ipod.php Roberto Sedycias works as IT consultant for PoloMercantil.