The MP4 Player Design Review & Planning Process

Without goals you can't score. You should remember that having goals is a good thing, having goals that can't be achieved is a bad thing, your doomed to fail before you start.

Having discovered the market was stagnant, and gotten over the shock of how poor things had become we perked up. The sudden realisation that you've got a blank canvas is really quite refreshing.

The second half of March and most of April were sent brainstorming, trying to put together a blue print design incorporating all of the functions, features, gizmo's and widgets we could think of that would be desirable in an MP4 player. These covered the norm, music, video, camera etc. and the darn right mad. Whoever thought of putting TV and radio in these devices needs shooting. Its bad enough getting a stable signal at home let alone whilst your on the move. Never the less all went into the melting pot.

At the end of April the day of reckoning came. It was time to pick the baseline functions and features for the first generation of the media box. This was tougher than expected. After all our aim was to wow the public with an all singing and all dancing piece of MP4 player wizardry. We discarded the ideas that were doomed to fail, out went the microwave and dishwasher function, we decided the power requirements for these could be restrictive, after all there is only so much room for batteries. The MP4 player blue print was created, agreed and signed off. We had our goal, and yes it could be achieved.

• Number 1 on the list was functionality. Its great having a 32GB MP4 player, fully loaded with a good selection of music and video, off you go on you travels to find out your battery is dead within 4 hours. You should have brought a 4GB MP4 player and saved yourself some money. Therefore top of the list was power budget. We had to make sure that the battery could sustain whatever we put in the box for at least 10 hours, no 12 hours, no 14 hours. We settled on 18 hours continuous video play. Why, because we could and nobody else was getting near this.
• Number 2 on the list was usability. An MP4 player should be easy to use, its as simple as that. You shouldn't need a stylus if you go for a touch screen MP4 player, these only get lost or used to clear away excess ear wax. The screen should be big enough so that you don't end up with a permanent squint after watching 10 minutes of video. The navigation should be straight forward, easy to understand and even easier to use.
• Number 3 was design, the sex appeal. Now number 1 and number 2 above help with this. Your case can only be as small as the sum of the contents. This is why as MP4 players get smaller so does the battery life. Yes battery technology has come on leaps and bounds in the last 3-5 years but not to the point where you can power a car from a watch battery. We went for a simple soap box design, nice to touch, pleasing to the eye and easy to plant in your pocket. No cheap shiny plastic trim that falls off after a week, no silly bits and bobs stuck on with double sided sticky tape. Just plain, clean lines, honest design.

Now that the 3 fundamentals were in place it was time to look at the hardware to make it all happen.

Tune is soon for the next instalment of an MP4 Player range launched.

(Quick note for Steveoath. If your Mac will detect a standard USB device then your cool with a media box)

New MP4 Player Range Launched

Early 2008 it became apparent that the MP4 player market had become awash with cheap copy MP4 players. Many imported from China and all doing pretty much the same, few stood out from the crowd and offered a new direction, either in functionality, technology or design. The market has, and will be for some time (due to marketing budget) been led by Apple. Quality products, offering innovation but at a high cost. It was at this stage MCH Electronics made the decision to design and manufacture a product that offered an alternative to the norm.

At this stage I must point out that this move is not for the faint hearted. What started as a projected 3 month project stretched into 8 grueling months of late nights, 7 day weeks, design, redesign, budget then re-budget.

Our initial design concept was to produce a product that offered all of the good things that were then available in the MP4 player market and then sprinkle some magic dust onto this blue print to create a new breed of hardware. Our biggest obstacle was what was actually available, after much research we found that a large percentage of the MP4 players being imported were in fact the same board in a different case, yes some had SD card slots, some with FM radios, but on the whole same board with different bits added to fit the case. The software was the same, static icon based and hard to navigate. This left us feeling cold. As it was we managed to pick 2 or 3 good things that the mass-produced MP4 player market could offer, from there we were on on our own.

Over the coming weeks we will continue with this story up to the point of media box range launch, November 2008. After this we hope to keep you informed of both our developments and changes in the MP4 player market.