Kinoma Inc. today introduced Kinoma Player — a digital media player for Palm OS-based PDAs. The software also includes Kinoma Producer, an audio, video and still imaging encoding tool that works on Mac OS. Together, the software can be used to produce and deliver content to Palm OS-based PDAs and phones.
Kinoma was the brainchild of Peter Hoddie, former Chief Architect of QuickTime at Apple. He teamed up with several other digital media experts this year to found Kinoma.
Kinoma Player utilizes Cinepak Mobile video technology to bring high-res video playback to Palm PDAs. The software can provide up to an hour of video on a single Memory Stick or SD Memory Card (for so equipped PDAs). Up to 2,000 high-res images can be stored on a 64MB Memory Stick or SD Memory Card as well.
With Kinoma Producer, you can encode content including QuickTime, MPEG-1, AVI, MP3, AIFF, WAV, Flash, animated GIF, JPEG and BMP. Kinoma Producer can be used to convert PowerPoint slides, digital photos and computer-generated animation for playback on Palm handhelds. The software supports custom layouts combining digital video with full screen background images, too.
Presents for more than forty different handheld models are already included in Kinoma Producer. The software provides support for a variety of vendor-specific capabilities: SD Memory, MemPlug, Memory Stick, Sony’s jog-dial controller and virtual silkscreen, high-res video playback, and audio hardware from Hagiwara, Sony and Yamaha.
The Player software is available for free download and is compatible with “nearly all” Palm PDAs, according to the company. You can download a free trial edition of Kinoma Producer now, and the full version is available for US$29.99. A special $19.99 competitive upgrade is available for users of other digital media products for Palm PDAs.
System requirements call for Mac OS 8.6 or later, including Mac OS X. Various flavors of Windows are supported, as well.