Haier Theatre player reaches US with capacitive touch
updated 06:10 pm EST, Mon December 7, 2009
Haier enters touchscreen arena Stateside
Having been quiet in rolling out new players for months, Haier today quietly slipped out the Theatre (link may be broken) as its first-ever touchscreen media player for the US. Although treated as a budget player, it's advanced for the category as it uses capacitive touch that should be more sensitive to finger input. An accelerometer is equally in place to auto-rotate imagery, and it should carry both FM tuning and voice recording.
The player supports AAC, MP3, OGG and WMA audio playback for up to 12 hours as well as JPEG photos and MPEG-4 videos. A rare move also gives it native text file support for basic notes and e-books. Haier will sell a 4GB model for $90 but is asking just slightly more for an 8GB version at $100.
