Philips debuts "motivational" Activa MP3 player
updated 11:45 am EST, Tue January 5, 2010
Player matches tempo, words to workouts
Ahead of CES, Philips on Tuesday launched its Activa portable audio player which offers a "focus on motivating people to improve their fitness." According to the company, the device helps motivate people to work out more frequently and intensely by providing real-time vocal feedback on their performance, and music that automatically adjusts in tempo to match their pace: when users increase their speed, faster music from the music library is selected and when they slow down, the device offers words of encouragement. The company did not offer any other hardware specs or details (including memory capacity).
"The Philips Activa is the latest innovation in the company's family of solutions to help people lead healthier, more active lifestyles," the company said in its press release. "In addition to the Activa, Philips also announced that its DirectLife daily activity monitor and personal coaching will be launched in the UK and Germany in early 2010."
The embedded TempoMusic is proprietary software developed by Philips that automatically matches music to a user's workout pace. It starts by analyzing the user's music library, storing a detailed set of characteristics for each song, including several related to tempo, to help choose motivating songs for working out. The software also asks users to identify a song that inspires them to work harder and also reflects the type of music they like. Philips said.
"Through a combination of these features, TempoMusic chooses songs for uploading that are similar to this selected song, ensuring that each user has a library of "performance-inspiring workout music that matches their own unique preferences."
The Activa will be available worldwide in April of this year for $130.
Image courtesy of Gizmodo
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jan 2010
Interesting
This sounds like an interesting idea, but as an avid runner, I don't think I'd appreciate a voice providing 'words of encouragement.' Some training runs require repeats at different paces, so this voice could become annoying quickly. If there is a function to turn that feature off, while still allowing it to choose songs depending on your speed, then I think this could have great potential.