iRiver has come back to the large media player field with the arrival of the P8 in Russia. The five-inch player focuses on video first and can play HD video, either at 800×480 on its own screen or at native resolution through HDMI out. iRiver has freshened up its interface with a Mac OS X-like interface that has both a “dock” of common tasks as well as widgets for top-level access to media controls, photos, and other parts of the interface.
Its size helps it last for nine hours of non-stop video and forty hours of music. As with most iRiver hardware, the format support is broad and in video includes hobbyist-friendly video formats like Matroska (MKV) and XviD along with AVI and WMV. Audio includes APE, FLAC, and OGG along with the usual MP3, WAV, and WMA. Common compressed photo formats, FM radio, and voice memo recording define the P8’s extras.
Versions are shipping with just 8GB or 16GB of internal storage, although a microSDHC slot takes up to 32GB more. The Russian site doesn’t mention pricing. Whether or not the P8 makes it to other countries is just as unknown, although iRiver’s lineup is frequently exported both officially and otherwise.
