Company’s lineup for Christmas also includes its 50-inch plasma TV
Peter Wilson
Sun
When it comes to its new MP3 players, LG Electronics — which prides itself on marrying technology with design — is giving Canadians the finger.
Okay, it’s the finger inside a glove because it does get cold up here and operating an MP3 player isn’t that easy as you skate across that frozen pond.
It came about because Canadian consumers were looking for something different in the way of an MP3 player, said LG Canada’s manager of public affairs.
“So we went to our design teams and we said, look, we need to do something for Canada, something that’s unique,” said Lee. “And one of the things that came out in our focus groups was something that could be operated, even if you had gloves on.”
After all, said Lee, they wanted to hand the design team a challenge.
What they came up with — on MP3 players, particularly the FM20 (with the dewdrop design) along with their larger FM30 and JM53 designs — was a set of controls on the top of the player around which a single gloved finger could be wrapped.
“One way to hold this unit is actually in such a way that the index finger rests on the top,” said Lee.
“So you have forward, reverse, up, down and select to allow you to navigate,” said Lee. “Once you memorize the menu system, it’s actually quite easy to operate, even if you have a pair of gloves on.”
Another thing Canadians are truly concerned about, said Lee, is the up-time of the MP3 players, That’s why the JM53, with an eight-gigabyte hard drive, plays for as long as 30 hours and the FM30 delivers 60 hours.
Lee was in Vancouver Tuesday to demonstrate LG’s lineup for this Christmas, including its 50-inch plasma TVs. The company hopes buyers of big, high-definition TVs will also look as its theatre in a box. The LG LH-T9654MB model, with a single disc DVD player and a 1,000-watt amplifier (about $500), allow users with tricky rooms to connect their speaker wirelessly so that they don’t get caught up looking like a set of LED lights themselves as they set up to entertain the family over the holiday.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006