The iRiver P7: The portable media player that automatically converts your videos for you

You’re looking at the P7, iRiver’s latest portable media player that runs circles around the iPod. The big thing this go-around is that it automatically converts your videos to make sure they playback flawlessly (so iRiver tells us). How well that actually works, in the Real World, isn’t quite known yet; it’s new, you see.

The screen isn’t too bad, either. It’s a 4.3-inch touchscreen; the user interface is described as “widget-like.” Oh, widgets, what would we do without you?

It looks to be compatible with most of the file formats out there, including h.264 video and FLAC audio. It even plays Ogg Vorbis, satisfying a popular Slashdot complaint from 2004.

Throw in decent battery life—50 hours of audio, seven hours of video—and you’ve got a solid player. At least I think.

I don’t know, I’m Mr. let’s-give-something-other-than-the-iPod-a-chance these days, so perhaps I’m partial to iRiver stuff by default.

There’s two versions: an 8GB one for $179 and a 16GB one for $209.

Unrelated: Liverpool for the league, Chelsea or Barça for the Champions