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Toshiba will launch three new versions of its Gigabeat hard drive-based portable music player starting in late November, the company says.

The biggest difference between the three models will be in the storage capacity, which will be 10GB, 20GB, or 60GB. All three players use 1.8-inch drives manufactured in-house by Toshiba, and this will be the first digital music player from any company to make use of the 60GB drive, says Midori Suzuki, a spokesperson for Toshiba in Tokyo. The drive was announced by the company in August.

The exterior design of the Gigabeat player has been revised to sport a 2.2-inch QVGA (240 pixels by 320 pixels) color LCD and a navigation button that looks like a large "plus" sign in the center of the player's front panel.

Also new is the shape, measuring 4.2 inches long by 2.5 inches wide, which is longer and thinner than previous models. The two lower capacity models are .6 inches thick and the 60GB model is .7 inches thick, the latter because the hard drive uses two disk platters and so is physically thicker. The capacity of the drive also affects the weight, which is 5.6 ounces for the lower-capacity models and 6.0 ounces for the higher capacity model.

Let the Music Play

The players support either MP3, Windows Media Audio, or WAV files, although the files have to be passed through Toshiba's "Gigabeat Room" software to be loaded onto the device and recognized by the player. This process results in the files being encrypted and is an anti-piracy measure, says Suzuki. If music files can be dragged and dropped onto the Gigabeat's hard drive without using the software the device won't recognize them.

In addition to encrypting the files, the software can also grab music information from Gracenote's CDDB database of Compact Discs, and stores all of the transferred music into a database for searching. JPEG image files can also be attached to albums or songs, Toshiba says.

A by-product of the need for this software is that it restricts use of the Gigabeat players to people with computers running Windows XP or Windows 2000, from Microsoft.

Other specifications include a USB2.0/1.1 interface and battery that supports about 11 hours of continuous playback.

Like previous Gigabeat models, the new players have an on-screen menu that supports Japanese, English, French, Spanish, and German. However, Toshiba doesn't yet have any plans to sell them overseas, says Suzuki.

The portable music players will go on sale in Japan from late November. The MEGF10 10GB model will cost $360 and the MEGF20 20GB model will cost about $400. The MEGF60 60GB model will be on sale from early December and will cost about $580, she says.

They will be unveiled to the public at the Ceatec Japan 2004 exhibition, which takes place from October 5 to October 9 in Chiba, Japan.