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LAS VEGAS -- Despite Napster's travails and threats of copy protection on CDs, digital music is still sounding strong, judging from the selection of new portable devices shown at the Consumer Electronics Show here this week.

While most players stick to the basic formula of packing an hour or two of MP3 music into a tiny, low-cost device, a number of vendors are aiming higher. Archos, Bantam, Creative, RCA, and SonicBlue are introducing higher-price models with extra features such as FM radio tuners, voice recorders, and video players.

They are also pushing capacity by adding copious flash memory, monster hard drives, or DataPlay's upcoming 1.25-inch optical discs. And you can use some of the players without turning on a PC.

Trading Size, Capacity

Many of the new players depart from the typical deck-of-cards-size devices by taking one of two paths: maximum portability or maximum capacity.

On the miniature side are players like Samsung's new YP-700H. A bit larger than a Zippo lighter, the YP-700H comes with 128MB of built-in memory--enough for more than 30 high-quality MP3 songs. You can double the capacity by adding a smart media card, and Samsung claims you can double it again by encoding music using the company's more-compact 2XMP3 compression scheme.

The YP-700H also supports Microsoft's WMA music files and the more compact, higher-quality version of MP3 known as AAC. To keep the music playing, you can supplement the rechargeable NiMH battery by plugging in an external pack that holds a standard AAA cell. You can also plug in a headset featuring a combination remote control and FM radio tuner, and you can use the device to record voice dictations. Samsung expects the YP-700H to go on sale in February for a list price of $299.

In size and capacity, Samsung's player resembles the BA350 from Bantam Interactive, though the silver finish on the Samsung contrasts with the brightly colored, rubberized look of the $199 BA350. Released in October 2001, Bantam's tiny player won a Design and Engineering award at this year's CES. So did Bantam's heftier upcoming BA800 model, which is expected to go on sale in May or June priced at $299.

The BA800 boasts twice as much on-board memory, at 256MB, and like its predecessor, it provides a slot for further expansion. The biggest addition, however, is the BA800's 2-inch LCD screen for displaying JPEG images (stored at about 80 per megabyte of memory).

Spinning More Content

A color screen also adorns one of the heftier music players, the Archos Jukebox Multi-Media Portable Entertainment Center. In addition to showing still images, the new paperback-size Multi-Media can play MPEG-4 and DVX video. Movies obviously demand more storage, but there's plenty of room on the player's 10GB hard drive. Filling that disk may take a while over the built-in USB 1.1 connection, but an expansion port accommodates speedier USB 2.0 or IEEE-1394 (FireWire) adapters.

The Multi-Media can also forego the PC connection entirely by attaching directly to a CD player or other music device and using its built-in MP3-encoding engine. This feature--along with a voice recorder and the ability to act as an external hard drive--is also provided on the earlier, audio-only Archos Jukebox.

The Multi-Media's expansion port offers additional ways to bypass the PC by plugging in modules providing a 1.3-megapixel digital camera, inputs and outputs to record MPEG-4 video or play it on a television, and CompactFlash and SmartMedia readers to load digital photos. The Jukebox Multi-Media is scheduled to ship in late February priced at $325.

Room for More Storage

Many other digital music players are sporting drives. Creative, for instance, is offering an unofficial preview of the 20GB Nomad Jukebox 3, which it expects to begin selling in April or May for less than $400. (A simpler model, the Nomad Jukebox 2, is also in the works.) Like the current 6GB and 20GB Nomads, the Nomad 3 resembles a portable CD player, but it's a bit smaller and lighter than its predecessor.

Perhaps the biggest change, however, is the Nomad 3's options for connecting to other devices. In addition to the USB 1.1 port found on the current player, the new model includes an IEEE 1394 connection for faster music transfers from PCs equipped with 1394 ports (as are all systems sporting Creative's current Audigy sound cards). The Nomad 3 can also skip the PC link by importing music through standard analog or optical inputs and encoding it to MP3s on the fly. Four-channel output can then pump music from the Nomad 3 to a surround-sound stereo system. A cleverly designed search function lets users jump to the desired tracks.

Newcomers: RCA, SonicBlue

While Archos and Creative are launching their second-generation hard-drive players, RCA and SonicBlue are introducing their first models.

RCA's Lyra Personal Jukebox is a hefty 11-ounce player about the size of a large digital camera. Its slightly complex set of joysticks and buttons enable users to navigate up to 10GB of MP3 music files. An included belt clip will make it easier to lug around the Personal Jukebox, which is expected to ship in early spring priced at $299.

About the same size as the Lyra, SonicBlue's new Rio Riot provides a handy scroll wheel for navigating through the music collection or accessing special functions such as My DJ, which tracks the user's listening habits to generate custom play lists. The Top Tunes option, for example, collects the songs that are played most often, while the Memory Lane option collects tracks that are seldom or never played.

SonicBlue expects to sell the Rio Riot in mid-February for $400--the same price as Apple's iPod player, but SonicBlue says the two gadgets will appeal to different customers. At 20GB, the Riot offers four times the iPod's capacity, but it's also much larger.

"We can't stick the Riot in our pockets," says a SonicBlue representative. "But the tradeoff we made was providing more storage."

DataPlay: On the Way

DataPlay's tiny, write-only optical discs may offer a compromise between small size and large capacity in future players.

Similar to DVDs, DataPlay discs can contain up to 500MB, or over 500 minutes of MP3 music. Several companies previewed DataPlay devices, such as a handheld player to be sold by Evolution Technologies and co-branded with MTV, which is expected to debut in April priced at about $370. Blank DataPlay discs should be available by then.

By May, several record companies--including Universal Music Group, EMI Recorded Music, and BMG Entertainment--are expected to begin offering albums on DataPlay discs, according to DataPlay executives. Those discs will store music in encrypted form, allowing access after customers pay a fee and receive a key to unlock it.