A brief look at what I do on my computer these days uncovers that I spend a great deal of time converting one format of "media" to another. Be that minidisc recording of Walken jams to CD and/or MP3, the audio from DVD concerts to CD so I can listen in the car, download videos to VCD for easier watching, or download MP3 to CDr.

Converting video to VCD is very time consuming. As time consuming as I remember WAV to MP3 being. These days making MP3s is a snap, one day MPEG video will encode as fast as MP3 does today. I'm thinking of setting up my VCR again, plugging it into my TV-out on my video card. Much quicker "to TV" conversions.

My point? I don't want to have to do this. The video part is easy. When I move out, the computer will live next to the TV. The audio part is less easy. I want portable audio. Portable MP3 CDr players are the closest thing I've seen so far. But I want one in the car too.

When are they just going to come out with a "media player" that is upgradable to play whatever the latest format is.

I want my monkey god.