More MP3 players from Alba and Digitalway

2 August 2004 17:16 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Following hot on the heels of the Rio Carbon mp3 player, Alba and Digitalway have also launched MP3 players today. Alba's, the Alba MP364NDI, costs £30 and has 64MB of memory and is aimed at the beginner market.

Digitalway's, called the mpio hd200, however is a 5Gb player priced at £199 and will offer 80 hours of music, in-built WOW sound support and a 5 band equalizer. It also offers support for MP3, WMA, ASF and OGG file formats and also has direct encoding straight from a stereo. With the integrated FM stereo and recording function, USB 2 downloading and 14 hours of battery life the player aims to offer plenty.

How both players fair in the market will be hard to tell against tough competition from more established brands like Apple, Rio and Creative.

Meanwhile it appears the Ministry of Sound has launched a series of coloured Rainbow Stix MP3 Players that come in an assortment of colours in a blatant copy of the iPod Mini

Ministry of Sound has even gone that one step further and pre-loaded an exclusive "DanceNation 2004" album onto each MP3 player to get you grooving straight-off.

The models will feature 128mb of internal memory and offer plug and play USB PC connection.

The models will be on sale at the end of this month with a price tag of around £69.99.