Chinese PMPs are driving me nuts. All these crazy design ideas can sometimes give you nausea. Take this, for example. Is that my grandma's homemade time machine, or a miniature photo frame made in Vietnam? No, it's the V503 PMP itself.

I don't know, but the thing is it looks terrible. Some say it looks pretty much like an old dusty Archos PMP. That's if they would have invented one in the early 80s.

The brainy company behind this is called Nanjing Panda, and it sounds as familiar to me as fire tail gudgeon fish sounds to your tuna sandwich, or something...regarding the V503 portable media player's specs, it can do a bunch of not-impressive stuff like dealing with common audio-video file formats, like MPEG-1, MPEG-4, DiX4, DivX5, as well as AVI and DAT for the videos at a precise resolution of QCIF, CIF, DI, 2/3DI, ½ DI and more.

But, hey, it can also read the familiar MP3s, WMAs for the audio files. JPEG is the only admitted format for the photo file reading, which is more than enough for a player of its kind.

And yes, it can double as an e-Book reader and it lets its users read some Jane Austen while commuting to the office. As for its external view, the more visible parts of the design, it reveals a nice 2.4 inch TFT LCD. In addition, it comes packed with a juicy 1.8 inch HDD and allows AV-out, meaning you'll be able to see your worst hair days on the biggest flat screen. Memory can be boosted via a SD card slot added to compensate the looks.

There is also a built-in audio reading and recording capability you may want to check out. Needless to say, it has some "cool" additional stuff, like the "addictive" FM radio functionality. But, hey, what are you complaining about. You'll get the IR remote in the purchased package. Lazy bones! Price and availability, unknown, but do you really want them?