CES South Korea's Cowon this week demo'd at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas what it claims is the world's first micro media player based on a 0.85in hard disk drive.

The iAudio 6 contains a 4GB HDD - presumably the Toshiba drive that has just begun shipping - on which users can store WMA (including DRM-protected songs), MP3, Ogg, WAV, FLAC, MPEG 4 (AVI) and JPEG files. Picture and video are presented on a 1.3in, 260,000-colour OLED screen. The display is touch-sensitive.

The player connects to a host computer across the obligatory USB 2.0, but it also supports USB On-the-Go, allowing it to act as a host when it's connected directly to digital cameras and other media sources. The iAudio 6 has an FM tuner on board, too, and provides the customary voice recording facility.

Cowon claims the player will operate for up to 20 hours on a single battery charge - almost certainly much less when it's being used for video playback. The company did not say when the product will ship. ®