With strong and powerful audio brands like Cowon, iRiver or Samsung, it’s probably hard for unknown Asian companies to get their 15 minutes of fame in such an overcrowded market of dominant media players. But brands and popularity aside, sometimes you pay a lot more for much less and today, when recession keeps knocking our windows (or bank accounts), maybe it’s time for other names to make their debut. And, one of the companies that recently decided to go out with a new player is Atree, that has rolled out the J100 machine, which boasts a 3-inch touchscreen, together with a microSD expansion, DMB digital TV tuner, 4GB of internal flash storage and even an e-dictionary support. Formats wise, the J100 is compatible with MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC and APE lossless audio files while video playback will presumably run any AVI, DivX, Xvid and WMV footage. Hence, if you happen to visit the southern part of the country and find it attractive having an “anything but iPod” DAP in your pocket, you should start counting 198,000 KRW (about $158), the price it costs.

[Atree]