As an iRiver MP3 player owner, I have mixed feelings about the announcement of their new iMP-1100 “CD Player”. Their products seem to be fine for the most part, yet having a video screen in your CD player seems to be a little overkill to me personally. That’s right folks, the iMP-1100 model will have a video screen built right in to it. This leaves me asking, why?

We warned you earlier this year that iRiver would be releasing a medallion-style media player, their iMP-1100. But it being a CD player, we think it’s going to be a pretty hard sell now that it’s finally on its way to America. This thing may go underground with the budget crowd, but we can’t help but already sense the world of hurt this thing’s going to experience once it hits the shelves: it’s got a measly 2-inch 260k color LCD screen, but it does play up to 6 hours of video on its LiIon battery (not that it matters when you’ll be lucky to get a couple of hours of video on a CD). Seriously, you have to wonder why they didn’t just make the thing a DVD player in the first place; for $280 US, they definitely should have.