Cowon has made a formal announcement of the Cowon V5 which comes shortly after a promotional video of the player was leaked onto the internet.  Unfortunately, all of our enthusiasm for this gem has been deflated after we’ve learned that the V5 is driven by Microsoft’s Windows CE 6.0.

The device packs a 4.8-inch screen and is available in either 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB – we can’t ignore the SD expansion slot. But, the big news is the HD support (720p).  Not only can the player handle HD file format’s, but it also comes fitted with HDMI and composite output.

Video file support is beyond belief with AVI, WMV, ASF, MP4 , MKV, MPG / MPEG, DAT, TS, TP, TRP, and 3GP video files supported amongst MP3, WMA, OGG, AAC, FLAC, APE, and WAV audio formats.  The player handles a host of other file formats including JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, TXT, PDF, PPT, XLS, and HTML formats.

Falling just short of a netbook, the V5 includes an image viewer, voice recorder, text reader, calculator, metric converter, world clock, DMB-tuner, and games.

If you thought that Cowon E30 was light on power, consider that the V5 is capable of 45 hours of continuous audio or 10 hours of continuous video.

Available in a choice of silver, pink, black, and white, the V5 will retail initially in Korea only for the respectable price of roughly $257, $299, and $342 USD for the 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB respectively.

[via imp3]

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