By Richard Menta 2/16/06

The mystery NEC player we mentioned last week has finally surfaced and it is a pretty interesting (aesthetically) player to look at. The NEC VoTol, short for a moderately pretentious moniker they label Visual On-demand Tool of Life, is modestly notable for the fact that an English to Japanese translator is packaged into the thing.

A PMP unit, the VoTol is capable of handling MPEG 2 and 4 video and DivX. On the audio side, the VoTol adds Ogg Vorbis and ACC (not Apple's proprietary version, but you probably already knew that) to the commonly used MP3 and WMA formats.

The NEC VoTol holds 30GB in a 1.8" drive, has an SD port for added memory and transfers, and sports a 2.7-inch 320 x 240 LCD. And that water graphic on the screen shot? It's a fancy battery level indicator (points for flair). The VoTol will be available in March for $340.