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Multimedia players are used to store and play digital media files containing songs, videos and other media content. You can watch movies and listen to music with these devices. These players are referred to by various names including portable multimedia players (PMP) and portable video players (PVP). Digital audio players and mobile phones are also categorised as PMPs because of their ability to play music and videos. A hard drive, a microdrive or a flash memory is used to store data in such devices.

The first PMP – the Archos Jukebox Multimedia –¬ was officially launched by Archos in 2002. Microsoft launched the Portable Media Centre (PMC) platform in 2004. A year later, Archos introduced the Archos PMA400, which had the combined features of a PMP and a personal digital assistant (PDA).

Digital songs, video and images can be easily listened to and viewed with a PMP. Images and video are displayed using a colour LCD or OLED screen of up to about seven inches in width. These digital media players might also make use of additional accessories for playing or recording audio and video. Digital media players sometimes also use a built-in microphone, a line-out cable or an FM tuner for playing audio. If you need more storage space in your player, you can often use expandable memory cards in your device.

Almost all digital media players can play the MP3 audio format and also support the Windows Media Audio (WMA), the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and the WAV audio formats. There are some digital media players that also support open-source audio formats such as Ogg Vorbis and Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC).

Digital media players can display images that are in JPEG format. Other formats such as GIF, PNG, and TIFF are also supported by some digital media players such as the Apple iPod. If you want to view images in different formats, there is conversion software available.

Recently launched digital media players are generally compatible with the MPEG-4 video format, the Windows Media Video (WMV) format, the DivX video format and the Xvid format. Most digital media players are equipped with device drivers that need to be installed for transferring files between your computer and the player itself.

PMPs use hard disks with storage capacities of up to 250GB or flash memory storage of up to 32GB. For transferring data from external devices, digital media players may use additional memory card slots. Buttons or touch screen interfaces are used to navigate around a PMP device. Touch screens are increasingly common on digital media players.