Jeffrey McManus

Link: WSJ.com – Disney Courts ‘Tweens With Video, Music Player.

Priced at $99, the Mix Max is set to hit stores in late October, say Disney officials. The device has a 2.2-inch color screen and comes with enough memory to hold six hours of video or about 240 songs. Disney hopes to court kids and parents by keeping the price well below what it would cost to buy a video iPod.

While it is possible to download music and videos from sites such as Yahoo and Napster onto the device, Disney also will sell in stores its own movies on postage-stamp-sized memory cards that can be inserted in the Mix Max.

In one significant departure from the recent industry norm, the Mix Max technology is open to anyone who might want to create content for it. "There’s nothing tying it to Disney," says Chris Heatherly, global vice president of Disney global electronics. "We intentionally left the platform open because we knew kids would want other video material."

Very smart — this price point and the fact that the system is open will make this a no-brainer purchase for our little video-watcher this December.