On Monday night, I dropped by the Toshiba in Your Life event at the Essex House in New York. There were several rooms set up with just about every Toshiba home entertainment product you could dream of, but the crowd was gathered around the new Gigabeat. CNET has a review of the Gigabeat, and gives the portable music/video player its "Editor's Choice" brand. Just about every technology blog and magazine has bandied about the term "iPod killer" over the past couple of years, so I every time I hear it I'm automatically skeptical. I must say, though, the Gigabeat lived up to expectations when I finally got my hands on one.

The unit itself is very well-designed, the controls are intuitive and the screen displays a rich picture. The Gigabeat is available in 30GB ($299 retail) and 60GB ($399 retail) configurations. It will play just about any audio or video file (Anything but Apple DRM'd files, obviously) and display digital photos. Toshiba has made a few key partnerships to usher the Gigabeat into mainstream consciousness. Rhapsody, Napster and eMusic have deals with Toshiba to get their music content onto the Gigabeat and Starz Entertainment announced earlier this week a deal between Vongo and Toshiba to make the Gigabeat the first portable player compatible with the subscription movie service.

There are a few things to note here, especially if you happen to be a company bringing a content-driven product to market. Toshiba did things in the right order here. Before a wide release of the product, it made sure content would be available to play on it. Is the Gigabeat truly an "iPod killer?" My gut says no. The iPod has such a stranglehold on the market that I don't think anything is going to bring it down. However, if Steve Jobs presses enough buttons in Hollywood, and iTunes doesn't get the rights to distribute movies, there will be a small crease. Toshiba just might be able to sneak into that crease. Of course, Microsoft is exploiting this space as well, but Toshiba has beaten it to market with a quality product. Only time will tell. — Brian Ward

Technorati tags: gadgets, gigabeat, ipod.