Digital Foci on Tuesday announced that it will introduce its new Picture Porter Elite portable photo album during the 2006 Photo Marketing Association (PMA) trade show, which starts Feb. 26 in Orlando. The device comes in 40GB and 80GB capacities and features a 3.6-inch color LCD as well as support for all the popular memory card formats.

Picture Porter Elite lets users rotate, zoom and pan photos, as well as play slideshows and view EXIF information. The device can also be connected to a TV, and it supports the PictBridge standard, so it can print directly to any compatible printer.

In addition, Picture Porter Elite plays music files and can record and play back video in MPEG-4 format. It also works as a mass storage device when connected to a computer via its USB 2.0 port.

The device supports the CompactFlash I and II, MD, MMC, SD, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro storage card formats. With an adapter, it can also accommodate xD-Picture card, miniSD, RS-MMC, Memory Stick Duo and Memory Stick Pro Duo. It supports the JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF and RAW image formats as well as the MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV music standards and the MPEG-1, MPEG-4, Divx 5.x, WMV and MJPEG video formats.

Digital Foci will ship Picture Porter Elite in May, with pricing set at US$499 for the 40GB version and $599 for the 80GB model. The device comes with a USB 2.0 cable, video and audio cables, earphones, an AC adapter, a remote control and a Lithium Ion battery that provides up to four hours of video and up to 10 hours of music.

Picture Porter Elite also comes with Ulead Video Toolbox 2 for video editing and conversion as well as Ulead Photo Explorer 8.5 SE for photo management, but Digital Fociis Web site does not specify if the software runs on the Mac. The device itself requires Mac OS X v10.01 or higher.

The Picture Porter Elite