iRiver America, maker of portable music players, has announced the release of a new hard drive based player, the iRiver iHP-120. The new player offers an extra long battery life (16 hours), a remote controller, a 20 GB hard drive, and the ability to encode MP3s without a PC. The product uses USB 2.0 over FireWire, but unlike most of the other MP3 player vendors who choose to go with USB 2.0, iRiver does include Mac support in the iHP-120. From iRiver America:

iRiver, the emerging leader in digital entertainment, today added the sleek and feature-packed iRiver iHP-120 to its line of award-winning portable music players. The 20GB* iRiver iHP-120 stores over 600 hours** of digital music in MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG and ASF and works with PC or Mac computers.

Compared to leading competitors, the iRiver iHP-120 has double the battery life (16 hours), an FM tuner, backlit remote, built-in MP3 encoding, optical audio output, built-in voice recording and WMA support. The iRiver iHP-120 also gives customers the option of using familiar folder navigation to sort through files quickly and easily.

The iRiver iHP-120 features the unique ability to record, encode and store MP3s all in real-time direct from the unitis FM tuner, built-in microphone or optical input, giving users the ability to record MP3s on the fly from an array of sources.

The iRiver iHP-120 comes bundled with iRiver earphones, remote control with backlit LCD, carrying case, AC adapter, USB 2.0 cable, line in/out cable, microphone and the iRiver Music Manager CD.

iRiver iHP-120 features:

• Plays [up to] 600 hours of digital music
• Supports MP3, WMA, ASF, WAV and OGG files
• Ultra-fast USB 2.0 transfers
• Integrated FM tuner & voice recorder
• Simple music navigation on 8-line backlit LCD
• Real-time MP3 encoding (voice, FM, optical & analog - no PC required)
• Remote control with backlit display
• Store or transfer files of any type
• Rechargeable battery lasts up to 16 hours
• Optical input and output for high-quality audio
• Enhanced 3D audio

You can find more information on the iRiver iHP-120 at iRiveris Web site. The unit is priced at US$399.99.