We are definitely excited to see some more products roll out from Cowon as the other brands have been rolling out and announcing their players for the holidays. The Cowon iAudio 9, or more commonly referred to as the Cowon i9, is the successor to the Cowon i6 and the flash version of the i6, the i7. I believe that the number 8 was skipped due to an eastern superstition. So we move right along to the new Cowon i9.

Not everything is known about this player, but from the splash page on Cowon's Korean site the player has all the great features of the Cowon family like killer support for all kinds of audio codecs and it looks like it is adding some nice support for video files too: AVI, WMV, XViD, and ASF. It also states that it supports TV-Out, which could possibly mean video playback without conversion. Additionally, it will add a built-in speaker in a tiny package (42mm x 95mm x 8.9 mm). This could make a lot of Cowon fans happy for a more compact version of the S9 they have been carrying around.

[Cowon via Journal du Geek]

I got an email from abi reader Reece saying “i couldnt be bothered sending my iAudio 7 to korea to repair, as i had broken the menu button off inside the player. i decided to give it a crack myself, and i fixed it fine.”. Massive props to Reece for taking matters into his own hands with a little bit DIY and many thanks to him for sharing his slide show of this endeavor.

If you need instructions on you probably shouldn’t be taking it apart. Cracking this bad boy open requires a small screw driver and a little bit of patience. If you forget how to put it back together perhaps these photos will help. Thanks again Reece!

The iAudio 7 review, if you missed it. Also in related news, just yesterday Rockbox dev Daniel posted a photo of the i7 with custom code running on its way to getting Rockboxed.

The iAudio A3 is Cowon's flagship PMP with a very thorough list of supported codecs in both music and video. The 800x480 16.7 million color screen is crisp and will do justice to your video collection. There is a lot of good going on with the A3, and it's probably the best PMP of its size on the market.

However, the A3 is still has plenty of issues. The user interface is weak (as is many of Cowon's interfaces), the firmware could use some work and the advertised 1280x720 HD playback is anything but refined. Again, the A3 is a great PMP, but read on for the caution areas.

It has not taken long for another DAP manufacturer to follow suit after the Creative Zen V Plus received a memory increased to 16GB. The iAudio 7 with a capacity of 16GB has been announced by Cowon.

Alongside the i7, new edition of the D2 (dubbed the D2 DMB) will feature 4GB and 8GB of internal storage, while expansion through SDHC cards can provide a further 8GB. The increase in storage space is not the only addition to the D2; it will also receive the ability to handle DMB content.

Several player and accessory packs are available for the South Korean market, but there is no dates and prices for other regions yet.

[Press Release]