If both devices were just a screen with a plastic encasing, you would be right.

Chumby has components like the WiFi adapter, USB ports, on-board memory, ram, a good processor, which the DVD player doesn't. I assume that chumby has higher quality parts than the DVD player. Also, the device includes access to the online chumby service so that you can upload widgets to your chumby.

$150 is a bargain if you ask me, but it'll probably end up costing $200+ Canadian .

Have you priced out a 7in screen vs 3.5in? I have never been about to figure out how they are getting 7in screens into those DVD players so cheaply.  3.5in is difficult for anyone with any kind of vision problems (like needing glasses) to read.

Yes, moving parts for the DVD player significantly add to the price. But as joegrand said, volume is also a factor. There is more of a market right now for DVD players than there are for chumbies (or chumbys?). More DVD players are produced, so DVD players are cheaper to produce. I thought DVD players at the <$100 price point used double-As, but I guess I am wrong. A rechargable battery would add to the price. Also, I believe the chumby does have a chip to decode MPEG video.

Chumby plays neither, it doesn't have the power to play video without using its specialized MPEG logic, and they've already said they won't commit the code for that logic to optimize video playback simply because they're not sure if they're going to go with the Freescale MX21 chip or not. If they change chips (and already had all of the code for the MPEG unit), they'd have to completely rewrite that section of the Flash Lite code, which would be a royal pain in the bottom.

In fact, the iPod Video plays video with an even slower chip than Chumby's got (~80MHz with a variable clock for battery savings), but with a very complex MPEG unit onboard. But if it had to run the video completely in software it would choke and sputter and most likely crash.

In my experiences with touch screens they have been of dubios value and reliability. It is much cheaper to make some softkey buttons along the sides of the screen.

The Freescale MX21 processor that we're using DOES have an internal hardware module for MPEG4 video decoding. We just haven't implemented it. However, this module also affects the overall price of the MX21, as Freescale has to pay licensing fees, even if we don't implement it.

We've always said that if we can find someone to build the hardware at a cheaper price, we'd likely just use them. The beauty lies in the chumby service, not necessarily the hardware. On the other hand, we want to make the hardware hackable and accessible to support the hacking community who might not want to sign up for the service.

Joe

If you got a chumby at FOO camp, you also received a CD with the source for the kernel and everything you need to build it.

Otherwise, you'll need to enter a service request on the Support/Service page, provide your chumbyID and send it in to be reflashed or replaced.

and to the price:

I personaly prefer a realy good 3,5inch LCD versus a low quality 7inch LCD.

Most portable DVD-players have crappy screen and building quality. If you want to have a good one you have to pay good money.

see the sony D-VM1 DVD-Player that went on sale for more than 1000 Dollar and it just had a 3,5inch LCD (that you could wear about your wrist). Awesome

And 150 Dollar for a gadget like this is a realy realy fair price! I owned a PSS110 from Philips acts as my MP3-Alarmclock in my bedroom and that thing costs 130 Dollar, too. No color LCD but nice big speakers and my own tunes in the morning.

So don't blame the chumby-team; just do marketing at family and friends so that the chumby-team HAVE to produce more units as the demand becomes higher.

And finally you possibly could get it cheaper than 150 ...

Why $150? because it provides the assurance

Because it is fun and interesting to see what people were thinking/saying in 2006.

And maybe we're hoping for a sale!

You should read all of the old "zlnetworks" posts - they're quite funny.  Do a search.

Unfortunately, many of the links to the alleged screenshots of Windows running on the chumby where he claimed he replaced the CPU with a "AMD athlon turion" are no longer available.

I think this one is my favorite zlnetworks thread, although this one is a close second.

I should note that these threads date to just a few days after we'd passed out about 200 alpha prototypes at Foo camp - it was not possible to buy a chumby.