Portable media centers are on the way. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Amazon.com has started taking orders online…for the next generation of handheld digital players. Windows mobile based portable media centers will not only let you carry your entire digital music collection around…they'll also store and play TV shows…movies…home videos and photos. The first models are from Creative Labs and Samsung….where marketing manager Mark Farish says…while there have been digital video players available from RCA and Archos…

"From our perspective, the strategic alliance that we have with Microsoft takes this, I think, to the next generation in that one of the most important pieces of players like this is having available content to play. And working with Microsoft and their upcoming portable media center, that will allow consumers to access the content."

Major League Baseball, for instance…is hoping to sell subscriptions to video content…to fans. Samsung looks to have the most winning design…

"We wanted to differentiate ourselves from some of the other designs out there. And the feedback we had from this design was that it sort of touched the consumers in a way that it was something they were used to seeing ..similar to that you would see with a wide screen TV display."

You'll need pretty deep pockets…about five hundred dollars to buy a portable media center…and large pockets. You'll also need either a media center PC….or a computer with a TV tuner card to be able to record shows to transfer onto the portable device. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.