Hasta La Gadget!

Panasonic’s new little black plastic box is a pocket media server which will stream video and music direct to your iPhone or iPad, or other compatible device via Wi-Fi. But given its high price and limited functionality, it’s hard to see who will buy it.

The DY-PS10 is little more than box with a li-ion battery (ten hours life), an 802.11b/g router and an SD card slot. You pop in a card loaded up with media (Panasonic’s DIGA DVD players will rip copies direct to the right format and copy them to the card) and you can then stream to your iDevice. And that’s it. The box — launching first in Japan — will cost ¥11,800, or $154.

Why would you buy this? You have to convert movies anyway, so you may as well convert them and just copy them straight to your iPad. Not enough space? Then you should have taken that $150 and put it towards a larger capacity iDevice.

Perhaps it’s useful for viewing a movie you just shot with your Panasonic camera? You could just pop the memory card into this box and stream the movie to your big-screen tablet. Except that you could pop the card directly into the iPad using the $30 camera connection kit.

Or you could buy a MiFi personal hotspot, which has all of the above features (including a card slot) plus a 3G modem. This little box really seems to be a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

The DY-PS10 launches in Japan on September 15th.

DY-PS10 product page [Panasonic via Slashgear]

See Also:

• Western Digital's TV Live Hub Is the Anti-Apple TV
• iPad Buzz Player Streams and Converts Movies From Network Storage …