However, it is important to understand, the PortalPlayer and Samsung chips have dedicated circuitry for decoding music from WMA, MP3, and AAC. Without this, the battery life would drop. They also now days have video accelleration as well for MPEG video standards. Intel doesn't have this in Xscale, xscale is too generic.
Actually, if you look, xscale isn't a product.
They have several different lines of products, some being IO processors, others being for handhelds, with different subsets of functions and features.
I do not beleive they have a embedded cpu for media players; they have handheld computer cpu's, but those are obviously aimed at a different use, have more features, worse battery life for audio-only apps, and of course, a much higher price point than a dedicated media player would.
In the end, PP/Samsung remain the best option.
On the other hand, don't forget the XScale "product line" has been used by apple before, for example, the network io processor is in the xserve RAID. Apple picks the best tool for the design. I give them credit for this; alot of companies like to use a single product and cookie cutter it into everything for ease-of-design...... that typically doesn't ever fit the needs of each individual market itself, and results in a poor product.
