In the interest of some fairness and balance (this is all-Branson-all-the-time, not just the-Branson-PR-aggregator), I should note that not all reviews of the new Virgin Player have been positive. Shiny Plastic writes: "It doesn’t look like anything special, too much un-shiny plastic, the navigation isn’t very good, and at the end of the day to my eyes it’s just not sexy in the way that the iPod mini is."

Forbes has the story about the new iPod competitor from our favorite global consortium.

The consumer electronics arm of the Virgin Group is introducing a new 5-gigabyte hard-disk portable music player, bringing a powerful brand name in music to the increasingly crowded product space…

The Virgin Player has 20 percent more storage capacity than the iPod Mini. It is slightly larger but is a half-ounce lighter at 3.1 ounces. Virgin claims it has eight hours of continuous playback time on its rechargeable lithium ion battery - the same as the iPod Mini.

The player will be available for $249 at the end of October.

Interesting timing— I already have a regular iPod but was looking for something else today, both for an FM tuner and also because my iPod has been incredibly flaky of late. It locked up completely yesterday just playing regular MP3s (though admittedly large 300MB+ audiobook files). Looks like Sir Richard will get another $249 from me soon.