I have nothing against acronyms per se but it seems like the industry is going overboard with some of the new ones. It seems to have started off with the confusion between DVR, which should become a standard term for Digital Video Recorder, and PVR (for Personal Video Recorder) which doesn't really help to identify anything. I have seen this used to describe a TiVo-like device for the home AND a portable media player like the Archos & iRiver lot - the latter of which are probably more accurately referred to as Personal Video Players or PVPs.
Now I am seeing acronyms like PMP (for Personal or Portable Media Player - again vague) and DMP (for Digital Media Player)... what's next? At least let me get through the Memory Stick MagicGate Duo vs. mini/micro SD/MMC mess first!
What's most frustrating is that many different acromyms overlap. A DVR and PVR are essentially the same thing, but the iRiver is not a PVR. It's a PMP since it doesn't record (if it plays back video. Otherwise it's PAP).
Marketers of electronic devices love acronyms because it makes the product sound cool, and it confuses consumers. We're not just another protable media player, we're a digital media player! Digital is another term that marketers have gone nuts with.
Then, the confusion and crap that surrounds much of this is only compounded by retail staffs that support the bogus marketing... mostly because they know less than the consumer.
I'll give you a great example of acronym marketing, but I'm going to have to pick on Sony. I remember years back they marketed a feature on one of their large home bookshelf systems (you know, the kind that are way overdesigned). This particular model had feature called V.A.C.S. If you bothered to look up the definition in the Sony manual, you would have discovered that it stood for Variable Audio Control System... simply put, it means that the unit had a volume control.
It makes you wonder how many consumers bought it just because of how cool that acronym sounded?