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Archos Announces Portable Mediabox
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Archos has just announced the Jukebox Multimedia Portable Entertainment Center. Due this January, The unit is the same size and weight as the company's Jukebox 6000 MP3 portable, plays and records MPEG4 video, MP3 and WMA audio, has a color video screen built-in, and offers a FireWire interface as an option. What's most interesting about the player is an expansion connector that allows additional modules to be attached to the unit. One module lets the player take digital photographs and another allows the unit to record video from a TV. Neat concept that's more flexible than the Bokks AV component reported on Slashdot last week, but I think I would want more than the 10GB drive it uses for storage."
We've seen a lot of portable mp3 player announcements on slashdot, some of these totally undeserving of front page status. However, don't dismiss this article as another one: this is a different situation. The new Jukebox isn't an mp3 player, it's a replacement for a variety of gadgets and a major breakthrough in consumer technology. With MPEG4, MP3, WMA, a built in color screen, digital photos, TV input, and fast firewire the Jukebox 6000 is the all in one media solution-a camera, camcorder, TiVo, mp3 player, and portable storage device in one. No other device has ever attempted such an ambitious set of functionality, and this thing appears to pull it off. I can't wait to get my hands on one, this is clearly a revolution, and the wave of the future. Very definately "stuff that matters."