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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."
Question for me is, are the different mpeg4 formats similiar enough that I can play my DiVX 3 and DiVX4 anime fansubs on it?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
The major problem with products like these is the battery life is going to suck royally. My iPaq uses a high end Lithium Polymer battery, and I still only get about 8 hours of battery life... and that's not even doing something too intensive like playing mp3s or watching movies.
Can you imagine the processor needed to decode mpeg4 on the fly? Can you imagine the processor needed to RECORD mpeg4 on the fly? Can you imagine how long this processor will run on 4 Rechargable NiMH AA batteries?
Ick.
While the article claims the device will fit in a pocket, the odly shaped modules sure wouldn't. And at 12+ ounces already, it becomes an ungainly, low resolution digital camera...
...or a digital video camera with a _very_ long recording time. Somebody mentioned in a previous article how nice it would be to attach a 40 gig ieee1394 drive directly to a camera for hours of digital footage. 10gigs is certainly a step in the right direction, it just looks strange.
****IT SLICES IT DICES IT MAKES MPEG4 - your fully buzzword compliant device!****
I'm sure that the the features of this new model will attract many, but I'll personally stay away: I've had three bad experiences with Archos products.
I purchased an Archos 6000 MP3 player from ThinkGeek about two months ago, and it arrived DOA. It simply would not turn on. I got my money back (TG was excellent as far as service is concerned, by the way), and used it to purchase an Archos HD-MP3 from a retailer in New York (who offered the better model at approximately the same price). I figured that the first time was probably a fluke, and besides - the better model offered the ability to record MP3's, something I could definitely use to for live music recording.
Two more returns later, and I'm still waiting for my fourth Archos MP3 player. My experiences may be the exception to the rule, but I'd be wary of something like this until reliability figures come out.
Perhaps its just that geeks prefer to hack things apart more than hacking them together?
If you took even the briefest moment to visit the site before trying to get 'fp props' or something, you would have been able to read that the unit has a 10 hour playback on one charge.
It's not clear what this was 10 hours of playing, eg, is it the same for video versus music?
for some reason it lists the specs for the Archos Jukebox at the bottom, not the Archos Jukebox Multimedia
I mean:
"Capacity: 6GB Low Voltage Hard Drive "?
"Display: Graphic Backlit LCD (Up to 8 lines of characters)"?
Players getting more and more complex
More portable desktops (LCD iMac)
It ought to be rather interesting when these 2 trends run into each other.... the digital home appliance, maybe?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
As i was reading the article, i thought the item was a fake (all those badly rendered images), so i went to archos's site and here is the official page on the device. however, it still sounds like vapor to me.
I have personally had miserable experiences with the Archos MP3 recorder. I am still awaiting shipment of my #4, after a poor history.
I purchased directly from Archos.
#1: Charging Jack on the unit was loose and finally shorted completely. Took Archos a month to get on the ball and issue an RMA.
#2: Badly beaten refurb was sent out. HD errors out the wazoo, caused a bus storm if hooked to the computer.
#3: Slightly bruised refurb. Played for 5 minutes (exactly) and locked up. Every time.
Aside from the poor reliability, the jukeboxes have problems with large directories, playlists, etc. The random function can only be applied to one directory, and has a poor randomizing algorhythm.
Example: My daughter's christening, I filled a directory with 300 songs and put them on random. The jukebox would play one song and then choke on the directory while looking for the next random song to play.
Recording is VBR ONLY, and I often had trouble with recorded tracks playing back.
Archos will be toast if they ever get some real competition. But heck, that's what I said about Microsoft.
~Hammy
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