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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.
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.
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)"?
It can get better. I have the 6000 jukebox and found that a 30 gig drive fits quite nicely in it and works as well as the 6 gig it comes with, and at $150 it makes a nice upgrade and only drops battery life by about an hour. Using the Monster 1800 ma NIMs corects that quickly as the bats it comes with are only 1500 ma NIMs. They also have 48 gig drives that are the same size over on pricewatch.com, havent tried one of those in my jukebox, but I bet it would be real nice in this player.
Question reality.
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.