Archos Jukebox Multimedia Reviewed

An anonymous reader points to Richard Menta's review of the Archos Jukebox Multimedia (mentioned in this earlier Slashdot posting). Here's a snippet from the review: "Right now my wife and I are watching an old episode of a TV show no longer broadcast in our area or available tape. How are we watching it? We are playing it off of a 9oz. MP3 player -- where I have digitally stored the episode -- hooked up to the small TV in our room and inconspicuously placed on top."

Comments

finally

[Nihilanth]

This unit has been availible for a while, i'm glad to see it finally getting the attention it deserves. I got kinda sick of pulling out my archos at a party, only to be asked if it was an ipod. UGH! I've used two incarnations of the archos jukebox, most recently the video capable described in the article, but if that's a bit too expensive for you, there's a 20GB MP3 player made by archos for only around 240-250 (i originally got mine for 300ish with shipping, but that was a while ago), and a 10GB MP3 player/recorder for around the same price range (they even cary these at radioshack, if you want to play with one before paying for it).

The thought i'd like to leave you with is...buy one before they are outlawed! buy two! This may be the second-to-last, third-to-last, heck, maybe even last wave of these devices without DRM built in. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Tivo compatible?

[PDG]

This would nice with a interface to Tivo/ReplayTV so you could simply sync up the two together.

Re:CIF Resolution.

[sambo99]

I own an archos mm, and about a week ago I gave up on watching movies using the archos. It just involves way too many steps, and the quality is not perfect.

1. First you have to source the movie
2. Then you have to convert it to a divx avi. not any divx will do, it has to have the exact divx format supported by the ajmm. archos recommend using virtualdub. virtualdub does not remember your last settings so you have to reload the settings from a file.
3. occasionally you get audio syncage issues - to get a video right it may take a few encodes.
4. if the picture is too big it will not work
5. transferring a movie into the ajmm over usb 1 takes quite a while, I have still not got the usb 2.0 cable. and have not bothered chasing archos about it, yet.

So what do I do? If there is a movie I want to watch on my tv, I will drag it into nero and burn to vcd. works almost every time on my dvd player.

I use my ajmm to listen to music, sound quality is perfect, provided you throw the headphones archos bundles in the bin, and buy new ones.

I use my ajmm as a file taxi, if i need to take any large files to my friends place. the ajmm requires no driver installation under windows xp. that is fantastic.

I will be using my ajmm to download pictures from my sony memory stick while traveling. Have tested the whole process and it appears to be working (*the dsc-f707 has the option of saving a thumbnail with normal shots - watching large res pictures on the archos is painful cause rendering is too slow - so ill be using that option)

I love my ajmm, with all its quirks. and no other device out there can play mp3s perfectly and copy files from my memory stick directly.

Re:20gig?

[Cyno01]

for video 20gig does seem a bit small, i have an archos jukebox studio 20, i havn't bothered to find out whats in it, but its probably just a laptop drive (about the right size) and you can get laptop drives larger than 20gigs so why dont these things come in larger sizes?