Archos Releases Portable Video/Image/MP3 Player

GregGardner writes "Archos is about to release the AV300 series, the next generation of portable video/image/MP3 player based off of the Archos Jukebox Multimedia discussed on Slashdot previously. Features include a 3.8" LCD screen for viewing movies and photos, FM tuner, MP3 playing and recording, 20GB or 40GB HD models, USB2.0 (optional Firewire) connection, TV-out, MPEG-4 encoding from a video/audio-in signal, digital photo (3.3 megapixel) and video camera, and much more. Looks like some of the features require add-on modules. I found a brief review on SF Gate which states that the 20GB model (AV320) will retail for $570."

Comments

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds great, but what kind of resolution are we talking about here? I wouldn't want to see fuzzy, pixellated video writ large on my TV screen, whether it comes from my VCR or a tiny MP3 player

Uh huh...

[Malfourmed]

You can store up to 50 of your favorite movies and view them on the high resolution 3.8" color LCD...

Don't know about you but I don't want to see any of my favourite movies on a 3.8" screen.

Re:Uh huh...

[Artifex]

I don't want to look over on the train and see someone else enjoying his favorite pr0n. Praise $DEITY the screen is small enough that my chances of doing so are minimal.

Yes, but with a screen that small, he only needs one hand to hold it... I think you're more likely to see him "enjoying" it.

Not enough features!

[starlabs]

What, no cel phone?

Plus, I want a spellchecker with that.

To many add on's

[Anonymous Coward]

The main product it self seem to be just a hub for joining together add on components. Its not really an all in one as it can only do one thing at a time dependant on what componant is attached. It seem very much like a marketing scam to me, why not put all the componants in the main product instead of selling them as extras. Without the extras it doesn't seem to do much at all.

As your mother would say...

[Psychor]

Viewing Natalie Portman on a 3.8" screen makes you go blind!

Seriously, this sounds like a pretty cool gadget, but I'd like to see what kind of battery life this thing has, and it doesn't look to me like it'll stand up to being bashed around particularly well. The linked review didn't seem at all comprehensive however.

Re:As your mother would say...

[bad_fx]

Viewing Natalie Portman on a 3.8" screen makes you go blind!

Nope, that's caused by what you do while viewing Natalie Portman on a 3.8" screen...

MPEG4 Licensing

[ih8apple]

This article came out almost exactly a year ago and has an interesting quote regarding all the devices, including this one, that license MPEG4:

"The MPEG-4 compression has run into controversy regarding high licensing fees. So significant were the fees that Apple actually delayed the release of Quicktime 6 in protest. How this will all play out with users over time is not known yet, but unless this fee issue is addressed it may dampen adoption by users."

Also, the link above links to this article regarding the entire controversy. (It's kind of funny because the first article is dated before the second one, so obviously that article was modified to include the link after being first published without the date changing.)

I wonder if they've managed to knock down the price or if the license is a significant portion of the cost of the device?

...Used Laptop?

[TWX]

I can get a decent used laptop on eBay for less than the cost of the device, and I can also then do word processing, war driving, mild gaming, etc, and STILL do everything that this device can. Why should I buy it? Size? Size does matter, but cost matters more to me.

The IBM Thinkpad 240 series, the tiny sharps, the tiny Sonys, all available, of decent quality, and inexpensive.

Re:...Used Laptop?

[zwoelfk]

I would buy something like this (but not this one... not yet) for the same reason I own a portable DVD player. I spend over 20 hours a month in a plane and countless hours in trains, so I want something that is easy, small, light and has good battery life. A laptop does not cut it. I don't want to wait for it to boot and shutdown. Even the smallest laptop is much heavier than my DVD player. And I have easily 8 hours of battery life.
I also have a PDA, 'cause it's much more convinient to pull it out, tap the screen a few times, get the map or note I need and throw it back in my pocket than a laptop would be.
There is a market for these. But I understand that you'd rather have an all-in-one device for a lower cost. So would I - If it was easy, small, light and had a good battery life.

Z.

because you're the only person using ogg vorbis

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Ogg Vorbis is a niche format. It may be technically superior, but so was betamax. It's all about whether or not it gets player support. If it doesn't, all the superiority in the world won't save it.

You may want to keep this in mind while you're busily converting all your CDs.

Re:Ogg Vorbis support!

[Pieroxy]

I'm wondering if when Ogg version 2 will be released you'll convert all your CDs into this new format or if you'll keep them on your "very old and bad" Ogg V1 format.

Industry needs to settle itself on a media, and MP3 seems to be acceptable. In 5 years, we'll have 5TB HDDs in these little devices and my 256kb MP3 collection will fit just fine into 5% of it.
And we'll also have Ogg V6 which will oblige yourself to re-encode for the 6th time all of your CDs (Or you'll be blamed to be such a retard for using OggV5)

My point being, who knows if there is a need for Ogg support on these things? Certainly not a commercial need...

if screen is bigger...

[u19925]

now if they add 10" or bigger screen, wouldn't it be called PC?

How about a PC with 3.8" screen, without CD/DVD, very few ports..? It should be possible to manufacture one much cheaper than USD 570 (the list price for 20 GB).

It is a cool device but at that price point, it will compete with sub-notebook PC and people will compare with it. Other than small size and touch sensitive screen, it has nothing extra but has lot less than PC.

Reverse convergence?

[Nexum]

Hmm... so I can spend around $550 on this thing, which, with all the extras is much mre likely to be around $700.

OR

I can spend a little more and get a nice iBook [or insert your favourite budget notebook here] which is a thousand times more capable.

I don't think the features vs price really pays off to be honest. Things like the iPod/MP3 players work because they offer an awful lot your PC can't (portability, battery life, simplicity, PRICE).

This device would be a pain in the ass to look at for 20 mins let alone an entire movie! The battery life isn't all that great, the HDD space is only acceptable - nothing stellar, and the cost is really pretty damn high.

Can you see Joe Public or your boss ripping and encoding his own DiVX's from his DVD'a? I can't... I love DiVX but I'm a geek, this just doesn't seem to appeal to the masses.

I think these guys are afraid that the iPod got a jump on them in the MP3 arena, and now they're trying to enter/create a product a couple of years before the stability and market is there to support it ut of fear from being left behind again.

-Nex

Price ??

[frodo from middle ea]

Well I was so looking forward to buying this thing.
When i first read about it in Wired , It said, it would retail about 350-375 $. But 570$ give me a break.
Plus add another 70-80 bucks for firewire cable and 50-70 bucks for the compact flash adapter. Thats too much price to pay.
Besides archos JBM 20 had some serious design flaws like plastic buttons etc. And archos is not exactly known for after sales service.

Will be ignored until Apple does it

[harlows_monkeys]

This will go nowhere until Apple does something like this, and then everyone will say Apple has innovated yet again.

Re:Will be ignored until Apple does it

[jridley]

If true, that'll be because Apple will build it right. A friend at work has an Archos multimedia player (the forerunner to this model). It broke in normal use in a few days, and though they got him a replacement, their service was HORRIBLE, and the thing feels like a cheap wad of plastic. I've held $10 kid's toys that felt less likely to break. No FSCKIN' WAY am I going to give these yahoos that kind of money for the kind of stuff they've cranked out in the past, given their service history.

If Apple builds one, it'll look great, work great, sound great, and shit, it can't cost more than this, can it?

NOTE: I have never owned a SINGLE Apple product, been running PCs since my 286-16, but DAMN I'd love an iPod.

Re:Will be ignored until Apple does it

[joel8x]

Well, apparently Archos likes Apple a lot. Just look at the tag-line on their website: "Think Smaller". Sounds pretty familiar, don't you think?

This thing will not get the mainstream success that the iPod is now seeing because its just too expensive and it does too much. As crazy as that sounds, the majority of consumers wont shell out $570 for the bottom end model when they probably only want/need a couple of its many features. The video-out is great, but for a few hundred dollars more you can buy a much more useful iBook. So you are correct, this will only be a niche product until another company can organize and package it in a reasonably priced way that will appeal to a broader audience.

BTW, the definition of "innovate" is: To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time.

So, if Apple takes a poorly executed and unpopular idea and packages and markets it into a success (iTunes Music Store comes to mind), then yes, it is technically innovating since it is popularizing the product/service as if for the first time. The Beatles didn't invent Rock N' Roll, but they sure innovated.

Never again

[deanj]

I own one of their MP3 players. It worked briefly for me, and when it broke I was never able to get them to answer me, either via phone (no call back) or e-mail (and a lot of those).

I'll never buy a product from this company again.

Firmware problems

[MWoody]

Hmmm... This looks neat, but I wonder how well it'll work in action. I've got an Archos 20GB Recorder, and it kicks ass (looks cool, sturdy as hell, acts like a portable hard drive). However, when I first got it, I almost returned it due to it's horrible firmware (buggy, slow, unwieldy, hardly any useful features). I have only kept it - and grown to love it - thanks to open-source Rockbox firmware, which whips the llama's ass hardcore.

So, with the AV300, I worry whether or not we'll see a version of Rockbox or something similar, or whether the firmware that comes in box will be at least serviceable this time around. If not, at that price tag, this device will try and fail to compete with both the smaller laptops and the portable DVD players.

Re:Ogg Vorbis support!

[zurab]

The following may sound like a flamebait, but it's not. I am not making any statements to you in particular, or to anybody. I am just making a general observation.

I'm wondering if when Ogg version 2 will be released you'll convert all your CDs into this new format or if you'll keep them on your "very old and bad" Ogg V1 format.

What I am wondering instead is - when, in the future, MP3 replacement is spoonfed to you with the same or even harsher restrictions that MPEG-4 currently enjoys, will you simply bend over as usual, or will you demand and use something standard that works better and bears no cost to you, or anyone, to use in any way they please?

And we'll also have Ogg V6 which will oblige yourself to re-encode for the 6th time all of your CDs (Or you'll be blamed to be such a retard for using OggV5)

Actually, it is MP3 format that is fast reaching its end of lifecycle. Start off, it is inferior to other current formats, including Vorbis (which you call Ogg). It already has bunch of unclean "hacks" for variable bitrate support, as well as multiple ways and versions to store information about the audio - ID tags. Combining MP3 with another such patented "standard" - SBR - already led to a disaster - nobody actually uses it.

Vorbis, on the other hand, has a cleaner upgrade path; starting from that the encoding algorithm may be improved in the future AND remain backwards-compatible.

I'm not saying that Vorbis will rule the world, but discounting its capabilities is not looking at a full picture.

If History Is Any Indicator

[ihatewinXP]

Then Apple will wait and then deliver what we are really looking for in this package. Not to say that this AV Jukebox is a slack product, quite the contrary, its actually almost feature bloated. That and its size, weight (big weight, tiny screen),and cost are going to turn many off besdies early adopters.

I say Apple not only because the iPod was the answer to the original Jukebox but also the Knowlege Navigator (see: http://www.billzarchy.com/clips/clips_apple_nav.ht m ). Apple has had products like this in the skunkworks for a good while, but it seems after the Newton panned and Palm took over that Apple has switched to a "wait, see, and capitalize" approach (see also flagging tablet PC sales).

Re:Ogg Vorbis support!

[steveha]

Industry needs to settle itself on a media, and MP3 seems to be acceptable.

You are thinking small.

Why can't all the cool new devices support MP3 -- and Ogg Vorbis? Ogg is very close to free: no license fees for Ogg, free reference sources for Ogg decoders (including Tremor, the integer-math only decoder), a little bit more ROM space used on the device. There are already devices that decode both MP3 and Windows Media audio files.

If you had a small band, and you wanted to sell compressed songs online, which would you rather use: MP3, where you will have to pay a minimum of $2000 per year, or Ogg Vorbis, where you will have to pay a maximum of $0? (That small band may not have to pay anything this year since the MP3 licensing authority waives the royalty for "entities with an annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00." But they could change the rules at any time. They own MP3 and they can charge whatever they want.)

People had to choose between VHS and Betamax because it is not possible to make a device that can play both. (Well, you could, but it would be large and expensive so few would buy it.) Ogg Vorbis may become huge overnight, or it may be a niche product forever, but the costs of rolling it out are so small that it will happen.

steveha