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5.5 oz. MPEG-4/Audio Portable From Archos
An anonymous reader writes "Several manufacturers produce hard drive-based MPEG-4 portables now, but to date they are all big and heavy devices weighing in at around 3/4 of a pound. Archos just announced the Gmini 400, a 20GB video/audio player that comes in at the iPod's dimensions and light 5.6 ounces. Presently shipping, I guess they are ready now for the iPod Video in case that player ever becomes more that a /. myth."
Never send rotating machinery to do an IC's job.
Lots of people say "why would I ever need to watch movies". Fair enough, but the new player takes away the biggest reason *not* to have a video player. Not everyone will go for it, but there will now be a lot more people who'll say "why not have video as well, if the form factor is the same".
People might not think they would use video, but they'd be surprised if they actually had the opportunity, as I do on my Treo. When you can't be bothered reading on a crowded train, or you've got to wait somewhere a few minutes, nothing beats pulling a Simpsons episode out of your pocket. And you're not going to bring a player especially for that, but if it's already there anyway (because you carry your music everywhere), you'll use it.
With the onset of countless online music stores, Is it only a matter of time now before we can download feature legnth divx movies to these players? I hope so!
:).
Maybe, maybe not. I get the feeling that once bandwidth speeds up to the point where downloading movies becomes trivial like downloading music is, it'll still be a far smaller number of people who'll sit & watch a full length movie on a device like this, compared to those who'll listen to music. Of course, I could be wrong, and there's no reason to think a smaller market than MP3 players can't be profitable
I wonder if the technicalities of the device may influence the movies to be played on it. If a 2" diagonal screen looks OK at 160x90 pixels, it may make for a smaller & cheaper movie download
Not that it's really comparable, but my roommate has had that bigger Archos player that's been out for a while (I forget the model number) since around when it released... it gets used every day, has been dropped a couple times, still works fine (she even takes pictures with it from time to time).
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
my cellphone (se p900) has a bigger screen than this thing and thats right now
do these other industrial designers even take note of Apples attention to athestics ? are they blind or just stupid ? and yet the wonder why their devices fail (in terms of consumer acceptance) people dont read specs/features first, it has to be good looking enough for them to pick it off the shelf in the first place before even reading what it does, its like Palm , constantly making clunky devices and wonder why the
oh and does it do Xvid ?
Another reason the iPod does so well is that it is a brand name product and some people will pay whatever it costs to have all brand name products.
IOW, a lot of people have an ipod not for what it does, but for what its named.
Over in the dpreview.com Storage forum, there have been a number of frustrated users of the Archos 220, which for some users has a high degree of file corruption, ruining quite a few pictures. Given photographers uses these devices to backup their media so they can erase it and continue on, it is fairly serious if these devices routinely corrupt files.
Now Arhos may have fixed the problem in the new version, and they may not have. I suspect I would wait on the sidelines until other people try it out, given the previous history.
I'm on my 3rd personal storage unit for photos, and I really like the CompactDrive PD6A that I got (previously I used the Image Bank and x-drive II). All it does is save photos on a disk (no MP3, no video), but it does so quite fast.
is Rockbox, the open-source firmware for most of their devices, with features out the wazoo, assuming you're one the the lucky wazoo-bearers of the species.
Well, not quite (more like a Game Gear), but still, doesn't it just beg to be a portable gaming system?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Well more than an app. It's the CF slot and the adapter for SD,MS,MSpro,etc.
Imagine not having to trek back to the car to dump off pictures onto the laptop. You could even take it backpacking for several days with extra batteries. You've got a 20GB drive in you pocket that also plays tunes!
That kicks ass.