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Detailed Review of the Archos AV420 PVR
ilovealpacas writes "The Globe and Mail has posted a step by step look at the Archos AV420. For about $1000 Canadian (I think that's $800 US), you get an 80GB portable video player and recorder that also plays MP3's and has a CF slot for pictures. Hmmm.....laptop?"
Yes, but does it run linux?
Yepp, everything will become a PC.
Aren't laptops cheaper than that, though?
I mean, even an iBook works out less.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
when will they stop making all this specialized crap and just make better software and hardware based on laptops or PDA's to do the same thing why reverse engineer things
This definitely brings up the question of what overkill is. I think I may enjoy something like this, but at the same time, how much would I really use it for anything other than audio and maybe a little video.
For me it would probably end up as little more than an 80 GB mp3 player with a lot of extra hard drive storage space.
Does anybody out there think this would be better than a laptop? The only place I can see using this for movies or pictures would be on vacation or business trips where a laptop would be more practical.
what?
[curmudgeonly sneer] You bums need to read books instead of wasting yer money on these fancy schmantzy doo-dads. What? Too afraid to talk to the guy sitting next to you on the airplane?
Why, when I was a youngster...cough cough KACCCCCHHH...phtt.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Personally, I will never buy another piece of equipment made by Archos. I had to take apart one of their Jukebox Recorders to try and get it to function at all. I discovered that the 4 circuit boards inside (which pretty much make up the entirety of the interior, and what the outer casing attaches to) are all held together with solder joints. As in they have attached the circuit boards to each other using solder. In addition, the battery contacts are on circuit boards at either end of the main boards. So when you put the batteries in, the pressure of the springs puts stress on the solder joints that hold the thing together.
Needless to say, I was not able to revive this piece of crap.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
It couldn't have been that much of a stretch to add a DVD player could it? I'm sure all the other features are great, but when I think of mobile entertainment, DVD is 1st on the list. Ahh well I can't afford it anyway, so it's back to work.
I have an AV320 that I got from some consulting I did a while back (because he couldn't pay me in cash, har har har) and I absolutely love mine.
;-)
It's powered by embedded Linux (which I love) and it works like a dream. There have been many an airplane ride that was made easier because of my AV320
My biggest problem with mine (could not apply to this version) was that the screen wasn't well protected. A simple $8 camera carrying case and a pack of Palm screen protectors and this problem was solved.
If one can get a 2.4 Ghz laptop for $889, then is this thing overpriced?
... and you can't timeshift live TV. Hardly a PVR. This thing needs some serious refinement for it to be the primary device in my home theater (or "theatre" in Cannuckistan ;-) ).
-Randy
FTFA: And unlike most laptops, it boots up in a few seconds making it easy to use at any time.
But didnt I just read a story on Slashdot a while back about a laptop with an embedded linux distro which would boot the laptop in seconds for multimedia use? Imagine one of these in the 12" slim form factor with a tablet display and you've got an only slightly larger PVR which doubles as a laptop and looks oh so nifty you just know they'll all be using them in the 24th century.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Personally my ultra-portable versitile media player of choice is the Sony X505 laptop.
y /eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_BrowseCatalog-Start;sid=Vla fJk-jSK-fdQ7Bp2GVLQCvoObgPGmU4_s=?CategoryName=cpu _VAIONotebookComputers_X505_Series&Dept=cpu_VAIONo tebookComputers
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinit
So hot.
I don't get the point of these portable DVD players... most of the time, they're the price (or cost more!) than a laptop that you could use to do MORE than listen to video... Anyway, I don't even see a purpose for them. To listen to videos... in your car? Maybe? Someone care to explain?
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
The article description might be a little deceptive.
The Archos AV420 is only 20GB and it retails for about $470 on Amazon.com.
The AV480 is 80GB and is about $715 also from Amazon.com
Check out more information on the devices on Archo's own page located here.
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
Hmmm.....laptop?
Maybe you're not familiar with how this works. You submit the story, we make the jokes.
You owe someone a +5 Funny.
--
it's all part of the new Slashdot Comment subsidy program.
I have an iRiver IHP-120 which I love, and have with me virtually everywhere, and beat the hell out of just by daily use. The cost of this Archos would make me leave it inside rather that drop it in my pocket and hop on the tractor (yes there are some of us rural type geeks :) I'd be too afraid to crack the screen, or otherwise break it.
So you're left with a movie player. An $800 portable movie player. WHY? As others have said you can grab a decent laptop for less than that, or even a $200, 3 year old laptop off of ebay will do everything device does. Sure it's not as cute or pretty, but seriously...
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
So far as I can tell, this device is like a miniature TiVo with a screen + iPod + portable hard drive.
I mean, yeah, the features are nice and all, but who needs a portable device to record TV programs? It would seem more useful if perhaps it also played DVDs or something like that.
Maybe it's just me, but it feels like a lot of these devices are simply trying to repackage existing technology just because it can be done, not because it makes sense. I can think of plenty of things I'd rather do with my $1000...
If you have to carry a notebook anyway with sufficient battery life, by all means - take that instead, but given a choice, i'd rather carry a 10oz device that works vs a 8 lbs device that runs microsoft.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Lastly, the folks at Archos saw it fit to just let the AV420 be recognized as a hard drive. As in all other functions, files can be moved, renamed or deleted right on the device. Just plug it in via USB 2.0 and just drag and drop any files to your heart's content. If you prefer to synchronize your tunes, you can always use the included Musicmatch software.
This is where they got it right, whether a PVR is in the stars for you or not everyone should adopt this practice (that means you apple!). There is nothing more upsetting than getting a device that only wants to talk to its software for importing files. My old iPaq PocketPC would annoy the hell out of me because I couldn't just plug it in to any USB port on any computer and get files to/from it. At least the iPod lets you get at the "other" files stored on the HDD without iTunes or other synch software.
Or am I just crazy? Should we all just install Music Match and Real One so we can get files off our USB flashpenthumb drives with stickers on them?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
I had one of the 20 gb Jukeboxes and it was very reliable. An associate has one of their video players and enjoys it.
Four-digit slashdot ID. Recognize.
"does not allow for it to stand up on it's own"
Now, major publications are letting mistakes like this slide into their text. I mourn.
Bob's Quick Guide to Its and It's, You Idiots
Karma: Chameleon (Mostly affected by the 1980s)
I bought a gMini400 from Archos to primarily watch movies/shows on long commutes. I'm on a train/bus/plane. I'm not the one driving. Why not enjoy myself?
As for the pure "geek" factor: you can get a 20 GB iPod for $300. For $60 more (if you shop around) you can get the same hard drive space with the ability to play DivX movies, read from compact flash and get roughly the same battery life (the gMini is rated for 10 hours playing MP3s). Why *wouldn't* a geek get one over an iPod? The only reason I can see for iPod left is UI (I transferred all my iTunes music to MP3).
Today's Daily Wireless has piece about a chip that can be added to a lop top to give it decent video [I am assuming playback not capture] capability.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
A beowolf cluster of these?!
That would be like Elvis, watching a lot of televisions.
I had -- yes had -- an Archos FM Recorder.
A decent use of off the shelf components, but the actual unit quality was abysmal -- I and many others found that the unit broke down quickly with merely normal use.
And the software -- the device's OS sucked. For the recorder, a much better alternative existed in the Rockbox replacement software, but not only did Archos never support this volunteer effort that probably saved their product line, their new revenue model includes selling "keys" to activate various closed-source extentions of their software. In other words, proprietary lock-in where you get to pay again and again, to use features that should have been included when you bought the device. And so no open source replacemnt.
So my advice is to stay away from this, and get yourself a mini-laptop.
While there's damned little software for them, I'd recommend Sharp's products: my Zaurus I've dropped on bare wooden floors dozens of times, and the worst that's happened is the keyboard shield came off -- and it took me two minutes to hook that back on. When I've dropped it, the running software kept running without a hitch -- even when I was using xmms to play mp3s.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
This is not a laptop any more than an iPod is a PDA.
It's all about the UI. You turn it on and it plays movies. You don't log in or wait for stuff to boot, etc.
Also, most laptops don't have 80 gig drives, and are quite frankly not designed to watch movies or listen to music. The speakers and displays suck for such tasks. I have a little portable DVD player, and it's 7 inch screen is easier to see from a distance or angle than my laptop's.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It will run Qtopia to be exact. . . They say it will be out before christmas and will have all PDA functions in addition to a hard drive and audio/video functions. It should be a nifty gadget if it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
From http://22surf.org/zurich.html & http://22surfboard.com
Surf's up and the LAMP developer community is ready to rock out--they just need a surfboard to surf Moore's Law, Metcalfe's Law, and Constitutional Law on home. As soon as somebody manufactures handhelds and media-servers that can readily run common Linux and LAMP (Linux/Apache/MYSQL/PHP) applications like postnuke and phpnuke, the floodgates of innovation will open. The technology is there. Move over iPodTM, TiVoTM, iPaqTM, and MicrosoftTM. Open-source CMS and DRM will power tomorrow's content marketplaces, handhelds, computers, and media-servers, as artist-hackers create the open-source hardware, software, and standards for all-in-one media devices, record labels, media marketplaces, and modeling agencies. In fact, if your company is building a 22surfboard or some other open-source-based device, send it along and perhaps we can hack a free marketing campaign for it. Any company who's building open-source devices is doing us all a big favor, so we'd be glad to help out!
The technology for ventures centered upon open-source CMS & DRM is all there as outlined at authena.org--RDF/RSS for rights definitions; http and REST web services for content transfer, rights negotiation, and syndication; SSL, PGP, Media-S, and OPENIPMP for encryption and security; bit torrent for accelerated downloads, and LAMP applications such as postnuke, phpnuke, xoops, oscommerce, and netjuke for media browsing, buying, serving, and viewing. Surf's up, but there's nothing to surf it with.
A 22surfboard will be an all-in-one handheld device that holds books, movies, and more. It will readily run standard Linux distros, including RedHat, Suse, and Gentoo. Designed with the Linux-Apache-MYSQL-PHP (LAMP) developer community in mind, it will inherit the vast power of the sourceforge LAMP community who are hungry for a true Linux handheld/media-device to hack.
At 22surfer we think it'd rock for hardware and software businesses, lawyers, MBAs, to think like artist-hackers. We need designers to design the 22surfboard. We need lawyers to pen the open-source patents and claims. We need MBAs to come up with cool marketing campaigns. And the hacker-community will make it the most powerful device on the market. Become a 22surfer! There's room for artist-hackers, lawyers, MBAs, programming gods, UI designers, drummers, and more! Heck, we could even use some architects to design the 22surfshacks.
The 22surfboard vs. The Prior Art: The Problems with Proprietary CMS & DRM Illustrated: The iPod(TM) & TiVo(TM) & HP & Zaurus & How to Do It Better--Manufacture Handhelds for the LAMP Developer Community.
To date there exists no personal media player nor home media server that runs on truly open standards. As soon as an open device comes to market, its adoption by the hacker community will be rapid, giving it vast power and functionality. As Moore's law marches on, personal and home media players, computers and cell phones, are destined tobecome one and the same. A hardware company manufacturing an open-source device such as the 22surfboard stands to beat Microsoft and Apple in both price and functionality. The off-the-shelf components will be inexpensive, and the vast power of the Sourceforge hackers will give the device unparalleled functionality, without costing the device manufacturer.
The prior-art shows countless examples of devices which were never truly open and thus ultimately failed to gain the essential widespead use throughout the hacker community. All too often we have seen companies brand themselves "open source" for some hype on slashdot, only to require NDAs and travel on down the proprietary route. Very few, if any, of these companies have succeeded.
HP & ZAURUS(TM): "Last month, I touched a little bit on HP's screwed up Linux PDA initiative, but perhaps I was a bit too harsh. Sure, they have a research arm that's completely underutilized and they have absolutely no clue as how to turn those efforts
It's the 22surfboard! Sorry abou that! I need to proof read subjectlines more often. Best, Ranger
Something like this will probably really appeal to the high-end digital photographers, with the CF slot in it. Shame there's only a 320x240 screen though, PDAs are slowly making their way out of that resolution (although I do understand that pushing any more pixels than that will require substantial processor power)
Can any photography buffs out there see themselves using something like this? A step up from the storage bricks I could imagine.
' i'd rather carry a 10oz device that works vs a 8 lbs device that runs microsoft. '
And who says that it has to 'run microsoft'?
One can just as easily install another operating system on that as any other laptop, you're not locked in to Microsoft...
Their Gmini 400 is only 30 dollars more than a 20gb iPod, and has a lot of the same functions listed int he article (no PVR, smaller screen, 20GB). I have been an Archos customer for a long time, the Gmini 120 is one of the best devices I have ever owned! And I am actually buying a Gmini 400 today for my brother.
Anyone who is considering a high 200's priced MP3 player (iRiver, iPod, etc..) should take a look at the Gmini 400. And on the cheap, the Gmini 120 (~$150) is a great product!
You're probably thinking about one of these. They cost 200 dollars. You think you can get a halfway decent laptop for 200 bucks? Please tell me where.
If something I said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, I meant the other one.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
And I would rather have something that takes up the same amount of space (or only slightly more) and can do a little more than merely play MP3s and video. I can't understand who would spend close to a grand for something that only really does a couple mundane tasks.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
well no one else said it but
canadians + 420 = nice and baked
haha well i saw the synnergy of multiple paradigms.
I thought this was an over the top toy at first, but it's turned out to be invaluable. It's about the size of the original Sony cassette Walkman. I.e. smaller then a CD. It's thick and a little heavy, and doesn't come with a belt carrier or other protection. I can lay hours of tivo recording (from my 300 hours modified tivo) and whenever I'm board or waiting in line or traveling, I can just watch a show. Or if I prefer listen to anyone of the songs from my entire album collection. And it's fantastic for capturing video stuff to transfer to the computer, or from the computer to video cassette, or to watch on a T.V.
Also, you got a copy of the Sopranos last night and your friend missed it. No problem just bring it on the archos, you can view it on a normal tv, on the archos, or transfer the file to his computer for him to watch it later.
After the archos itself turned out to be so helpful I decided to get the camera attachment, and I'm very happy with that as well. You can record ~hundred hours on the 80gb drive at slightly better then DV quality (for the file, the single ship CCD is a little week in low light). And it doubles as a 3.3 mega pixel still camera with an amazing amount of storage space. Also the camera comes with a carrying case which is more or less necessary because the lack of protection of the viewing surface.
The three cons for me are price, battery life (given it can't be replaced in transit), and lack of protection. Also the time it takes for the camera to take a still picture is a little sluggish, but manageable.
fire
[X]Beowulf cluster nonsence
please punish your self with 4 tech help sessions with inept wintel using soccer moms and a thrashing by the goatse.cx guy
-1 : STUF-NOW detected
Seems Technical Frontpage Userpost (but is ) Noncomparative Obvious "Wow"vertisement
I can watch Half-Baked on my 420.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Actually one niche it fills pretty nicely is for those of us who like to hack and tinker with video crap.
With this tiny thing, you can record video/audio from any video source in a portable and tetherless fashion. Got a camera in your kite, rocket, helmet, robot, or whatever? Instead of recording to a luggable VCR, or a luggable PC/laptop, or a camcorder with video input - this small thing records it digitally direct.
It's awfully convenient and not to be sniffed at for those of us familiar with the limitations and hassles of tinkering with this sort of thing.
I travel alot and just bought the av480 for $650 at Compuplus.com - I now have my entire MP3 collection (30 Gig) All my photos (20 Gig) with 3 gig left over for recording TV and copying pron. Add the FM receiver and you can now "Tivo" FM radio (30 second buffer) as well as record what you're listening too.
They seem to update the OS on a regular basis, my only compliant at this point is that the Direct TV receiver model D-10 is not in the av480 list but I spoke to Archos yesterday.
To set up the Tivo-like features - I have to go to Yahoo TV and save my weekly schedule to my harddrive - transfer it to the archos whre it is auto recognized! Not too bad.
So far - GREAT unit.
Plusses:
- Use it to time-shift your TV shows
- Can edit out commercials
- Can alter the screen ratio to normal, full, 4:3, or 16:9 (letterboxing)
- Boots up in seconds (as opposed to laptops)
- Shows recorded on the unit can be played on your PC (or is that a minus?)
- Can import TV listings from Yahoo! for programming
- Create playlists on the fly with s split screen and allows you to sort music files by artist, album, title, genre, year or playlist
- Built in microphone for live recording in addition to in-line recording
Minuses:
- For the best video playback at 2,500 Kbps (near television quality), using about 2GB per hour of recording; so 20GB model holds about 10 hours (80 GB model holds about 40 hours)
- Device will record files up to 2GB in size before closing that file and starting another
- By default, external speakers stay on, even when you plug in the headphones (potentially embarassing and annoying)
- Freezes on last image when fast-forwarding or rewinding so that you can't observe your progress
- Can't program for repeat events (such as weekly episodes), each episode has to be programmed seperately
- Gapless playback of songs is not supported
- Navigation buttons are not backlit, making use in very low-light situations difficult
- Records in WAV format only
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Actually, funny boy, the US dollar is falling and the Canadian dollar is getting stronger everyday. 4 more years of Bush and I'll be able to buy a state or two with lunch money. Keep it up!
And who says that it has to 'run microsoft'?
One can just as easily install another operating system on that as any other laptop, you're not locked in to Microsoft...
Although I would disagree with you on your choice of word "easily" - it is not the point. I did not say it HAS to run Microsoft, I said it DOES. Take a poll of a random 100 people you run into with laptops in an airport, and I would be surprised if you find more than one running Linux. But that again is not the point.
The point is that Linux will not make it any lighter, at least not in physical sense, and will add as much (if not more) complexity (relative term here) than Windows to get it to work. All this vs. a 10 Oz device that just works when you turn it on.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Slightly more space? Did you even LOOK to see how big the Archos is? You can shove it in your pants pocket.
That's like saying, "Who would want to buy an iPod when you could get an old pentium 133 laptop for the same price and use it to do more than play MP3s!"
I picked up an RCA RD2780 a while back for $400 USD, and lately have seen them retail for $350. IT does all the same functions; plays movies, MP3 player, CF slot, picture viewer, and act as a portable 20G HD. Even more stunning is that there are hacking forums that show the simplicity of upgrading it to 80G! Once the warranty runs out, that will be my next to-do on the unit.
As for video, the RD2780 suffers through the ".asf" format. However, I have found out recently that it is capable of playing mpeg files, although the episodes I've tried suffer from sync problems between the audio and video. If you use the built-in encoder with the video, there are two annoying features: Macrovision protection, and the inability to display dark scenes correctly. The Macrovision protection is a wash, as the encoding downsamples the video to be compact on the hard-drive (a 2hr movie compresses to about 1G), so I can't really see the point of file-trading. There is a way around the Macrovision, easily found on handheld forums. The compression of dark scenes is the worst, as it includes the black bars for 16:9 formats. Dark areas become blotchy black squares, so Alien vs. Predator fans might want to find another way to encode their movies. RCA allows the firmware on the unit to be easily upgraded, so I'm confident the firmware will unlock the full potential of the hardware eventually.
This leads into a minor gripe with the unit. On first pass, many of the features appear as "not available yet", such as slideshow on the photo-viewer and equalizer for the MP3 player. One has to downlaod the firmware upgrade to enable these features. Once that's done, it really lives up to the hype.
As for music, I've had no issues with playback of MP3s. The screen cuts backlit power during MP3 play, to conserve battery life (I get 8hrs of MP3 play easily). Since the unit acts as a HD, drag and drop of your favourite MP3s is simple to do. The RD2780 also comes with MusicMatch Jukebox, which not only encodes the MP3s, but also includes the album cover in the encoding, so the cover is displayed in the LCD. I haven't bothered much with playlists, but the ability to create and play lists of MP3s exists, too.
The slideshow is simple to use, and RCA released a thumbnail viewer for pics, for those like me who are too lazy to rename the titles. You can also set a soundtrack to the viewer, for those who want to use it as a new-age method to show vacation photos on the cruise ship (a pox to thee!).
As for interfacing with the PC, the computer sees it as a standard 20G HD connected to the USB port. Transfers are fast, and the navigation is simple, with directories set up for Video, Audio, Pictures, and Files (for transfer of your important data). One caveat- don't put a period in your filenames. The firmware sees the string after the period as a file extension, and doesn't display the file if it doesn't match the folder's media format. I lost access to several "Firefly" episodes when I used a "Disc.Title.asf" naming scheme (the files are still there, but I have to connect to a PC to rename them).
As for a comparison, the Archos AV-series do have more add-on options, such as a camera (that allows still and video capture) and a few more high-end goodies. As for a basic media player, then I believe the RCA unit is the best value. If Archos drops their price to compete, then I might have picked up one of their units. As it stands, I've survived many long flights with the RD2780 in my hands, with the warm glow of my favourite Sci-fi shows keeping me company.
Yeah, I want to see someone going jogging while playing MP3's on their laptop. (Sales pitch - It is a music player AND a piece of excercise equipment!!!)
On the flip side, the device is about the size of a PocketPC - wouldn't it be nice to have a PocketPC (running MS, or Linux, or PalmOS, or anything programmable and extendable) in the same form factor with a Hard Drive. When will those come out??? Now THAT would be something!
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Loading the content!
I have the older Archos JBMM20, and it's a wonderful machine despite its quirks and lousy firmware and small screen. However, the biggest pain in the ass is converting my downloaded video clips into the resolution and codec that it needs to play. It's a slow and tedious process.
Now, my brother has a DirecTivo set to dump to his NetApp drive array. My UltimateTV can't do that, and even if it could... I'd have to convert those videos to put them on my Archos anyway.
Same goes for DVDs. To rip a DVD I legally own, to use on my own portable hardware, I have to pay for some [possibly illegal] software and deal with the frustrations of getting those to work right.
What is needed is a play-any-content, tightly integrated to video-on-demand services and all of the other video-related hardware in my house. Of course, Disney (Michael Eisner is the devil) is fundamentally opposed to that view of the world. While you're at it, why not allow me to stream the videos on my device (no hard drive) from my central server over Wifi or ?
--D
The Archos jukebox (recorder) was probably the worst piece of machinery I ever owned. The only thing worse was Archos' customer service.
I bought that 2 years ago. Does anyone agree or otherwise think that that the quality of the jukebox was not indicative of the quality of their other products including current ones?
can't sleep. clowns will eat me.
If this ran Widows Media Center then I would buy it.
http://www.leadmagnet.50megs.com
I can definitely say that the AV320 does not use Linux.
The AV300, AV400 and Gmini products are all based on AVOS, an OS written from scratch by Archos.
It has evolved over several generations of hardware.
Last spring, Archos announced to be working on the AV500, which will be based on Linux.
A laptop can't play a whole movie without running out of batteries whereas a special purpose device such as this can play several in a row.
Wrong again, dicknose.
The iPod is a firewire mass storage device. Points for Apple.
iTunes is required to construct the index of all the songs on the device. It's required to acheive the 12 hour battery life. It means that the index is loaded into memory and that the index is searched, browsed, and read, instead of spinning up the hard drive willy nilly whenever ID3 data is required. The ONLY reason the hard drive is ever touched outside of bootup is to load up music data into the buffers.
You could argue, "Let the device generate the index!" but I argue, "Give me more battery!"
GPL Deconstructed
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Can any photography buffs out there see themselves using something like this? A step up from the storage bricks I could imagine.
Not really. There are a lot of reasons, perhaps most importantly, there's not likely to be a RAW converter built into it, which means that I can only see the JPG's I shoot. If I want to look a the images, I have to either dump it to a laptop or use my camera. So that fancy screen doesn't do me a whole heck of a lot of good. Why not just save a step (and some cash?)
As for the cost savings over CF cards -- well, I can get two or three two-gig cards for that much money. How many shots would I take for an assignment? Maybe 2000-3000 max. So I don't really need the off-storage capacity unless it's all RAW files (which take up more space), but then we're back to problem #1.
The last big issue is transfer speed. Most photo-banks like this have terrible write speeds -- 10 minutes for a 512 meg card is not unusual. There are dedicated image "tank" solutions designed for photographers that have 10 MB/s transfer speeds already -- and cost half the price.
Just about the only reason a photographer would use one is to listen to MP3's while shooting, but again, there are better solutions already out there for this.
This would be a nice little unit for travel -- though most long airplane rides already offer your own little screen with a choice of movies. Basically your target audience is someone who rides the bus a lot -- unfortunately, not the sort of demographic that has $800 of discretionary income to spend on a gadget.
MOD PaRent UP !!!!!
No,no, DOWN, DOWN !!! MOD ParenT Down !!
$699 2.4ghz
$598.00 1.6ghz amd
I bought one last week, and it arrived this morning. Sadly, the one thing I was dreading (after reading pretty much everything there is to read about the AV series) came true and it had shipped with a defunct hard disk. After fully charging the battery I would power on the player only to get 1 second of hard disk activity followed by an auto-shutdown. I got an RMA and shipped it back. Here's to hoping the second time's the charm.
I've had other Archos products, and the only real problem is getting one that works. Once you get one that isn't D.O.A. they are amazing. I have a JukeBox Recorder 20GB that's running Rockbox (actually looking to sell, if anyone is interested) that hasn't given me a single problem over that past year.
Oh, and when was the last time a laptop fit in your shirt pocket? Soon, I will be the uber-geek...every Simpsons episode at my disposal, whenever/wherever.
-R
Be careful with Archos. Every product I've ever bought from them has developed a messed up display within two to three months and has had to be sent back. Their tech support is awful and it took them over a month to send me a new Gmini 120 MP3 player when both the display and the battery went. Has Archos kicked up their support at all lately, or am I just alone?
It's $1000 Canadian, which at the current conversion factor is roughly $0.50.
Bet you can't get a laptop for that.
Seriously though, assuming it costs the same in the US, it's $792.29 USD (according to www.xe.com).
Admittedly, you still can get a cheaper laptop, but it won't have recording and it sure won't have a 4 hour battery life.
And forget about an ibook
1. Buy a brand-new/used Mac.
2. Pay RIAA taxes and buy 53 audio CDs
3. Buy 3 iPODs and wait for a crack that will play video on ipods.
4. Contribute to ihatebush campaign.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
What I don't get is, why do none of these media player units have bigger screens? I was thinking of getting a portable DVD player for the kids in the car, and they all come with at least 7" screens. I'd much rather get something like this that I can also use for playing my MP3s and taking on non-car trips, but the screen is way too small for anything other than hold-it-in-your-hands-in-front-of-your-face.