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Archos Widescreen PMP

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the if-only-my-psp-had-50x-the-space dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Archos has just announced their newest portable audio/video player the AV 700 Mobile DVR. The new unit has a 480x234 pixel widecreen display, a hub to record from TV and DVD, and offers a 100GB drive. The sucker is heavy though weighing in at over a pound. Cost is $799 for the 100GB model and $599 for the 40GB. MP3 Newswire also has Part 1 of its MP3 players for summer. Most interesting are Creative's new Neeon and a high end unit from Bose."

6 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Bad Size... by ThomasFlip · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If people want to listen to music, the will want something smaller, if they want to watch video, they will want something bigger. I personally don't think that combining a portable audio/video player is a good idea or will sell well.

    --
    If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
    1. Re:Bad Size... by TedCheshireAcad · · Score: 5, Funny

      maybe i can install one in my car so i don't have to pay attention to stupid traffic. that would be awesome.

  2. You know you're a geek when... by BBrown · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... you think a pound is heavy.

  3. So why not buy a notebook? by enosys · · Score: 4, Insightful
    You could buy a new notebook PC for the same price. You can do a whole lot more with it and it has a bigger screen and better image quality. You also won't have to worry about getting video to a format that is readable by the device. The notebook would almost certainly be able to play DVDs and you can install whatever codecs you need.

    I guess the only good things about devices like this is that they're smaller and come pre-configured for their task.

  4. I've got the AV300 by SkyFire360 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've owned the JBMM20 and the AV300 - the great-grandfather and grandfather of the AV700 - and I have to say that they're amazing pieces of technology. They run embedded firmware on the DSC25 that is compatible with linux so you can run Linux on it if you really want. The video playback on the AV300 is stunning, even at 352x240 resolution: you can read subtitles clear as day. It has decent quality sound (much better if you get a nicer pair of headphones like the Seinnheiser HD280 Pro), a bright lcd screen and 3-4 hours of video playback on the "Low Brightness" option which ironically is quite bright still. Oh yeah... and it plays DiVX

    For anyone that's interested, don't even think about getting the bigger harddrive model. Both old and new models use standard 3.5" laptop harddrives, which means you can buy one off of PriceWatch and slap it in there. Just format it with a FAT boot sector first and you're good to go.

  5. Uh, yes, it IS widescreen by definition. by WidescreenFreak · · Score: 4, Informative

    Excuse me? This unit gives a screen aspect ratio of 2.05:1. This is about 15% wider than widescreen TVs, which have an aspect ratio of 16:9 or roughly 1.78:1. So, it is not "somehow" widescreen -- it is widescreen. Whoever modded you as "insightful" needs to be modded "-1 clueless".

    Oh, great. Now this unit will give the anti-widescreen crowd a reason to bitch about why 16:9 movies have the black bars in the sides. Wonderful. :)

    --
    The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.