Archos Widescreen PMP

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."

It weighs 0.6kg

[MarkByers]

For those of us not from the US that con't be bothered to type 20.8oz in kg [google.com] in Google.

Re:Bose MP3?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, AudioVideo International magazine recently found the Bose Wave music system to have the most accurate reproduction of musical instrument sounds. It's sleek, compact, and has extraordinary sound. Bose actually re-engineered the tapered wave guide to reproduce one-half octave lower musical notes than the original Wave system you're probably thinking of.

Re:HDTV support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I highly suggest you pick up an AVeL Linkplayer2, supports Divx-HD, and some WM9HD. It can play files either on disc or via networked PCs.

You can find more information at http://www.iodata.com/products/products.php?cat=HN P&sc=AVEL&pId=AVLP2%2FDVDLA&ts=2&tsc=15 [iodata.com]

I've got the AV300

[SkyFire360]

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 [linav.free.fr] 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 [sennheiserusa.com]), 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.

Uh, yes, it IS widescreen by definition.

[WidescreenFreak]

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. :)

So close, yet so far.

[Civil_Disobedient]

"One significant problem that we found in our reviews of their players is that most movie files available online are in formats not readable by the Archos, requiring them to be laboriously converted before they could play on their devices."

If Archos would like to expand its marketshare (and survive the onslaught by Sony and, eventually Apple), they need to address this fundamental flaw with their PMP line of players.