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."

Bad Size...

[ThomasFlip]

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.

I want a better screen

[maynard]

I don't want to spend $800 on a portable display device that doesn't render at least 480p DVD quality. The specs listed are ambiguous. It says that there's a doc station for pass through to a VCR. Does this mean that its only external output is composite? If so - yuck. I expect at least component, and preferably also DVI/HDMI. And why would I want to carry 100GB of disk space on a portable if it won't output true 480p? Never mind that disk space like that is appropriate for HD as well.

So, my opinion: nice toy; waste of money. --M

You know you're a geek when...

[BBrown]

... you think a pound is heavy.

Re:Bad Size...

[bfields]

If people want to listen to music, the will want something smaller, if they want to watch video, they will want something bigger.

Yeah, would someone who has one of these portable video players explain what they're actually *for*?

I can see that a DVR that you can occasionally carry from one place to another might be nifty.

But I can't see it for, say, watching movies on the commute--anything that fits in my pocket is going to be too small to watch.

So why not buy a notebook?

[enosys]

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.

am i missing something here?

[Anonymous Coward]

why would i go for something like this for $799 when I can get a brand new iBook thats much more flexible for $999? It doesn't sound as if this unit is exactly lightweight... and, at least with the iBook, I get DVD playback and a larger screen as well...

About the MP3 gear in second article

[cojsl]

Thoughts on the 2nd linked article on MP3 players: 1. The Bose is CD based. Bose really doesn't get it. The extra time, effort, and waste of making a CD every time to change the music selection is too much of a hassle vs. flash and hdd players. 2. The Maxfield Diablo plays OGG, neat.

Re:widescreen?

[m50d]

It's wider than standard 16:9 or 4:3

From the article:

[lidocaineus]

Bose is all about the quality of sound (as opposed to Bang and Olufsen who are all about style and exclusivity).

As soon as I read that, I knew these people know nothing but marketing hype.

better than laptop

[Charbax]

How come 75% of the posts in here say that it's better to buy a laptop.

The Archos Pma430 is 600$, just search it on froogle.

Archos has a deal with Echostar in US to market all their Gmini400, AV400 and AV700 in special packages, maybe rebranded as PocketDish. This is interesting because Echostar will probably give away this portable video player/recorder just for getting new customers over from the DirecTV/Tivo users.

The Archos players are approximately same price as an iPod anyways, so stop saying that it's better to have a laptop, then you should say that the iPod is the same price as a laptop, and then anyways all Archos devices are much cooler than iPods.

Specially the Pma430 which is a fully hackable Linux embarqued with touch-screen, wifi, usb-host and still has all the portable video recorder/player full DivX compatibillity (dvd-resolution simple profile + b-frames + vbr-mp3)