For various reasons (up to and including the fact that i just found out i had jury duty this weekend), i decided to get an Archos 605 wifi. i can hear the collective gasp that i didn't get a touch iPod or any other such beast, but hang on a minute, let me explain why.
First off, this isn't an ipod.
Let me expand on that. The iPod is a device that plays music, shows videos and oh yeah, connects to the web. The Archos is a video device that plays music and connects to the web. Oh yeah, and does other stuff too. Unlike the iPod, this thing is really more a "Portable PVR with Wifi". i got it principally because i figured that it would be a fairly good at being that, and to be honest it doesn't do a half bad job of it.
It's not without it's lumps, so let's get those out of the way first:
1) It costs more than you think.
It bases for around $279 and for that you get a pretty respectable player. To do any video or USB stuff, however, costs you. ($77 for the DVR station, but that does let you connect up to HDTV, $30 for access to the built in browser, $20 for access to the unencrypted VOB player, and possibly $20 more to play H.263 and AAC streams)
2) It hangs on occasion.
Kinda annoying, really, but then it's a little box doing quite a lot.
3) It's slow to recharge.
Granted, i've been messing with it quite a lot, so that's not exactly helping the recharge speed.
Plus my own personal nits:
4) It can't talk to my Samba server (but then, i know there's something goofy in the configuration since it doesn't show up in the browse list for any of my other windows boxes.)
5) It can't really drive my 100GB portable drive.
While it's USB2 in, it's probably NOT USB2 out right now. Or it could be that with the unit charging there's not enough juice to drive the external drive too. i'll check that again later. It can read it fine, only there's not enough power coming out of the USB-A to drive the disk. Adding a 5V power supply solved that problem.
6) The Wifi Server doesn't quite work.
Again, haven't dug into this 100% but when i set it into server mode, i can't find it or connect up. i'll go read the manual and see if i can figure out what the problem is.
and now The Good.
It's small. Smaller than i thought. It's about the size of a large pad of post-its. The DVR station is also kind of small, with the connectors in the back, so there aren't wires all over.
The DVR remote is both small, and pretty powerful. It passes the 10'+ range with ease, has a mini keyboard and mouse pad, which is pretty cool when you think about it. (Not illuminated though, so touch typing is a must.)
Did i mention it does HDTV? Yep, a tiny little box has no problem sending HD quality signal through the SVideo or component outs.
As for the browser, again, it's definitely a plus. It does flash and AJAX without a complaint, and the 800×400 screen does two types of renders, the "normal" which is still readable, and a "zoom" version which doubles the size of the fonts. Again, pump it to the TV and i've got late night browsing.
i'll also admit, full screen videos wins.
So far, there's more to like than dislike about it.
Now, for the question i've been asking myself, what about my previous media box? Will i be trading it in for another one of these? No, probably not. i tried grabbing a stream from KQED (didn't work), so anything that doesn't come as a flash stream probably won't play.
Still, i'll probably poke around with this more and more to see what i can do with it.
