Media player is nearly perfect, but...
Matthew Miller, Special Projects Editor -- EDN, 8/4/2004
The AV400, the latest portable multimedia device from Archos, handles with aplomb myriad tasks involving video, photos, and music. It's easily the best portable media player (PMP) on the market and represents a true tour de force in product development. The only thing it fails to do is allay my fears about the viability of PMPs in general.
An earlier Archos player that hit the Digital Den about a year ago impressed me (see "Digital domains," Aug. 21, 2003). And the AV400 improves upon that product in significant ways, which I'll detail in a moment. Yet for all its excellence, the device still leaves me wondering whether there's a future for such portable wonders.
I laid out my case against PMPs—mainly against the video portion of their functionality—two weeks ago (see "Playing in Peoria"), and the AV400 hasn't changed my mind. As much as I admire the product, I wouldn't want to own it because I wouldn't find it terribly useful. And that would be true even if it weren't hugely expensive ($549.95 for a 20-Gbyte model or $799.95 for an 80-Gbyte monster). More to the point, I believe the audience that's hankerin' for portable video is so limited that companies like Archos—as well as Microsoft, which is pushing its own PMP formulation—are going to be disappointed.
Omnipotent omnivore
Like its predecessor and a few other devices on the market, the AV400 does so much that it's difficult to describe succinctly. But here goes: It's a digital-audio player and recorder, a digital-video player and recorder, a device for storing and viewing digital photos, and a USB 2.0-based hard-disk drive.
That dry description, although accurate and comprehensive, doesn't really do justice to the experience of using the gadget. The gregarious AV400 plays nicely with your living-room entertainment devices (TV, stereo, VCR, etc.), your PC, and your flash-memory cards. It willingly consumes pretty much any piece of audio/video/photo content. And it adeptly shares that content with an audience of one (via its own LCD, headphones, and built-in speaker) or an audience of many (via your entertainment center or any USB-equipped PC). The device delivers lightning-quick operation, responding in a snappy manner even when opening large files. And its software is intuitive, powerful, and seemingly rock-solid.
The AV400 improves upon the earlier Archos offering, the AV300 series, in numerous ways. It's smaller and more elegant, weighing in at under 10 ounces. More importantly, it now integrates two major features that formerly required unwieldy add-on modules: video recording and the reading of flash-memory cards. For the latter feature, the device has a built-in CompactFlash slot, and the company offers an optional adapter for other card types.
Two features in particular mark the AV400 as a fully formed product rather than an interesting proof-of-concept. First, it comes with a clever cradle that makes it a breeze to dock the device with your entertainment center. Second, it functions as a DVR, complete with the ability to schedule the recording of TV shows in advance.
The cradle represents a vast improvement over the previous Archos product. Rather than tangling with audio and video cables every time you want to use the device to record or play content via the entertainment center, you tangle with audio and video cables only once when setting up the cradle. Thereafter you simply insert the player in the cradle, hook up a single omnibus connector, and get busy enjoying yourself. In addition to making all the AV connections, the connector also charges the player's battery. And the included remote control lets you assume your most comfortable perch in the living room. (Click here and here for pictures that show the player in its cradle with the connector both plugged and unplugged.)
This approach, by the way, is superior to Microsoft's Portable Media Center concept. Rather than having a PC mediate between the player and the entertainment universe, Archos lets you connect the AV400 directly. Less fuss, more gratification. Plus, you still get the ability to connect to a PC when you want or need to.
The DVR functions aren't nearly as robust as a TiVo, but they work. The device offers two ways to schedule recordings. Option one is a screen where you manually enter start and stop times (left). Thanks to years of experience programming VCRs, I found the procedure effortless.
Option two is a bit more convoluted. First, you go online and use Yahoo's "My Yahoo!" service to populate a personal calendar with your favorite shows. Then you export your calendar into an HTML-format file. Then you connect the AV400 to your PC and copy that HTML file into a specific folder on the AV400. The AV400 then reads the HTML file and sets itself to record your programs. I'm afraid I possessed neither the time nor the inclination to try this method, although I have no reason to doubt that it would work.
With either scheduling approach, you must face the thorny issue of changing channels. Here you have three options, which are really no different than they would be using a conventional VCR. The simplest but most error-prone method is to make sure you leave your tuning device (be it your TV, a cable box, a satellite receiver, or a VCR) powered on and set to the proper channel at the proper time. Alternatively, if your tuner device is programmable, you can set it to turn on and change the channel all by itself, although this means you have to manually enter each program on two machines. Finally, using an infrared emitter that Archos provides, the AV400 can impersonate the tuner device's remote control and orchestrate the tuning process when the time comes.
Fuzzy logic?
All of these approaches work, but in the end you have to ask what you get for all of your effort—not to mention money. The AV400 can record video at a variety of bit rates from 500 to 2500 kbps. Its maximum recording resolution is 512×384 pixels. I recorded a series of TV snippets, including segments from Late Night with Conan O'Brien and ESPN's SportsCenter . I recorded at all of the bit rates and watched each file on both the AV400 and my television.
Most of the clips looked fine on the LCD. At the lower bit rates, the sports highlights became blocky, but I could still follow the action. The high bit rates rendered the sports scenes in a fluid and clear fashion. Conan and his guests, who didn't move much, came off well at all bit rates.
However, as you might expect, the larger TV monitor revealed obvious evidence of compression. Even at the highest bit rates, the sports highlights proved merely tolerable—and inferior to the broadcast—on my analog Sony set. As for the lower bit rates, there was no point even trying to make sense of the baseball action; I couldn't distinguish the baseballs from the compression artifacts. As for the relatively static Conan snippets, I would classify the results as merely unpleasant at the high rates and seriously annoying at the low.
The upshot? You're really limited to watching the LCD, at least for programs that you record with the AV400 (the device can output DivX- and XviD-encoded files at resolutions as high as 780×480 pixels, but you have to prep those files on your PC). Frankly, watching the LCD is not all that comfortable. You have to expend effort holding the device, and although the display offers a fairly wide viewing angle, you still have to keep the player tilted within a certain range lest the image disappear. For someone facing a long train ride or airline flight, these demands might be acceptable. For anyone else, not so much.
I mean none of this as a knock on Archos. The AV400 does everything it promises and does it quite well. The only problem I encountered was momentary jitter in a couple of the clips I recorded; the whole video image twitched up and down just enough to be perceptible.
Overall however, the AV400 is a fully polished product, chock full of impressive finishing touches. For example, the photo- and video-browsing modes offer thumbnail previews (left). The music-playing mode displays album art if your MP3 files contain it. Available plug-ins allow the device to work directly with Windows Media Player 9 and, for Mac users, iTunes. The scheduling screen makes it easy to add a cushion of a minute or two on each end of a recording so that you won't miss anything if the onboard clock happens to be slow or fast. Bundled PC software makes it easy to transcode video clips into the player's preferred formats. The retail package includes a protective leather case and (miracle of miracles) a lucid and informative user manual made of honest-to-goodness paper. The player itself even contains a video file that provides step-by-step instructions for setting up the AV cradle.
Overall, the AV400 is one of the most impressive electronic products I've ever used. I just hope it's not a case of exquisite engineering signifying nothing.
