Detailed Review of the Archos AV420 PVR 157
ilovealpacas writes "The Globe and Mail has posted a step by step look at the Archos AV420. For about $1000 Canadian (I think that's $800 US), you get an 80GB portable video player and recorder that also plays MP3's and has a CF slot for pictures. Hmmm.....laptop?"
No DVD! (Score:4, Interesting)
Why??? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an iRiver IHP-120 which I love, and have with me virtually everywhere, and beat the hell out of just by daily use. The cost of this Archos would make me leave it inside rather that drop it in my pocket and hop on the tractor (yes there are some of us rural type geeks :) I'd be too afraid to crack the screen, or otherwise break it.
So you're left with a movie player. An $800 portable movie player. WHY? As others have said you can grab a decent laptop for less than that, or even a $200, 3 year old laptop off of ebay will do everything device does. Sure it's not as cute or pretty, but seriously...
I have one and LOVE IT (Score:2, Interesting)
They seem to update the OS on a regular basis, my only compliant at this point is that the Direct TV receiver model D-10 is not in the av480 list but I spoke to Archos yesterday.
To set up the Tivo-like features - I have to go to Yahoo TV and save my weekly schedule to my harddrive - transfer it to the archos whre it is auto recognized! Not too bad.
So far - GREAT unit.
Re:How's the construction? (Score:4, Interesting)
Tore it apart, bought an off-the-shelf 40gb drive, did the magic hand wave incantation (i.e. formatted it FAT-32) dumped my MP3's to it, replaced the 1500mAh's with COTS 2300mAh's, and re-assembled. Cable went the way of all those Special Cables, so I grafted two USB-A Male ends together and made my own. Installed the RockBox rom, and BOOM replaced the standard archos rom with one that has the functionality I needed.
For $125 in parts cost, and an hour's work. I got a 40gb mp3 player that does about 12 hours on a single charge. I pop the plastic battery plates, and I can swap in any regular AA size batteries. Doesn't hook to the USB port on my big FreeBSD machine. No big deal. five minutes with the screwdriver, and the drive is free again, I stick it right on the IDE chain. Who the hell would xfer gigs of data over USB, when you've got IDE.
I've got four people who want me to make them one, all I need is the parts. Okay, so the construction is not Most Ideal. But I can fix a solder weild if it goes bad. Hell, Archos haven't gone forth and shut down the "How to mod your Archos" people, nor the 'open source rom' people. Isn't that something that slashdotters like?
Re:How's the construction? (Score:3, Interesting)
I bought the original Archos model 6000 with the 6GB disk. It ran without problems for about a year, and then the charging port and power ports both died. No big deal, the batteries charge more efficiently in an external unit anyway, and swapping them out takes about five seconds, so I can live with that. I only ran it on AC in my car, but given the battery life I can live without that as well. About a year and a half after purchase, the USB port starts getting flaky, throwing data errors any time I use it.
Again, no big deal really. It takes five minutes to reduce it to a bare hard disk and plug it in directly with IDE, and I don't change music mixes that often, though I do miss the ability to drop files on it and use it as a cheap, portable USB drive. Two years in, the hard disk takes a dive (never dropped once, only runs in my car). Easy to replace it with a 60GB laptop hard disk I had laying around. While I'm at it, I upgrade to the Rockbox firmware because it kicks the shit out of the original. Just last month (what, 3 years since purhcase now? I lost track) I noticed my charge wasn't holding as long as it used to. Popped in four 2300ma batteries to replace the stock 1500ma(?) batteries and it's now running for 20 hours solid on a single charge.
The lesson to take home here is that the Archos does well because it uses a relatively open hardware architecture. I am still using it precisely because I could replace the hard disk, firmware, and batteries. I will never touch any portable device that uses proprietary, unreplaceable batteries (hence why I hate the iPod and most Palm devices). In retrospect, given Archos's shitty 90-day warranty, I think it would have been better to buy it from Best Buy and get a 3-year warranty slapped onto it on the cheap. That at least is good to cover hard disk failures.
I'll be using this one until it literally burns out, however long that takes. It's a damn good chunk of hardware, despite a few manufacturing problems (as others have noted). If I were to buy another MP3/Video player device, I would be looking at Archos as my first pick, at least as long as the hardware remains that easy to hack and replace. I don't think I would ever drop $800 on a portable video/audio device, though. Maybe when it is $400 in a few years I'll think about it.