Archos 504 Portable Digital Media Player and Recorder

Customer Review

this is the best hand held mp4 player in the market, March 8, 2007

By	Peter T. Cheung "hahaha48" (fremont CA) - See all my reviews

1. As a mp3 player it is still the best if you are like me who refuse to buy any music with copy protection. I bought a handheld device every 6 months and move my files all the time. The copy protected files prevent me from doing that so ipod is out of the question for me. The user interface is much better then creative lab.

2. As for pictures as other reviewer say it does not support raw format and if you need this go for creative lab and not the wolverine(very bad company will not repair under warrenty even if they admit it is their fault but they do not know why). otherwise it is great.

3. Reliability wise i have great luck with all Archos product and none have much problem. My 504 have lock up once for about 200 hours of using. I have to remove the battery to restart it.

4. The best part about the 504 is the mp4 support. I use CloneMobile to rip dvds for the 504. I actually do it mostly for music. So instead of just mp3 I have music videos. CloneMobile offer ripping by chapter which is a function I have not seen this in most other software. The best part about the 504 is that it allow me to play all the videos in one folder in normal order, shuffle or repeat mode. while you are playing your mp4 you can see a side menu which let you see and change parameters. The most useful one for me is the display format (auto,full screen, maximize, original) and the player is very smart when displaying the video. The fast foreword is good but only up to 8X. i wish it is 32x. there is no go to next video command like the mp3.

5. i highly recommend the dvr docking kit for use at home and the $26 small travelling adapter for traveling. The most important features lacking without one of the 3 adapter is a fast charger and the ability to use regular usb cables.

6. The little speaker is a convenient feature but useless as the sound is horrible. I hook the 504 to a device with a mp3 player audio input with a subwoofer. but the best sound is by using my headphone. I use the shure 500 when travelling and Sennheiser HD650 at home. It drives the Sennheiser HD650 without an amp with very good sound. I had a portable headphone amp but i find it too cumbersome to use it. It is possible that a headphone like the 701k that require less power to drive may be better for the 504 but i am currently very happy using the hd650. Also with the dvr adapter i can hook the 504 to my hi fi system but i just do not like to run long cables.

7. I upgraded the firmware immediately since someone said the sound quality has been improved with the newer firmware. The instruction given did not work. I have to click the firmware file manually after i copied it onto the 504 for it to run and then it upgraded fine.

8. Someone complain about the size of the 504 and i found it to be very acceptable. It is a lot bigger and heavier then my 400 but there is very little you can do if you want a large screen for the size. May be in the next few years they can cut down the thickness and weight but knowing what i know about hard drives that may take many years.

9. I still do not like the buttons and you cannot use them in the dark. I think some additional gui like the 400 that you push and small menu display on the side to let u pick choices will be a great addition for operating in the dark. This is not an issue if you are watching a long movie at night but an issue if you watch music videos. you have to turn the lcd to the brightest and keep some lights on to use the device. This is a bigger issue when travelling due to the drain on the battery. Talking about the battery it is very easy to remove, so an extra battery may be an answer.

10. I have not use the 504 to record anything because I have no need for that. I have other systems set up to do those task. Personally I have to say using a hand held device should be for travelling and I leave the heavy lifting of recording to my home video and hi fi system.

Archos 504 160GB Portable Digital Media Player and Recorder

Archos 504 80GB Portable Digital Media Player and Recorder

Archos 504 40GB Portable Digital Media Player and Recorder

Archos 705 Wi-Fi Portable Media Players

Customer Review

Pleased with Archos 705, January 24, 2008

By	Robin B. Moore "Rob Moore" (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews

I got this for Christmas (after a number of hints to my wife!) and was playing with it as soon as I got it, and the DVR attachment. I wanted it mostly for travel but also wanted the DVR functionality and the ability to watch movies or view pictures on my TV screen.

I like this model over the 605 because when I watch a video or movie, I don't want to have to peer at a 4.5" screen. The seven inch screen makes all the difference.

I have to say it lives up to my expectations 100%! (Even my wife's impressed!) I put four or five DVD's on it, in both the DVD native format and condensed MP4 formats and they all look good, although the native DVD formats have slightly better resolution when viewed on the TV screen. I got the 160GB version because DVD's typically use up 3-4GB in their native format. I have over 50GB of movies on it at this point so it looks like a good decision.

I bought the plug-in's I needed and they downloaded flawlessly and I had no problems at all with them. One plug-in I bought was the browser and I haven't used it that much but it does work and will be useful when traveling if I don't have my laptop with me.

The DVR functionality works fine, although you have to make sure that the IR port on your cable box can "see" the IR port on the DVR adapter. This might be a problem if you have your equipment stacked vertically on a shelf. I haven't found a decent way to reflect the light from one IR port to the other but I'm still working on it.

Streaming from my home PC seems to work fine - I've watched a few movies that way. Occasionally it will act jerky but I assume that it's something to do with my wireless network because I've fixed it by rebooting the computer the video was streaming from. Viewing pictures works fine and doesn't have any problems.

I like the case that comes with it. It's not leather like some of the aftermarket cases, but it protects the unit and stores the stylus and that's all I really need. I also like the remote control, which works well and does exactly what you'd expect. (If you buy the DVR accessory, you'll find that it comes with a remote as well so now I have a spare!)

Cons:
1. The touchscreen works as advertised but needs a firmer press than most.
2. The menu system is conteXt sensitive and so you have to learn where things are to take best advantage of it.
3. The manual could use some improvement in organization and readability. There are menu items that aren't mentioned and the organization leaves you looking through page after page until you find what you want.
4. Paying extra for the plug-ins sort of rubs me the wrong way but not enough to matter.
5. It's NOT an iPod .... but who cares. I like it better!

Archos 705 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (160 GB)

Archos 705 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (80 GB)

Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Players

Customer Review

The Bar Is Raised on Mobile Video, September 4, 2007

By	James Duckett (St. George, Utah) - See all my reviews

While I'll probably never use this as an MP3 player (I have smaller devices for that), it makes one nice video player. I've been playing with one for a little while and here are my impressions thus far:

Positives:

1) The video. Wow!!! I doubt there is anything this clean and crisp out there that is this small and portable. The video looks fantastic and I've yet to have any hardware lag while viewing it.
2) 160GB. That is massive and just the right size for carrying around video.
3) Intuitive user interface. I've got a Zune for my mp3's and I often find that complicated (and irritating) to navigate around but this is quite easy to figure out. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to get this to work the way you want it to. Navigating around a movie is fantastic as well because it is so easy to pause, fast forward, or do anything else you would want to do on a video player.
4) Responsive Touch-Screen. Using the touch screen was quite easy... I don't think I even touched the buttons on the side much. I had no problem even though I've got some thick fingers.
5) Sound quality. This thing sounds great some with nice earphones. I can see why some might use it as an mp3 player as well. It sounds awesome!

Negatives:

1) No standard USB Connection on the device? Come on, if you are going to be this large then give us a standard USB interface, please. For one, it is smaller than this ending. Also, if we are near a computer we can use the USB to charge it without having to carry the proprietary cable around. USB is just sooooo... universal... I'm flabbergasted anytime somebody doesn't include a USB connection.
2) Battery. First, this isn't removable so you can't carry a spare pack around. But it doesn't last that long when playing video. This wouldn't be too much of a concern if it had a USB connection because there is always a way to charge it that way. But if the battery doesn't last as long as a laptop... there isn't much point.
3) Browser is not good. You can download video from Youtube and a few other sites but you can't just get out on the web and grab stuff. I've read you can buy a browser to do this, but something decent should have come with the device. If you are going to have Wi-Fi, why not make it as functional as possible?

So, if you are willing to shell out the cash this is an excellent device for video. I'd have other preferences for music but this is quite capable of handling that as well.

Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (160 GB)

Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (80 GB)

Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (30 GB)

Archos 605 Wi-Fi Portable Media Player (4 GB)