Excellent all round media experience. | Archos 704 80 GB WiFi Portable Digital Media Player

Great "wow" factor! | Archos 704 80 GB WiFi Portable Digital Media Player

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	• Archos 704 80 GB WiFi Portable Digital Media Player Archos Archos average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
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Archos 704 pretty picture but . . .

Pretty picture and a smooth Video Player but .. it's still a brick (weight) of a Portable Media Player.
Archos 704 color screen is absolutely gorgeous, vivid color in all angle of views. Its touch-screen technology is flawless for a handheld with 7" color screen. Interface takes some practice but as is with anything else- different. The truly shining feature has to be getting-the-DVD-into-the Archos 704. Simple and quick for you to get going on a train or plane or automobile. WiFi is somewhat slow but it's handy when you need to get to the email. Opera built in browser can be better, a lot better. Music as smooth with MP3 but unlike iPod where Apple owns the iTune. If you're a big fan of DVDs or have long commuting, this is it. It's the one.

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Excellent all round media experience.

This machine is a fantastic time-shifter DVR - I can take my essential TV viewing (or favourite Divx and Xvid videos) to work with me, watch programmes and movies on my 50 minute commute to work, and again at break times. I am so up to stream on my favourite TV programmes as a consequence of the Archos.
I also do a lot of photography, and it is great to use as backup - the Wifi is powerful enough to upload to your favourite website. Ideally it would support viewing of the RAW image format, but if you shoot (as I do) with JPEG simultaneously selected, the JPEG's effectively act as thumbnails which the ARCHOS cannot generate from the RAW format.
MP3 and WMA format music are supported, plus AAC anc AC3. The onboard speakers are a tad tinny, but effective. An equaliser exists to make optimum use of the sound. On a plane, and in a car, use of headphones with gel attachments allows you to push the sound deep into your ears, thus excluding any engine hum or annoying announcements.
Recording from TV - and playing back video/music - could not be simpler if you take the docking-station accessory. The DVR portion of the 704 records direct to Divx 4.0 format. The file-sizes it produces are approximately twice the size of Xvid (so, I reprocess afterwards, to get more onto my 80Gb, but in general, no post-processing required). However, as it compresses video to Divx on-the-fly, it is the fastest and most direct method of making small and manageable, high-quality, digital .AVI files. This is what makes it so compelling in keeping yourself current with your TV viewing - as I often leave it on overnight: it has its own infrared Satellite-Box channel changer, so you can record any programme, from any channel on your digibox, directly into the ARCHOS.
Managing the files is a cinch - in the docking-station, just set to USB File Server, and use it as an external drive on the computer to which you have it attached; or, set it to synch with Windows Media Player - this process it will quite happily spend the night doing whilst you sleep.
The touch screen is quite accurate, requiring something more pointy and sharp than a finger - but quite often, if you have forgotten the supplied stylus, a finger-nail just does the trick.
It has an incredibly large screen for a PMP. Which is great imho - 800x480 - and exceptionally clear if you use PAL or NTSC formatted video. I have heard that video with a resolution smaller than the screen can look poor, which is only to be expected. There are new products on the market now to allow much easier carrying of this giant (it fits neatly into my bag for work, but I have to select a large-pocketed garment when I do without the bag). The neat pouch can sometimes be unwieldy, and a strap is a good idea - I have seen such a product, and it can now neatly hang over my shoulder, should I want it to.
Firmware tweaks attempt to deal with one or two minor niggles - one being that it can randomly lose all sense of date and time, thus completely trashing your auto-recording setups (!!!), and once in a while, it stops recording on its own, and then resumes again just as randomly. Its a small price to pay for what I can only call a stunning multimedia experience - for my use, the wifi is just enough - newspaper headlines, email, and uploading/downloading of media files. I am not overly bothered by not being able to MyTube, but apparently the 705 has taken care of that. Oh, and if you raid Project Gutenburg for all those free books, you can store them, and read them, in Adobe's PDF file format.

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Great "wow" factor!

This thing is freaking amazing. The screen is beautiful and every time I whip this thing out on an airplane and cycle through a choice of like 30 movies, they want to know where to get one. The battery life is pretty good. The capabilities of this thing are real cool and the touch screen is fantastic. The internet needs a little work. It is a little better than surfing the web on a Sony PSP, which isn't very fun. I got the separate DVR dock and that works pretty well too, but haven't used it a ton yet. When using it to watch movies on your TV the movies do not look or sound super great, I guess they could have looked a little better, but even DVD quality movie files look kinda crappy and you have resize a couple times to see which one looks best. In the end, though, I didn't get this to watch movies on my TV, I got it for a portable media powerhouse, and with 80 GB, it is certainly that.

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The Archos 704 WiFi features a wide, high-resolution 800x480 7-inch color touch screen that allows you to navigate through menus easily with a stylus or even a fingertip. The size of screen enables a great visual comfort. The integrated 802.11g Wireless Interface is perfect for those who want to access their media wherever they go, including surfing the Web, sending and receiving email from Web-based mail applications and connecting the device to a home network to transfer files or play content directly from your network. Its 80 GB hard drive capacity allows you to store up to 100 movies encoded with a PC. Play them in high resolution up to 720x576 DVD quality with the optional DVR station. Photo viewer - JPEG, BMP, PNG, Transfer your photos directly from your digital camera Music playback time - Up to 25 hours Video playback time - Up to 5.5 hours on built-in LCD Connections - WiFi (802.11g) connection (Opera Browser for web browsing), 3.5 mm mini jack for headphones or TV output (PAL & NTSC), DC-in to connect power adapter/charger, Mini B for USB 2.0 computer connection, Mini A for USB 2.0 host connection, Docking connectors to optional DVR Station and other Archos accessories System requirements - Windows ME, 2000, XP, Media Center, Vista, Macintosh OS X or higher, Linux, USB port Unit Dimension - 7.05 x 4.96 x 7.75 inches / 182mm x 128mm x 20mm Unit Weight - 22 ounces/1.4 pounds/630 grams

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