AV320: Portable media center!
Written: Oct 29 '04
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Pros: Huge screen, good feel, not-too-bad firmware, movie/photo playback capability
Cons: Joystick is a little bit fragile
The Bottom Line: Lots of great features, looks nice, sounds fine, what are you waiting for?
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| midknight2k3's Full Review: Archos Jukebox AV320 (20 GB) Digital Media Player |
MY STORY
Guess it's time for another review, huh? :) I got this Archos AV320 about 8 months ago. I chose it because it had the ability to play back movies, show pictures, and play music. Its ability to record from a line-in or internal mic was also a plus. There are numerous other features that you'll be filled in on a bit later.
INCLUDED ACCESSORIES
Included along with the AV320 multimedia device itself is a digital video recorder attachment, a remote control for couch viewing, a USB 2.0 cable, a charger, some flimsy headphones, numerous audio/video cables, and a CD-ROM containing the manual and some software/drivers. The included audio/video cables are all you'll ever need to take advantage of most of the archos' in/output features: an AV cable for outputting the display to a television, a video cable (RCA to RCA) for recording with the DVR accessory, a left/right audio cable (that is, 2 RCA to Mini jack) for recording audio with the DVR, and a female-to-female audio cable (2 RCA to 2 RCA) for recording audio/video from an Xbox console (for example). The USB cable and AC adapter are standard. The remote control and its functionality is a bit poorly designed in my opinion: the buttons are a little 'mushy', and it takes about .8 seconds from pressing a key to getting a reaction on the archos' screen. The digital video recorder records videos at 304x224 (the display is 320x240) at 30fps.
THE BASICS
The Archos firmware is fairly simple to master and intuitive, and it's adorned with numerous icons. The 'Start' menu (main screen) offers 9 choices represented by large icons and text underneath: Photo, Music, Video, AudioCorder, Browser, Setup, Camera, CamCorder, VideoCorder. The Camera/CamCorder options are grayed out if the Digital Camera attachment isn't plugged in; likewise for the VideoCorder that operates the DVR attachment. A note: the attachments are not plug-n-play, you have to reboot the machine to enable these options after plugging the attachment in. The Photo, Music, Video options aren't anything special, they just link to the respective folders on the hard disk. AudioCorder (awful name) brings you to a recording screen where you can record audio in different formats from different inputs. Browser will allow you to browse your hard disk, and Setup will allow you to change aspects of the firmware/archos' operation: time/date, display, system, sound settings.... All works as expected.
PHOTO MODE
The Photo mode is fairly simple: launch a photo (bmp or jpg) from disk and the firmware will display it (sized to fit the LCD). You can zoom a total of four levels: resized, ֿ”, ׀”, and ׁ” - no real scale seems to be used. Panning while zoomed is a bit of a disappointment: it's fairly slow and very jerky, and considering there's a hardware function for (a very) smooth scroll, it's a wonder why they didn't use it. There's a 4- and 9-thumbnail mode built in (2x2, 3x3) which works fine, and a feature that reads the EXIF data from the picture, often telling you what device took the image and what settings were used. You can also rotate the pictures for display, but sadly this rotation isn't saved to disk (just temporary).
MUSIC MODE
Pretty standard fare here too. The screen that's shown while music is playing displays ID3 artist/album/title, some data (format, bitrate, sample frequency), a graphical representation of the current volume, and some 'old style' LED-type peak meters (which do look fairly nice). A progress bar is also displayed, along with current track time, remaining track time and total track time. A very nifty feature is that if there is ID3 album art in your tag it will be displayed on-screen. You can browse the hard drive to start a different song, as well as access the playlist that's being played from, and you can get to the setup menu to change sound settings (as well as other things). Sound quality to me is 'very good', but not stellar. The same audio decoding chip is used in the Jukebox Recorder – my 'other' favorite :)
VIDEO MODE
The video player can play 320x240 video at 30fps, or 640x480 video at 25fps. It can play a few different resolutions as well (such as 160x120) but generally gives an error if it's an odd size. This is a bit of a letdown to me, I think that 640x480 playback at 30fps would be a lot nicer (it's rated 25fps, but looks like 15fps to me – unwatchable). Right/left on the joystick in this mode will skip ahead a keyframe, apparently, during a 2-hour movie this means about 3-5 seconds per press. Note that after about 50 seconds the hard drive will have to spin up again to refill the buffer. No other options here, but a note: sound settings do apply to movie playback.
AudioCorder MODE
Allows you to record from the internal microphone, line-in, SPDIF, or 'external mic' – A.K.A. Line in. You can record at up to 192KBPS CBR MP3, or uncompressed WAV (PCM) format. Sampling rates go from 16-48khz. You can use the virtual keyboard to input ID3 artist/album/title, but this can be annoying if you want to just record. The main display is the same as the Music Player in general, but instead of the bitrate it displays your quality setting (1-8), and Left/Right will control the input level.
SETUP
6 subcategories are available, each with different options:
-SOUND settings
----Volume, Bass, Treble, Loudness, Balance, Bass Boost, Pitch, Reset option
-PLAY MODE settings
----Folder/All/Single/Queue/Scan modes, Repeat/Shuffle, Bookmark, Picture Pause (seconds)
-CLOCK settings
----Hour, Minute, Second, Day, Month, Year, Time Format, Set option
-DISPLAY settings
----Language, TV Standard, Video Output, Video X/Y position, LCD Brightness, Image Display mode
-POWER settings
----Battery and DC Power options for: Poweroff, Backlight Off, Hard drive spindown
-SYSTEM settings
----Show All Files, Middle Joystick, DSP Overclocking, Remote Control channel, UPDATE FIRMWARE button
SOME THOUGHTS...
A few things to say about the device. For one, its size: it's no iPod, it's actually quite large, but feels comfortable in-hand and controls are all on the right side, easy to use for right-handers (lefties are out of luck here). Like usual, Archos gave us rubber bumpers on all four corners, but luckily they're smaller and stand out a lot less. The unit looks very sleek in general, somewhat glossy silver with the gray bumpers and a bit of translucent orange/brown trim. The screen is quite large as mentioned, but there doesn't appear to be an anti-glare coating which is a huge shame, it's a lot harder to view in brighter light (but very easy to view in a darker area such as inside). The joystick seems a bit flimsy, as I broke my first one (playing Sokoban via avOS, no less). Using my Best Buy warranty, I got it replaced quite easily. Better be careful with this one: Best Buy's not selling them anymore. The battery life on this device is 'pretty good' - I got about 4 hours of video playback when it was brand new, and I'd expect about 8 hours of music playback with the screen backlight off.
avOS?
avOS is a replacement firmware for the Archos AV3XX series, much like Rockbox for the Jukebox Recorders. AvOS is basically dead as of now, but LinAV is very much alive...
LinAV?
Linav: a project of porting Linux to the Archos. Linux runs on this device fully right now, and I'm already a contributor – I've ported my Rockbox clock (partially), written a matrix scroller, a screensaver-type demo that shows the Lorenz Attractor, and worked on the interface for numerous plugins. LinAV can play MP3s now too. Quite promising.
ATTACHMENTS
You can purchase a range of attachments for this device, including a 3.3 megapixel digital camera/camcorder, flash readers (CompactFlash or SmartMedia) – which you can use to transfer pictures from a digital camera, and an FM Remote to listen to the radio.
CONCLUSION
The Archos AV320 is a very good device in general: sleek and functional. A few drawbacks such as the lack of an anti-reflective coating over the plastic LCD cover slightly mar the AV320's other great features such as expandability (some nice attachments available) and functionality (video playback, very cool). The headphones suck, but hey, do they ever not?
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 549.99
Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
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Epinions.com ID:
midknight2k3
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Member: Zakk
Location: Seattle, WA
Reviews written: 40
Trusted by: 13 members
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When there's new technology, check here for reviews.
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