Archos AV400

Basq

Hello all.

Anyone here have any experiences with the Archos AV400? Got it from the brother as a 21st Birthday / Christmas present... looks like a great piece of machinery but Amazon haven't delivered it yet!

For those of you that don't know what it is: Official Site

Archos AV400


From Amazon:

Geared towards families, TV enthusiasts and gadget lovers, the Pocket Video Recorder AV400 experience starts in the living room where you can record television shows and movies directly from a TV, VCR, or cable/satellite receiver with a convenient one-time set-up TV Cradle. At the same time, the AV400 takes personal entertainment enjoyment far beyond the living room, where consumers can watch videos and view photos on a large colour LCD screen, listen to and record music, and transfer photos from a digital camera and data files from a PC or Macintosh.
The Pocket Video Recorder AV400 was designed with consumer ease of use in mind and presents many new features unseen in a portable video player, including a sleek and small design, 20-gigabyte to 100-gigabyte hard disk capacity, removable battery for extended life (20-gigabyte version), one-time set-up TV Cradle, an external speaker for enjoying music and video without headphones, best video playback quality 1 , and a built-in Compact Flash reader for transferring photos directly from digital cameras. These new features make the AV400 a uniquely powerful device, yet slim, light and easy to use.

Portable Entertainment Starts with the Pocket Digital Video Recorder
To be placed on or near the TV set, the TV Cradle is a docking station for the AV400 that allows you to record directly from a TV, VCR or cable/satellite tuner. Once the TV Cradle is connected to the TV, VCR or cable/satellite receiver for the first time, you will not have to reconnect the cables again, just dock the AV400 and you are ready to record or view your files on the TV. The AV400 Recording Scheduler directly controls the tuner inside your VCR or cable/satellite receiver to automatically adjust the channel and record based on the time and duration of the schedule. Further, the AV400 Scheduler will synchronize with Yahoo TV Guide (where available) from the Internet so you can prepare your recordings for the week or month in advance.

Far More than a Portable Music Player with Video, Photos, Music and More
The new Pocket Video Recorder AV400 allows you to:

Record and Play Back Video: Record between 80 and up to 400 hours of TV programs and video content, or between 40 and up to 200 2 full-length movies in MPEG-4 video, at DVD quality and with CD quality stereo sound. Listen with a built-in speaker or headphones.

Schedule Video Recording: Program recordings using the Recording Scheduler, which directly controls the VCR or set-top box tuner to schedule and automatically record TV programming.

Enjoy a Large, Colour LCD Screen: The AV400 features a high-resolution, 3.5-inch or 3.8- inch colour LCD screen 3 or view directly on a TV, PC or other video output device.

Record and Listen to Music: The newly designed music player lets you record between 300 and up to 1500 3 hours of music, with playback in MP3, WMA or WAV formats using a built-in speaker or headphones. The ARCHOS ARClibrary software automatically tags tracks for easy viewing and organization.

Store and Manage Photos: Store and view hundreds of thousands 3 of JPEG photos on the AV400, and view as a slide show. Instantly transfer photos from computers using USB 2.0 or from memory cards using the built-in CompactFlash" reader. The Pocket Video Recorder AV400 can also support SD, MMC, SmartMedia", Memory Stick ® or Memory Stick Pro thanks to the optional 4-in adapter.

Jammer

very very delicate piece of kit..and its kinda chunky, what can u expect tho...its does everything bar wash the dishes!!

Basq

Jammer wrote:

very very delicate piece of kit..and its kinda chunky, what can u expect tho...its does everything bar wash the dishes!!

Yeah, looks quite good!

Should hopefully be in the morning. Read a very good review of it here: http://www17.tomshardware.com/mobile/20040706/

As for it being chunky, i don't expect to be hauling it around the place - to college etc - especially taking into account that price tag and how much i'd be kicking myself if it was lost / stolen.

Already have an iPod for listening to MP3's on the move, so this will be mainly for hooking up to my stereo to listen to some MP3's / recording some stuff off TV etc.

Should be a great little gizmo - will keep you all posted on how i get on with it!

Astro1996

I got one of these for christmas and its bloody brilliant ive got 4-5gb of music on it, 3 seasons of the simpsons and 1 season of family guy. you will love it. Its very fast with usb 2.

Basq

Cheers for the info Astro.

Am still waiting for mine. A few people told me mail isn't expected to resume til Thursday though so here's hoping...

Am busy in the process of converting practically every DVD i own into Divx format!

weemcd

thats a savage peice of kit, be carefull with it tho, looks like a theive magnets. ps dude are you going to greenday?

Astro1996

Heres a handy program for you, it includes an av400 profile..

http://divx.ppccool.com/

Recording from the tv is the best thing. The best settings regarding the quality/storage size from the tv ive found are, set it to lcd mode then bitrate 1000kbs and audio 32khz, 30mins is +/- 190-200mb and when you play it back on the tv it looks almost the same.

Update the firmware to 1.8 when you get it, its more finely tweaked.

Basq

weemcd wrote:

thats a savage peice of kit, be carefull with it tho, looks like a theive magnets. ps dude are you going to greenday?

Yeah, damn right i'm going to Green Day! Can't wait to hear the new stuff live, you going yourself?

Regarding it being a thieves magnet, like i said above.. i don't expect to be hauling it around to college etc. I've got an iPod for listening to music on the move anyways! Will be mainly used for recording stuff off TV / watching stuff in mate's houses etc (hook it up to the TV and pick something off it!) etc.

Astro1996 wrote:

Heres a handy program for you, it includes an av400 profile..

http://divx.ppccool.com/

Recording from the tv is the best thing. The best settings regarding the quality/storage size from the tv ive found are, set it to lcd mode then bitrate 1000kbs and audio 32khz, 30mins is +/- 190-200mb and when you play it back on the tv it looks almost the same.

Update the firmware to 1.8 when you get it, its more finely tweaked.

Cheers for all the tips Astro. Will keep 'em all in mind when i hopefully recieve in on Thursday. Was using Dr. Divx (www.divx.com/drdivx) up until now but will try that PocketDivxEncoder from now on. Cheers again!

Can't wait to get it now!!

PS - Apologies for posting that link to that file a few minutes ago - was a Quicktime Movie trailer for new film 'White Noise' (looks quite good by the way) and i've no download manager on the computer - so i needed a link to 'Save Target As' somewhere!

weemcd

aye lookin forward to the show, i doubt they will top the ambassidor show tho

Basq

Yeah, not a huge fan of The Point but Green Day will never let you down for a top-class show!

MrPinK

Picked one up when I was in the US over the summer. My morning commute went much better with some Family Guy and The Office. It's a big improvement over the old 300 series, in both functionality and design. The old one was a bit chunky and didn't fit into my pocket too well. I like the new cradle too.

There are a couple of things missing though. The 300 series had a 40gig model, which is the ideal capacity imho. There's a huge price difference between the 420 and the 480, they really could do with something in between. And the 300 series had a camera attachment that could turn the whole thing into a digital camcorder, which is a fantastic idea when you got all that HD space.

ambro25

Best gadget I've bought in years. Totally converted me to multi-capable devices...and totally leave Ipods to fashion victims!

However (there is a "but"), get ready to fiddle with DivX innards (i.e. become expert in home-based avi video editing), though, as quite a lot of your avis and those which you may download will need audio/video re-synching. The player's quite particular with video and audio format combinations, out-of-synch happens a bit too often. + (as they're still relatively new) there's precious little ARCHOS-specific FAQs & tutorials on web. Nothing you can't sort in a few mins and a good PC, though

Contrary to a lot of posts/comments on the web, I've found reliability and build quality to be way beyond superlative, easily on a par with anything SONY-badged. But in agreement with a lot of posts/comments on the web, their customer support absolutely sucks.

Still, they're learning.

Basq

ambro25 wrote:

However (there is a "but"), get ready to fiddle with DivX innards (i.e. become expert in home-based avi video editing), though, as quite a lot of your avis and those which you may download will need audio/video re-synching. The player's quite particular with video and audio format combinations, out-of-synch happens a bit too often.

Not been getting any out-of-synch problems so far with any videos downloaded off the Web... especially after i simply re-encode them in the Virtual Dub encoder (MPG4 Translator v3.0.7) provided with the AV400.

Very easy-to-use.. pick your source file, select a location for your destination file to go.. and click 'Start'.

Takes about 25 minutes for a 90 minute movie.

Andrew Fotzpatr

ye thats a good program..got the archos gmini 400 at Christmas time very good..

ambro25

Basquille - I find any episode (you may know what I mean - e.g. Lost.se01e09.lol.hdtv.avi) I grab is out of sync, because the audio is VBR, not CBR.
Or sometimes no audio at all because it's AC3 (which the Arch' just doesn't decode).

In both cases, I use VDub to reencode the audio to mp3 with the Lame codec, but the audio tracks ends up a good second or two too late compared to the video sequence - so I have to yet again VDub the audio with introducing a delay (trial-&-error style to guesstimate the sync difference).

Chalk

ambro using vdub :
go to audio menu
selcect full processing mode as opposed to direct stream copy
then go to file and save wav.

that will eliminate any out of synch-ness from vbr mp3s

ambro25

Chalk - thanks for the tip, but ripping the audio to wav then re-encoding the video with the wav audio file is all well and good if I've got about an hour or so spare... . What I'm trying to do is re-sync using direct stream copy on both video AND audio (takes seconds).

On a different but related note, I've noted the Arch400 doesn't seem as happy with XviD than with DivX avis, with some framerate issues. Could be down to the original file encoding, but you noticed that, Basquille?

rubberduckey

Got the AV440 2 weeks ago, fantastic functionality.

Setup was very straightforward except for getting the IR emitter to work on my NTL set top box.

Anyone any advice??

I saw a post from Basquille that you have it working on your Chorus box.

Advise would be most appreciated.

Thanks

Basq

padshea2 wrote:

Got the AV440 2 weeks ago, fantastic functionality.

Setup was very straightforward except for getting the IR emitter to work on my NTL set top box.

Anyone any advice??

I saw a post from Basquille that you have it working on your Chorus box.

Advise would be most appreciated.

Thanks

Got it to work on my Chorus box.. but only got mono sound (from left speaker). Bit irritating.. may change to using a VCR in time!

The IR emitter is the toughest part! I forgot exactly how i set that up.

Try the following:

- Look up your brand of NTL Box first
- Go into Setup --> TV Control
- Change TV Tuner to 'Cable Box'
- Change Tuner Model to your NTL Box brand. (for example, my Chorus Box was made by General Instrument)
- Go into Tune IR Emitter
- Leave all the 'Tune channel select:' options as they are
- Click 'Test channel select' (channel will refresh / increment) or 'Test: ON/OFF (box will turn off).. whichever you'd notice more!
- If it doesn't work, move to the next code under 'Tune CABLE code for <brand name>' and retry!

rubberduckey

Thanks Basquille, will try that when I get home.

Basq

Best of luck!

Let me know how you get on anyways.

The IR Emitter can very tricky.

rubberduckey

Thanks Basquille, I have it working, thanks for the advise.

If any other digital NTl usrs are attempting this, just follow Basquilles advise and select the NTL Pace model option to tune in IR.

Cheers P

Basq

padshea2 wrote:

Thanks Basquille, I have it working, thanks for the advise.

If any other digital NTl usrs are attempting this, just follow Basquilles advise and select the NTL Pace model option to tune in IR.

Cheers P

No problem!

Enjoy the gadget!!

philtaylor

Lads,

Got one of these after Christmas in the States . Superb kit for Commuting . One Problem that I have do . It only records the channel I am watching on the TV. I can 't watch one channel and record on another or record like a VCR ie..have the TV turned on standby.

Any ideas

ambro25

Well, it's not a TiVO box: it hasn't got an internal tuner itself, so of course it's not gonna record anything else but what's coming in 'through the pipe' (the set of AV-In cinches).

If you want to watch 1 channel and record another,

1/ hook up the ARCHOS cradle to a VCR
2/ tune the channel you want to record on the VCR
3/ record the tuned channel from the VCR and
4/ watch the other channel (the one you want to watch whilcts recording another) on the TV.

Simple

philtaylor

Cheers for the info ,

yeah i actually have done that has by sky box runs through the vcr and will record 1 channel while watching another , however if I change the channel it reverts back from the vcr channel recording to the channel I have swithced to

The Recliner

I am thinking of getting one of these

Can anyone tell me exactly (what applications should I use) how to get a DVD I own onto this gizmo and how much space does a movie take up. Also doe sthe copying keep the extras?

Also will it play songs recorded through iTunes?

Thanks

charmedmad

Im guessing from reading you can only get it in the US, any idea on the price in euros. Im going to get a iriver pmp 140 but this looks so much better
Can it playback Divx and Xvid?
ps id be recording off NTL so im glad it is possible cos it would make my TV Ripping so much easier

Nietzschean

I picked up one of the new pma430's there last week, sweet piece of kit...
pvr + pda..... 30gig is a lil small but i'll live , play's Xvid/DivX but i've found better support with Xvids encoded by other people , and also ran into a good few problems with ABR and VBR mp3 audio tracks with films had to convert em all to CBR but thats not too much hassle. (Using virtualdub directly is so much handier once ye know how to use it, had 2 copies of it running simultaniously doing nice big batch jobs for me over the weekend)