An update on recent technical problems and more from the admin: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/250292/on-technical-difficulties-mod-coverage-and-other-things/p1?new=1
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Archos or Creative
That_Guy
I don't wanna be that guyRegistered User regular
I don't wanna be that guyRegistered User regular
I have been looking around them internets for a good deal on an Archos or Creative PMP (Personal Media Player) and came across 2 really good deals on refurb units. First up is the Creative Zen Vision W 30GB. Next is the Archos 504 40GB. Both are currently the same price (the Vision has free shipping) at $169.99. I have a couple of concerns about both, including supported file formats, longevity, and general usability. Currently I have an iPod Color I got from the "Free Ipod" deals years ago. I am running RockBox on the iPod and have rather primitive video playback abilities, but I want more. Sundays at work a really slow and I want to be able to watch TV shows and movies without being tied down to my laptop, ORB and an aircard.
I value this community's options, so what do you all think?
PS: I will post the links to the deals if anyone wants them, after I get some honest opinions.
I value this community's options, so what do you all think?
PS: I will post the links to the deals if anyone wants them, after I get some honest opinions.
https://www.youtube.com/hesthatguy | https://www.patreon.com/hesthatguy | https://steamcommunity.com/id/ThatGuy3141/
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Edit: If you can afford it, the new iPod Classic is pretty damn good. Though dealing with the proprietary video format is a real hassle.
The Zen W also doesn't support the newest versions of DivX and Xvid, and I've had to get semi-decent at figuring out what version of a codec a video is in, and how to change it if needed. I'm not sure if the Archos line is better for this.
It looks like hell, but still works like new. One of my friends has gone through three iPods in that time (failed battery, split casing when dropped, and the last one inexplicably stopped registering that it was attached to a computer. To be fair to Apple, they did warranty replace the first and repaired the third under warranty).
EDIT: FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK. I missed the Archos deal by a couple of hours. Here is the Creative deal, though.
I haven't been using it much at all lately because I had to get a new iPod because my old one's battery gave up the ghost, and the new one plays videos. Since I don't really watch videos, it fits my niche just fine.
Oh, and at some point during a trip, I put in a CF card that happened to bend one of the pins, so it no longer reads CF cards, meaning it's useless as photo backup. Ultimately, both device would probably suit your needs just fine if you're not looking for any kind of integration, but rather just something you can copy things over to.
I primarily wanted a music player onto which I could transfer my whole CD collection (which I already have, ripped, on my laptop hard drive. That's easily 40GB, and I wanted room to grow, so 80GB was the minimum, but the difference between 80GB and 160GB was only about 30$, so I went for larger.)
I had a bad experience with Creative players in the past (bought a MuVo something-or-other, 512MB flash over 3 years ago, got home, found that the battery cover was broken, exchanged it for another identical unit, which completely died less than a week later, so I exchanged that for an iRiver 512MB flash player, which sounded much better -- thanks to its Sennheiser earbuds -- and has worked for me ever since) and I'd rather avoid iPods, mostly because I'd rather organise my media files myself than depend on incomplete and erroneous ID3 tags and such.
freedb Rant spoilered for those of you who don't care:
Who the hell capitalizes everything? I don't need my song titles screamed back at me!
Please, oh, pretty please: could you review the info you typed in before submitting it to freedb?
While you're at it, why not pick the most reasonable choices for musical genres? I mean, Data isn't a musical genre (that I'm aware of, unless songs sung by Brent Spiner are a genre upon themselves) and folk isn't the same as blues or rock.
There really should be some kind of bot that goes through freedb, reports duplicate entries (as in, entries for the same CD) and automatically deletes the least-complete entries, and then submits the remaining dupes for human review, on a website, somewhere.
Anyway, I didn't see any other alternatives except for Archos devices, which get about half good reviews, and half bad ones.
Here's my review:
The good: many great components, tons of great functionality. The screen is nice and large, and can display full-res DVDs (800x480). With backlighting turned all the way up, the colors are nice and saturated, and the whole display is as sharp as can be. The touchscreen is responsive, even with the screen protector that came with the unit left on (as in, the thin sticky plastic film that came stuck on the screen to protect against scratches during shipping. I just left it on, and have been having no problems.)
The player can play all sorts of formats, including mp3 (obviously) WMA and WAV, but for now, I haven't been able to play OGG or FLAC. I suspect that unencrypted AAC files can play, but I haven't tested any, because I don't have any on hand to verify. Video-wise, the unit surprised me by being able to play .FLVs directly! Otherwise, most MPEG4 formats will work (DivX, XviD, H264.) To play MPEG1 and MPEG2 videos, you'll need to buy the Cinema add-on, which is 20$ extra, but lets you play ripped VOB files directly from the drive. AVIs and such with AC3 sound also won't play unless you have the cinema add-on.
When connected via USB2, the 605 can act either as a multimedia player, which is accessible through "My Computer" as a device, and which can be synched using Windows Media Player 11, or you can set it to work like a USB Mass Storage device. Transfer speeds are surprisingly fast, faster than most flash players I've used in the past.
The unit sounds good with a pair of Sennheiser earbuds (about 30$, the best earbuds you can get in that price range!) but I haven't tried the buds that came with the unit. One thing, though: the unit is just loud enough. Where I would normally use my iRiver at volumes of 40-50%, I find myself regularly setting the Archos's volume in the 90-100% range. There's also a builtin speaker, which sounds pretty good considering its size, but which distorts badly when things get too loud. Still, it's great when you just want to share a quick burst of music, or a short video clip with fans.
Wifi: the unit can connect to WiFi hotspots (doesn't seem to support WPA, though, only WEP. I may be wrong. Anyway, it mostly works, except that the included Opera port is crippled and you have to pay 30$ to unlock it. Otherwise, I was easily able to transfer files from shared drives on my laptop to the Archos via wifi, and I was also able to stream videos from my laptop to the Archos without copying them over first. The Archos can even see media servers such as TVersity (which I use to share and stream videos and music to my XBox360) or the Windows Media Player 11 streaming (which is also used to share to an Xbox360.)
For viewing images and PDFs (all the user manuals and help files come straight on the unit in PDF form, which is nice) the unit works as well as other players I've seen. PDFs look pretty nice, considering the power of the unit.
The Bad: The interface. They're still using an interface that was designed for their previous devices which didn't have a touchscreen, so the UI just isn't designed to work well with a touchscreen. The column of buttons to the right side of the screen (and I mean physical buttons, not UI buttons) isn't the best layout, and they feel flimsy and fragile, like they could break easily. They are also badly-placed: the headphone jack is on the bottom-left side, so it's opposite the buttons, which mean that you can't easily operate it blindly while it's in your pocket. You also can't put it into the carrying pouch that comes with it while it's turned on, because either the headphone jack will prevent you from pushing it all the way down, or the buttons will get randomly pressed as you push it in. Pretty stupid design, actually.
More on the UI: apart from dragging sliders to change volumes, EQ, or moving through a song or video, there's no drag 'n drop functionality. File transfers would be so much simpler if that were available... And on the subject of the UI not being well-designed for a touchscreen: they provide two "Palm-style" styluses (stylii?) and I can see why: using your fingers requires a lot of precision. You'll get the best results navigating with your fingernails, but some of the buttons are really small, even with a stylus.
There is a lock button, but a lock switch would have been better: with a button, you have to hold it down for a few seconds to lock or unlock. Also, the volume buttons remain functional when you lock the rest of the controls, so if you first lock the controls, then push the unit into its carrying pouch (or sometimes in your coat pocket, etc.) you might accidentally change the volume. Plus, while the unit is locked, every time you touch the touchscreen, it lights up to tell you that controls are locked. Hugely stupid waste of battery power, if you ask me.
For video playback, I couldn't find any options that let me tweak the aspect ratio of videos (many downloaded videos have really bad aspect ratios) and some of the viewing modes crop parts of the image to make it full-screen. Normal view is the best for files that are close to DVD resolutions.
The unit, as-is, can only be charged through the USB port. A full charge can take a whole night. If you want to charge it faster, you have to get one of their add-on PVR units, one of which includes a bigger battery that can recharge your unit's battery much faster. And the USB cable has a proprietary connector on the device slot, instead of using a standard mini-A or mini-B.
You can copy over some .swf files if you want to play simple flash games or animations, but I have yet to find a game that plays at an acceptable speed and many of the games I transfer to the unit simply don't play at all.
Since last Saturday, I've been trying to buy the browser and cinema plugins, but neither their website nor the on-device store work properly to let me buy the plugins. I even sent them an email requesting support, where I got an auto-reply saying that the address I used (found on the device) is not in use anymore and to use their support form instead. I clicked on the link provided, which got me to their site's 404 page (not model 404, 404 as in page not found.) By looking through the site, I finally found the support form. I'm still waiting for their response (the 48 hour delay they give for a reply hasn't elapsed yet, so I'm still giving them the benefit of the doubt here.)
Conclusion: The raw components that went into the Archos 605 wifi 160GB seem well-chosen, and the feature set is a techie's dream come true. Unfortunately, it seems that the company (which is French, incidentally) really doesn't have their shit together yet. Flaky website, clearly not through-through UI and controls design, and functionality that should be included with the device, instead of being sold separately, are all signs of a company that's lost (or never had?) focus. I don't want to sound pretentious, but I could certainly design a much better set of controls and UI. So much potential, so many wasted opportunities due to bad design...
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I bought an Archos 504 (80GB if that matters to you) off Ebay about a month ago and I was slightly disappointed. That's not to say I'm unhappy with the unit; I just expected more. It's a definite step up from my last MP3 player was a Creative Zen from 2002 which was ugly but functional.
Cons
1. The main thing that surprised me about the 504 was how big it was. I knew the dimensions beforehand but it still surprised me with how bulky it seemed to be. It's a little on the heavy side too. Both those characteristics make it feel really solid. It's a little more fragile than it seems though. The HDD seems pretty sensitive especially after my Zen. It sometimes skips when I have it in my pant pocket and I'm walking, which my Zen never did.
2. The interface is pretty clunky. It's really inelegant. Getting it to play a song involves quite a lot of drilling down from the home screen and it is a little bit of a nightmare creating playlists. For some reason it seems to create a duplicate playlist of one I've updated using the player. The duplicate playlist disappears after a few days but I don't know how or why it happens or how to prevent it. You can also use it as a WMP11 portable device so you can set up all your playlists there but that aspect has proven a little tricky to get used to. I am not sure how much of that is design flaw vs user ineptness.
3. The battery life is mediocre. Since I bought mine used, I don't know how much of that is attributable to previous owner abuse/battery degradation but it doesn't seem to last anywhere near as long as the stated claim. The battery life for movie playback is supposed to be 5 hours. My experience is closer to 2-2.5 with the brightness set to 0. Granted, I am playing back raw VOB files so that might explain a lot of it. I haven't really tested the battery for music playback but based on the battery gauge, I think it's probably 10-12 hours.
4. The nickle-and-diming when it comes to accessories. No included AC charger is beyond idiotic in my opinion. I realize Archos wants us to buy their shit but USB charging is pretty slow and sometimes just inconvenient. The add-ons are also a little ridiculously priced. $26 was the lowest I found for the AC charger.
Pros
1. Absolutely beautiful screen. It really washes out in sunlight but I have yet to see an LCD screen that doesn't. Everything looks really sharp and clean. I prefer to watch some things on the 504 over my computer. The screen is small enough that video doesn't get stretched too much but large enough that I can see enough detail to make me very happy. Which leads me to...
2. VOB playback. Battery hog or not, this feature sold me on the thing. I am a pretty patient person but I can't wait 2 hours or more to convert video for my device. Getting the VOB file off the DVD takes me little more than 10 minutes. And I do not have to compromise on video or audio quality. Definitely worth the $20 for the software plug in to get this.
And that's pretty much my review. I know the con list is lot longer than the pro one, but I think the cons are pretty minor (except for the battery life possibly; double capacity batteries can be had for about $40). I spent a good deal of time shopping around and am pretty satisfied with my purchase. I paid about $185 total btw.
I just picked up the Archos 504 80 GB from the Archos store referb'd. It has a 6 month warranty so I felt save buying it. Prices at the Archos store for referb look like they have dropped recently, so check it out for a good deal.
All together with 2nd day shipping, I got it for $207
I would have suggested getting a zune if you were willing to wait. Woot had brown 30gb zune's for $80 a while back. I picked up a black one for $100, and it was a very awesome buy.
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
I was not really into getting a Zune. I wanted something with a bigger screen, BETTER screen, more features, larger capacity, you get the picture. It was well worth it IMO. It was just a sliver of my tax return, as well.