Archos 705 Portable WiFi Media Player and Recorder with 80GB

Comments about Archos 705 Portable WiFi Media Player and Recorder with 80GB:

No matter what I want, music, photos, movies, TV shows I have it! I can have it all with the Archos.
I travel all week and with this device and can watch recorded media on the plane without dragging out my laptop and booting it up. This screen is crystal clear and this device is lightweight and easy to use.
I think the sound quality of the output video could be better but this is still the best gadget I have ever used.

Comments about Archos 705 Portable WiFi Media Player and Recorder with 80GB:

I love the concept of the Archos 705, but there are some issues. For one, browsing the web has been problematic. You need to pay $20 for a plugin just to browse the web and I've been unable to get the device to finish the payment process. So, no internet. Also, the Archos content portal sometimes will not load.My biggest issue, however, is getting my DVDs to rip properly. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why some DVDs will encode and display properly and others do not. I've had to tweak the ripping software constantly, and unfortunately a 2 hour HD movie takes about 1.5 hours to rip. That's a long time to wait for something that you don't know will work or not.Other than that, the 705 rocks. Great picture, travels well, and my daughter loves it.

Comments about Archos 705 Portable WiFi Media Player and Recorder with 80GB:

This is the product of the year ! I like it, the screen is large. I can use it every where (on train, on holidays). I can connect my camera directly to and transfert the pics. The video playback is great. Internet works perfectly well.

Comments about Archos 705 Portable WiFi Media Player and Recorder with 80GB:

I installed all the plugins (not cheap) and the compatibility is good. I like the WebTV/Radio, tool. But, there are number of situations when the player locks up, volume is way low, can hardly hear it on maximum volume (even compared to my Archos 504 the maximum volume is much lower, and the 504 was already low). Cannot set brightness/gamma/contrast of the LCD, though it is possible on Archos 605 it is not possible on Archos 705. Why?

When the player locks up then I must restart it using the 15 seconds 'power on' method. Then it sometimes still does not restart correctly and stays with hourglass on screen forever. This requires another restart before I get it going again.

The situations where it locks up are many, playing a divx file, updating archos library, browsing the net, clearing the cache (which trigger archlib update), watching tv over internet, viewing a particular picture, cannot remember all, sorry. Archos needs to debug the software more.

But the low volume is real pain as it makes the player unusable with many DivX files, particularly if you want to play them over the TV using the tv cable. Even though I feed the sound thru amplifier and set the sound to maximum, which (would normally cause sound so strong it would bring down the house), it can hardly be heard, but I can hear it fine when I play the file thru PC.

Comments about Archos 705 Portable WiFi Media Player and Recorder with 80GB:

I bought it for avi, mpeg, ... other PC files, not DVD watching. It plays most of them, not all, but no problem. Others I can watch on TV through the PC. But when I fly somewhere for 8+ hours, I load it with playable files and great! Sound is strong, pic quality great, plays music as well. I like the fact that Archos charges extra for additional features. If they put all together and charged $700 for it, I'd end up buying another PC. This way I payed [$] for a portable movie player and that's all I need it for.

Comments about Archos 705 Portable WiFi Media Player and Recorder with 80GB:

The Archos is everthing that is Adveristed, then some. The only thing that they could improve is internal speaker. Even with headphones, the sound is weak. Almost could hear it , when on a airplane.Will try better headphones.

Comments about Archos 705 Portable WiFi Media Player and Recorder with 80GB:

Pro: Decent video resolution and nice 7" screen size. The unit is easy to learn and navigate. However, folks with big fingers it is probably better to use a stylus-type pen for the touch screen.

Con: I don't like using Windows Media Player 10 or higher to sync my video files. Although the drag and drop function will work for some formats. It will not copy video files without WMP, at least for me. WMP will also convert file to the unit before the sync process if it is not in a recognized file format. My biggest complaint is once the video files are in the Archos unit, it cannot be copied out. A bummer. Maybe I'm missing something for the video transfer process. I cannot get the unit to behave like a Hard Drive for these files - unlike the 404, 405 & 604 models I have tried.

Oh, the plug-in games that are purchased separately through Archos are not very good.