Domain Name Com's Electronics Archos 404 30GB Portable Digital Media Player (500868)

Electronics Archos 404 30GB Portable Digital Media Player (500868)

Domain Name Com's - Electronics : Archos 404 30GB Portable Digital Media Player (500868)

- Almost perfect
Great for movies. A serious, efficient, and multi-functional device that does the job well from A to Z (from transferring files, accepting formats, watching, and resuming).

Pros:
- 30GB hard drive,
- very good screen_size/device_size ratio,
- handles many video formats (for example, wmv, xvid) and accepts videos from many converters. Some other players officially support formats but are very picky about video format details,
- good screen, although resolution and viewing angle could be better,
- very fast USB transfer,
- no driver or special software needed,
- internal speaker, (not perfect, much better than none),
- many details done right, for example, different USB modes, bookmarking movies, Resume function,
- solid case. you get a feel of a sturdy device, not a toy,
- video to TV through a fairly cheap cable, (of course, a proprietary cable is needed :) )
- PDF viewer,
- potential for expansion (video recorder),
- ArchosLink software to download and sync podcasts.

Cons:
- H.264 and mpeg-2 (DVD) have to be bought separately. Not a huge deal because mpeg-2 are usually converted into smaller files, and H.264 video podcast are avail in other formats as well,
- buttons have left and right function. It is ok after you get used to it, separate buttons would be easier,
- proprietary USB cable,
- no wall charger,
- no backlit buttons, difficult to navigate at night.

Rating:

- Very good pmp device.
I owned a Zune 30 before i bought this. But the new updated software just killed the Zune. I had been looking at this Archos 404 for sometime now. This blows away any Zune or Ipod and its 4th generation. I forgot how great it is to have a device thats not linked to bad software or any software period. It does everything really easy and video and music look and sound great on it. You can buy the 2 extra plugins for it to give you more codec choice and thats only 40 dollars more,but trust me its worth it. The device will almost play anything. Drag and drop truely is a wonderful thing. I have put my Zune up for sale and i'm glad i finally got the 404.

Rating:

- Major output power problem
I am surprised that none of the reviews here has mentioned one truly serious problem with this device. This player suffers from a very low and insufficient output power.
Actually the output signal is so week that even my high power vehicle and home stereo systems can not get the music to loud enough levels ( I am using a direct audio-out cable). When used in sports this gets really irritating.
I have been pleased with the various video formats that it supports and I have been using it to watch DVD quality movies while on long flights. I was able to play WMV and AVI files out of the box while for the MPEG2 I did purchase the additional Cinema plug-in from ARCHOS Web site.

The following are additional cons:
* Cumbersome stone age menu and controls
* In video mode the battery dries out very quickly
* No power supply included
* The device crashes from time to time in the midst of playing a file. This does not happen very often but still it might be irritating
* For some reasons it would not play some AVI/DiVX/MPEG4 files. I can't explain this and I am unsure why would it play perfectly some files while fail with some other files.

In summary it is still probably one of the best players around due to the wide range of supported video file formats and outstanding screen quality.

Rating:

- A multi-functional mp3 player.
I bought the Archos 404 to replace a Gmini402 whose screen broke, and I like the new 404 better in some ways, but worse in others. I had all of my files backed up as mp3's and was able to copy them directly into the Archos 404 and be up using them very quickly. The UI is about the same. I really like the larger color display, and being able to view video's is nice, but I got it mostly for music. I was able to record wav files into my Gmini402 directly, and they sounded pretty good, when I used an external mixer. Also, I did like the option of being able to copy my camera's pictures to the 404, which I couldn't do with the Gmini. The features were not documented well enough on the Archos 404, and indeed I can do the same, but discovered I needed to buy the DVR station to do most of the things I took for granted, and that's a pretty spendy add-on. By reading the info I could get my hands on, I decided to "cheap out" and buy the $27 Docking Adapter. With it, I could charge my unit from the wall, and use it to transfer files between my camera and the unit. It works fine. I also thought I could plug a audio Line in cable into my headphone jack (with an archos supplied addapter) to get the audio line-in signal into the unit, but after ordering the video/audio cable for $20 incl shipping, I discovered that didn't work, and I need to buy the Travel adapter for another $60 to get that, and only suspect it will work to record just the audio, since I can't find that documented anywhere. Maybe I should have gone with the DVR station, but I wasn't interested in using the unit as a DVR.

I tried to play some of the video's my little Casio camera took after loading them into the Archos 404, but discovered that the format wasn't compatible. I figured out how to use Windows Media player to convert the video files to the right format on my computer -so I'll still need to bring it with me on trips if I want to review them in the field, but then discovered I needed to order the $20 Cinema plug-in SW to do view them on my unit even after I converted them with Windows Media Player. I've thrown another $100 at the basic unit to get most of the functionality I "need", but I've resigned to not bother with anything better than recording from the internal microphone.

Rating:

- Archos 404 All Around Good PVP+MP3 Player.
Well, I got my Archos 404 30GB about two weeks ago, and as of this point, I'm in love with this little device. It works well for videos and music, and photo's look great.

Pros:
Great looking video's and photo's.
Resilient LCD, I've used this device quite a lot, and so far not a single scratch.
Gapless playback.
Portable and Compact.
Tactile Buttons- I like these!

Cons:
Gets hot, gets hot rather fast.
Video Format can be hard to get right, but Total Video Converter works well.
AAC, have to buy plug-in for this.
Battery Life-Haven't gotten much for video on it....Ah well!

All in all, I think its a great product, but could use some refining! Other than that, I totally recommend this product!

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