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Review: Archos Media Player Delivers
So, I could manually set the start and stop times for recordings, but I couldn't browse the TV schedule on the unit and select my shows to record from there. That's a dud.
I also never found a really good use for the highly touted Wi-Fi feature. I could have spent some time streaming music, video and photos from a shared folder on my desktop through the unit and onto my television. But that's not what I wanted the docking station to do for me, and I doubt others will either. Music out of my TV speakers is a bit of a nonstarter and any home movies on my hard drive worth watching on the big screen have already been burned to DVD.
Being able to take television recordings on the road is where the Archos excels. The advertised battery life of up to 5 hours for video held up well. I watched a full college football game and a full-length movie recorded to the unit's hard drive without having to recharge. I never ran the unit dead listening to music.
Speaking of music, Archos still takes a back seat to Microsoft's Zune when it comes to music sharing. Two Archos Wi-Fi users can't quickly share their favorite tunes with each other, but the jury is still out on the usefulness of Zune's limited sharing capability anyway.
One downside of the unit is the wireless remote for controlling the unit while it's in the docking station. It is small, thin, flimsy and without enough buttons to get around the on-screen interface very well. Asking consumers to use that remote to burrow through their home Wi-Fi network and into their PC just to watch home movies is too much work and not enough reward.
If Archos shores up the channel guide feature and beefs up the remote, it's got a real winner. As it is now, it's an impressive performer that has some room for improvement in future versions.
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