Broadband News Item

Home > News > News Item

Archos: Moves Into The Living Room With Archos TV+

Last updated: Thursday, February 07, 2008 9:28:00 AM GMT

New WiFi entertainment device lets you stream, surf, record and download from the comfort of your sofa.

ARCHOS, introduces its first ever set-top DVR station, which brings all the advanced technology found in the ARCHOS PMPs to your TV. The ARCHOS TV+ is a new home entertainment hub. Acting as a bridge between your computer and your TV, the features of the ARCHOS TV+ allows you to stream content from your PC, and also lets you record TV shows and surf the web as well as download and watch movies all on your TV from the comfort of your sofa. Available in selected outlets from January 2008, ARCHOS TV+ will have an SRP of £169.99 (80GB) and £239.99 (250 GB).

The device will link seamlessly to ARCHOS’ range of Portable Media Players so that you can also have the option of taking your entertainment with you.

The box sits by your TV and connects up to your home network via WiFi or LAN connection, which not only gives you access to the internet but also allows you to access any music, movies or photos you have on your home computers. Via UPnP you can ‘stream’ this digital entertainment and display it on your TV. This allows those who want to watch a movie in a more comfortable setting than on a computer monitor or play a photo slideshow in a social context.

TV recording is made easy with the EPG, which enables one-click scheduling of recording up to a week in advance. Once programmed, ARCHOS TV+ will automatically communicate with your set-top-box to record the chosen programme. This will then be stored on your ARCHOS TV+ memory, which comes in 80GB and 250GB sizes. 250GB is enough to hold roughly 450 hours of video, and the memory can also be used to store music, movies and photos, all of which will be accessible through your TV and home entertainment system.

ARCHOS TV+ comes with a remote control which makes navigating the internet, writing emails and even downloading content a simple and straightforward experience. The ARCHOS Content Portal is a facility which acts like an online entertainment superstore, allowing you to rent or buy movies (which are automatically downloaded), watch online news and videos and access other entertainment easily.

More information at: http://www.archos.com

Your Views

Your view

Anonymous?

Name^*

Comments^*

Rowland O'Connor Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:17:03 GMT

I was at the press conference yesterday and took one of these to review.

Here are my initial thoughts:-

Setup
Setting this thing up is a herculean effort. Instructions are poor by omission of critical information.
-The default settings are for NTSC so don't show up on a standard SCART PAL system on initial device power up. It took over an hour to find this problem and had to initially use HDMI to see the screen.
-Connectors on the back of the device are RGB / phono with 6 each for input and output (making a total of 12).
-There is an HDMI output socket but no HDMI capability in the device (max 576p).
-The device forces you to "register" online to access most of it's functionality. Unfortunately, to register you need to go to your office PC as there is no native browser support (it's an extra plugin at 20 quid).
-EPG doesn't work (even after registration). Unhelpful numeric error code.
-Plugins don't work. 3 plugins downloded all of which returned another unhelpful numeric error code. On further investigation, we found the Archos website was sending us HTTP 404 (file not found) plugin files.
-To install the web browser plugin you need to hook up the TV+ to your PC using a USB cable (not supplied). This would certainly be beyond an average home consumer.

Capabilities
-No HDMI support. The video low resolution output (576p) shows up on HDMI 40" capable TV.
-Plays streaming media from home network. Extra plugins (extra cost) required to play video files.
-Large capacity (250GB version).
-We have yet to get the input (from a HD satellite box) to work with the Archos. It just displays a blank screen but audio works ok.
-The TV+ uses IR to "control" your satellite box, DVD, Freeview or whatever. This means that it need to sit FACING these devices to operate. This is simply "weird" as most home would stack the device underneath / on top to the IR will NEVER work.

Progress Today
At the end of the day (5pm), th

Top News

[read more]

Recent Articles

[read more]