back to article Archos 605 Wi-Fi personal media player

Archos' 605 Wi-Fi represents the flagship model of the French manufacturer's fifth generation of Personal Media Players (PMPs). And although it may not look entirely dissimilar to its predecessors, the 605 brings plenty of new features to the table. Archos 605 Wi-Fi multi-media player Archos' 605 Wi-Fi: hugely capacious …

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  1. RMartin

    Great, now there's TWO of them...

    Archos and Apple I mean. I've been a long term Archos fan starting with the AV20, the AV500 and now a 504. Each one has been a substantial improvement on the last and now this... and I'm beginning to appreciate the "upgrade envy" pull that Apple has so successfully turned into a major business. Archos will always get my money though as its just a much more open and rich system. Nice to see that Archos are learning the same tricks - or not so far as my wallet is concerned.

  2. Andrew Moore

    Okay El Reg...

    ...It's time to do a comparision/round-up between this, the Cowon Q5 and the Nokia N800. I've got some cash to spend and I want to know which one to spend it on.

  3. Ben Tisdall

    Looks good, but price shown a little misleading

    Looks like a very decent bit of kit, but the price you quoted had me scratching my head when looking on Amazon et al... ok, so I'd missed the '4GB' preceeding it, but how about including the price of the model actually reviewed?

    Still, keep up the good work.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nokia 770 upgrade path

    If there's a VNC and SSH client available for this, I might use it to replace my Nokia 770 which cannot handle Flash well, nor play movies smoothly either - as well as being a non-starter YouTube-wise.

    Anyone know about SSH and VNC clients for this?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ogg

    Why no Ogg?

  6. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

    Re. Price

    All the prices were there originally... blame an overzealous sub-editor and a glitch in the edit kit code for their absence.

    The full price list is now present.

  7. Mark Rendle

    Wot no?

    Does "no DivX" imply "no XVid"?

  8. Matt Thornton

    sounds great...

    Having now decided against an iPod, this is the model of choice for me.

    Though I have to ask - do people *really* care that much about being able to access YouTube? Maybe I've missed something, but, I would never rate being able to use it as a reason to buy a device such as this.

    Biggest gripe about this though is that they've changed it from a removeable to a fixed battery. That sucks. Means I'll have to buy the additional battery port to get any decent amount of time for use in remote locations.

  9. michael W

    DivX IS supported

    I'm not sure why so many people always think this but as a 605 Wifi owner since it was first launched in the UK I can guarantee you that DivX and XviD is supported by default meaning you do not need to pay for plugins to be able to play either codecs

    This has been a popular area of discussion on an archos forum I regulary visit - http://forum.archosfans.com

    I'm guessing because Archos simply say mpeg support and don't specifically list divx on their website that people guess it is not supported

  10. The Mighty Spang

    should be a camera card reader as well

    plug in a CF or SD card, one touch backup onto the hard drive (with verification) and an image viewer (that handles raw formats)

    the canon M-80 cost me £450, has slow data transfer and locked regularly whilst trying to back up cards, so i took it back.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Nokia 770 upgrade path

    Ummm, I don't know if you're heading in the right direction - if you're buying this to replace the Nokia, do you realise that it isn't a mobile phone? Or did you buy the Nokia for its PDA-ness, not caring about the mobile phone part of it? Sometimes the blend between multimedia device/mobile phone/PDA/etc is just too close for my liking. I like my phone to be a phone and my MP3 player to be just that. I really don't see the point of buying a phone just to get a PDA - why not just buy a PDA instead?

    Aside from that, this looks nice. If only I had a better job and a lower mortgage...

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Essential addons - pricing !

    Just added up the price of the essential addons ..

    recharge quickly directly from the mains, Power Adapter Charger 29.98 €

    However the charger needs at the least the travel adapter 59.98 € which will also allow external recording from most video sources, though the DVR STATION Gen 5 gives you a full tv program guide but costs 99.99 €

    Play mp4 or mov files 19.99 €

    Play vob or mpg files 19.99 €

    Internet browser ((Opera) and flash player 29.98 €

    That adds up quickly, and when was the last time you paid for a browser ?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    more professional!

    i don't like something seeming beautiful with many additional funtions but nearly don't know what's it.i only want to buy cell phone ,just call,like this:

    http://www.sourcingmap.com/cell-phone-c-980.html

  14. martin

    Essential addons

    the mini dock [and battery dock] come with mains adapters [with UK, EU, US plugs], so quick recharge, if you need it, only costs 29.99€ for the mini dock and 49.99€ for the battery dock. [i'd go for the battery dock, acts like an extra battery and is easy to carry in your bag when travelling]

    i've had the 604 and now the 605, and never needed the MP4 or vob plug-ins, so i appreciate not having to pay for them. some people might not need the web browser, so why should they pay for it?

    the archos pricing needs some getting used to, but i find the pricing model useful. you only pay for what you need, not what marketing think people need [apple anyone?]

    m.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Re: Nokia 770 upgrade path

    "Ummm, I don't know if you're heading in the right direction - if you're buying this to replace the Nokia, do you realise that it isn't a mobile phone?"

    Ummm, do you realise the Nokia 770 isn't a mobile phone either? ;-)

  16. Nicolas Charbonnier

    Nice review but I'd like to suggest being more precise

    Sure enough, Archos can legitimally be claimed to be trying to hide some costs by providing some things as plugins and accessories, but an other way to look at it would also be that Archos is providing the choice for people to personalise their product. Some people probably will be perfectly satisfied with the basic 200 euro 4GB version that plays DivX, WMV, Mp3, accesses the Content Portal and acts as media extender with Upnp/Samba over WiFi. Those plugins and accessories might reasonably be exclusively usefull for power users. Also you should point out that 13 pounds provides both h264 and aac codecs, or both mpeg2/vob and ac3 codecs. Those codecs have to be licenced, so if Archos included them in the basic package, they'd have to pay the licence even though less than half of the users ever will use those codecs.

    FM is available through a 29 euro FM remote control, which doubles as a remote control, again no need for Archos to include it since not every user would like to pay for the FM radio remote control.

    And about paying for browsers, if you have a browser in your mobile phone or PDA you most probably paid for it. And it can be said that people who buy the Microsoft XP/Vista OS are paying for Internet Explorer when it is bundled, and Mac users when they buy a Mac are paying for the development of Safari. The simple thing is Opera and Adobe charge a licence fee, though we don't know how much Archos is over-charging that licence fee, but most definately there is a licence fee. And since a large part of users might not even care to use the browser and WiFi, this way the basic unit cost can be cut by making it optional.

    Nokia N800 and N770 aren't phones eigther. They do multimedia and storage pretty badly at Nokia while they have more of the PDA like features. So if you'd like to do more of the multimedia and internet multimedia stuff then Archos is for you, if you want PDA open-source apps with bad multimedia support then Nokia N-series is for you. Cowon Q5 is running Windows CE and is basically heavy, expensive and thus I don't think of the same class. As for iPod Touch provides less features and less storage at the same price levels though is more compact and may have a more attractive but not necessarilly more useful user interface.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Nicolas Charbonnier

    May I be so rash as to guess that, given your name and your stance, you are an Archos representative? ;-)

    How much does your customer pay for the obligatory WMA and WMV licences? Or is Microsoft so keen to spread the proprietary format that it gives it away for free?

    And, as has already been asked, why no Ogg? That won't cost you anything to license. Was Microsoft unhappy to give you a good price on WMA and WMV if you included it?

    Still, I'm glad it supports DivX etc. Again, MS not too happy for you to make that clear?

  18. Luke

    Mmmm

    Weel, now I am very tempted to get one of these... was looking at the new Creative Zen, but this looks excellent.

    However, because of the "rip-off britain" factor, I will wait until someone from our New York office is coming back to the UK and get them to bring it - for about equiv of about £260 you can get the 160Gb version with DVR dock and all plugins... much better deal!

  19. foxyshadis

    Codec license fees:

    http://www.musemagic.com/papers/licensinginfo.html

    It's just a nickel & dime profit center for Archos, you have to decide for yourself if it's worth it on principle.

  20. Nicolas Charbonnier

    I am not a representative

    But I am webmaster of http://archosfans.com and http://forum.archosfans.com

    So I know what I'm talking about.

    I guess Ogg can technically be added, though it might not be easy to add, but probably that the firmware engineers have a ton of other priorities.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Nicolas Charbonnier

    I'm sure you know what you are talking about as far as you are privy to the information - but I doubt that will include the intricacies of the deal struck with Microsoft...

    foxyshadis: pity that document doesn't even mention that royalty-free options exist.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Archos and EXTRA stuff needed..

    I personally get very pissed off at all these reviews and their constant complaining about how Archos wants to charge you for the Browser or the Dock or something as opposed to bundling them.

    Not ONLY are you getting the Archos for the same price as previous models EVEN if you bought the DVR station, plug ins or whatever but you also get MORE for your money than previous models.

    Why the hell is that so hard to understand?

    When you do a review and you harp about this fact THREE times, you are effectively misleading the people and getting them to think the way YOU think which is not necessarily correct.

    Objectiveness would be nice. Say something like, "I don't like the fact that they do this...but in all fairness, the initial price IS much lower than it would be for bundled..." now THAT would be more accurate..

    I think it's a good idea and you HAVE a choice. NOT going to record from TV? Save yourself $99.

    Hell, I had the station with my AV500 and only used it a couple of times.

    I don't see how it's better to ship it all with the player and charge $150 more and besides, the review would look a lot better if you quoted the actual cost for the player and not the higher cost you quoted.

    Second, it's head and shoulders above the pathetic offerings from Apple. It's simply in its own league as the apple only Plays music and video, that's it.

    George

  23. P. Jausions

    How about SDK?

    If only there was an SDK available, or SSH I could manage my web sites without a bulky laptop...

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