Archos

[Tom]

I'm thinking about buying one of those Archos thingies.

As well as being a super little gadget to play with on long flights etc, I can also knock it out for work at 15-20 quid a day. Lots of directors these days like having monitors on a wireless microwave link (while filming), usually these kits have a small 6 inch TFT screen, but I reckon it would be better to have a screen that can actually record stuff, that way they can sit in the car and watch it back, make sure they've got all the shots they need. I can buy the microwave tx/rx bits separately, they're not too expensive.

Now then, are these things any good? What sort of audio quality can I get? Is it possible to record audio as uncompressed .wav, from the line in socket?

How easy is it to set it recording? Can I also set it to record on a continuous loop, and store various chunks of that loop to the HD (thereby reducing the amount of space available for that loop)?

I'm presuming they have a 'video in' socket, I can just plug a camera or other source right in the back, and it pops up on the screen?

 

[Xavier]

Sorry Tom, this is really one for the "Mobiles, PDA's, MP3, Gadgets" subforum.


*moves*

 

[Tom]

Right, bought one, the AV400 with a 20 gig drive. I'm mucking around with it now, I'll try and post some high quality videos later on to let you see how good it is.

Basically, the quality is better than Freeview or Sky Digital (although maybe not on a par with the best movie channels), better than SVHS, not quite as good as DV. Its recording some DVDs now, which I shall evaluate later.

One disappointment is that there doesn't seem to be an Svideo out (although it has Svideo in), but maybe thats a software thing that needs changing or something.