Customer Reviews:
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 Almost great March 22, 2007
30 out of 34 found this review helpful
I hate writing reviews like these.
Why? Because this little guy has so much potential...! And I was so excited to finally get this thing! But, at the end of the day, it's a bit of a mixed bag.
Some back story: I'm a Mac guy who had given up on a widescreen iPod (thanks a Steve!), but stumbled upon this. All the reviews on the Archos 404 from the "in-the-know" sites like Wired and CNet gave it really good reviews: "Great little screen...! fairly spacious hard drive...! decent camera/camcorder...!". Sure, it was a jack-of-all trades they said, but it was a darned good one.
So I bought one. And, well, it's not bad! It wasn't too expensive. It certainly does have a great screen. And the camcorder and camera aren't too shabby either. Even the interface, for a Mac user, wasn't the worst thing in the world.
But then I tried to play a movie.
It's supposed to play .mp4 movies "right out of the box", and it does. Sortof. I had transferred a movie I own (and watch way-too-much: "Office Space") w/ Handbrake (a great program) and saved as an .mp4. But I could only watch the first 20 seconds on the Arcos. Anything after that the sound still played, but the picture froze. And fast-forwarding or rewinding just made it angry. Always kicking me out to the video menu.
So I put some smaller .mp4s on. But not only did it have trouble playing them, when I scrolled down the list, the unit restarted! I thought I was crazy, but it did it over, and over.
So, undaunted, I download the "Podcast Plugin" from Acrhos: $19.99. It allows you to play H.264 video (a better compression) and AAC audio, which is darn good too. I was impressed at the Mac friendliness of the offering to boot.
I then re-ripped my movie in Handbrake using the H.264 setting, and it played. Finally. Without crashing. And it looked, and sounded great. Yay. Whew!
But then I tried the camcorder.
I've got to give Archos a bit of credit here, because for what it is, this is a cool little camcorder. You can even get this optional little "snake cam" (which I bought: $129). Stock, even though it doesn't have a zoom, it makes impressive video.
The only problem is the resulting .mov movies don't play in Quicktime. Or iMovie. Or anything else I can use. While the video looks fine, the sound stutters uncontrollably. And it sortof plays in VLC, but while the sound is good, the video glitches.
Well, it says right on the box that it's a Windows Media Center device, and I began to wonder if some of the files I was trying to work with were just a little to "Appley".
Hmmmm, I thought. And I did a little "get info" and I found that the sound on the camcorder's .AVI files uses DVI ADPCM compression. Both very Windows-esque formats. And while Quicktime, etc, does support most AVI files, it doesn't support DVI ADPCM.
I called tech support. And after a looonnnngggg time on hold, a sleepy guy finally answered and curtly answered "sorry, you can return it who you bought it from" to every one of my questions.
So I emailed tech support. And I got the same answers, plus an offer for a "repair" (I think it was the same guy!)... but I kindly explained that it wasn't broken, but simply needed some support and firmware upgrades.... To no avail.
So, bottom line is the Archos 404 is has got a severe case of the yinyangs. On the one hand it's simple, beefy and gorgeous. On the other it's twitchy, finicky and handicapped. Especially for us Mac people. In fact, I'd like to go on the record and say this is an EXTREMELY Windows friendly device... And for a guy who got this primarily to quench his iPod jones, that's a bit of a heart breaker.
Archos, if you're listening, you need to offer a free plugin for Quicktime so the sound works, pronto. Or, a firmware update that allows for a different on-deck sound compression option. Or better yet, do both.
Until then, this will be a crippled unit. Another could-have-been in the handheld what-have-you category. Another iPod casualty. A frigid lover. Especially for us Mac users.
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