I was wondering if anyone has had any expirience with the archos av500, because i've heard of some catch when playing all your divx movies on there, secondly how easy is it to get video on there>?
I have an AV500 and it is a very good movie player. I have not had any trouble with DivX or Xvid on the unit. The easiest way to get movies on it is to use the MP4 translator program on the Archos website since the only files the unit plays are: DivX, Xvid and AVIs with MP4 encoding.
so, i was thinking of buying the AV500 but the cowon seems nice although it has no replaceable battery? which do you think is the best. I've also heard good things about the creative zen vision.
Of the three i would have picked the Archos, although i have no personal expirience with the other two systems i have never heard of the cowon before and although the Zen Vision:M is a nice looking system i had a friend who had one of the Zen jukebox mp3 players and absolutely hated it he said the battery life was terrible and the software was fiddley and annoying. Also the Zen only has a 2.5inch screen whereas the AV500 has a lovely 4inch widescreen.
thanks, I think that I'm going to go for the archos AV500, although my cousin had the cowon A2 but there firmware's crappy and its messed up his cowon. seeing as you have the AV500, how easy is it to get videos on there? (mainly divx/avi? Also do you reckon its worth buying the extra battery as i've heard the archos has a pretty poor battery life??
I highly recommend archos. I have an archos av380 (80gb, no longer manufactured), but here's a picture. Plays .avi files aswell. Wonderful
The battery life isn't brilliant. About 10 hours of music and 4 hours of video. Although i havent personally found the battery too bad since i mostly use the video function to watch programs that i have recorded so its charging from the TV pod. Although if you were going on a long flight it would be handy to have an extra battery. Oh one more plus for the archos which i forgot earlier on was that the archos can record from the tv which is great for backing up dvds since you dont have to worry about encoding.
yes, that is a great advantage. I like recording direct from the television. But the picture is only good..it isn't excellent..
Recording and playing back on the TV is quite easy. Just connect your archos tv pod to the mains and use the provided wires to connect to your tv then connect your av500 to the tv pod and select the TVCorder option. There is also a way to schedual recordings although i have not used that.