3. Easy To Use... With Up-To-Date Equipment

The traditional strong point of Archos' players is their simplicity. Plug the player into your computer, drag and drop your documents, and you're done! But in this case Archos has fallen into the trap of extreme simplification, making technical choices that leave purchasers who haven't replaced their home entertainment equipment recently out in the cold.

Like many of its competitors, the AV700 can now automatically synchronize its contents with the Windows Media Player 10 library. In fact, the player is set by default to do that. Except that if you don't have Windows XP or if Media Player is not your main music management program, it won't work - with the result that the player isn't recognized as an external hard disk. You'll need to go into the AV700 system preferences and choose the "Hard Disk" option instead of "Windows Device," then re-connect the player to the computer.

Similarly, the AV700 also has a USB Host port that lets it load images directly from an external hard disk or recent digital camera. But if the device in question isn't MSC (Mass Storage Class) compliant, which applies to some older devices, direct transfer won't work. And since there's no slot for a Compact Flash or SD card, you'll have no choice but to use a PC to transfer your photos.

Also, it proved impossible to completely connect the AV700 to a TV set over 10 years old. Fortunately, with more recent TVs, everything worked perfectly. And making the connection takes only a minute. Once hooked up, recording directly or programming up to four different recordings is truly child's play. The quality in MPEG-4 640x480 was excellent and almost no loss of quality was detectable compared to the original, even when playing the recording back on a TV set. If the function is available in your country, you can even use Yahoo! Scheduler to program your recordings. In addition, the user's manual is clear enough to help you work out any problems.

DivX compatibility is excellent. All files encoded with standard sizes were able to be played. In the worst case, you'll have to re-encode.