1. Introduction

Archos specializes in portable storage, in particular, MP3 players with hard drives. We had a preview of them at the last CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany, but this is the real thing - Archos has just leapt a little technological barrier by offering a genuine hand-held device for digital video! The Jukebox Multimedia has a hard drive as well as a color LCD 237 x 234-pixel display screen. In addition to its video formats, Archos has invested in the future by choosing the MPEG 4 format, of which the most faithful emissary is none other than the DivX codec. In this article, we'll explain how it works and how to use this portable video player and its very exciting features.

From the design point of view, Archos has chosen to retain the profile of its previous MP3 players. So what you have is a small, metallic case with plastic reinforcements at the corners, a little bit like a shockproof watch. It is the depth of a pack of cigarettes, and one and a half times longer and wider. At 293 grams (just over 10 ounces), including the battery, it weighs almost the same as the Creative Labs Jukebox (which we reviewed here ), which makes it easy to carry in a pocket. It is a pity that the styling is rather poor. The chrome-plated plastic navigation buttons and visible screws are tawdry, but what is worse is that the two halves of the case do not fit together completely and hermetically, leaving plenty of room for dust to get inside. Also, on either side of the front of the LCD screen, there are two rather large slits (presumably for ventilation), whcih are unprotected by wire mesh, for instance, so it's not exactly a device that you'd want to take with you to the beach.

A Genuine External Hard Drive

One of the advantages of the Archos readers compared to those from Creative Labs is that they are treated as a logical drive as soon as they are connected to a PC. All you have to do is attach the Jukebox Multimedia to the computer and power it up for it to be automatically recognized as an external hard drive, and the operating system will allocate a logical drive letter to it. This means that the 10 GB Jukebox Multimedia drives are directly accessible by the user for storing any type of file. This is true if you are running Windows 95 and 98, as long as the drivers supplied with the device are installed, but you won't even need to do this if you are running it under Windows 2000 or Windows XP. This is not only ergonomically sound, but it adds functionality because the player/ viewer can essentially be used as a portable hard drive that can be connected quickly to any PC.

Video Player Use

In addition to being an MP3 player, the Jukebox Multimedia is primarily a video player. It can play any video as long as it is encoded in MPEG-4 Simple Profile at a maximum resolution of the CIF 352x288 type. This limitation is understandable, due to the power restrictions of the device for calculating and decoding, as well as the small screen size. So with Jukebox Multimedia, you couldn't possibly directly transfer a DivX film downloaded from the Internet, for example.

If you want to use such a film, you will first have to re-encode it in a suitable format that is readable by the Jukebox Multimedia. For this purpose, Archos supplies a simplified encoding module called an MPEG4 Translator on CD, but this requires the prior installation of free VirtualDub software (not supplied). It is very easy to use and, among other things, makes it possible to adjust the bitrate to improve quality or free up disk space. If you just want to watch a film on the LCD screen, then it is better to prioritize disk space because the improvement in quality is very slight when operating at more than 650 kBits/s. On the other hand, if the video is being played on a television monitor, it is preferable to increase the bitrate above 1200 kBits/s, if only to compensate for the low resolution (352x288). Downloading through the USB 1.1 port is quite slow; the speed we recorded was 800 kB/s. This means that it takes all of two minutes to download 100 MB.

The quality of the color display on the LCD is simply astonishing. The image is extremely sharp and the colors quite true. When the encoding is correct, there are few instances of slowing or of mosaic effects. If you use headphones, the soundtrack of a film is even more impressive. This is a genuine mobile video player. When traveling, especially on public transportation (such as train or plane), the user may have a slight problem, however. To get the full benefit of the LCD screen you need to be sitting right in front of it and quite close to it. To do this, you would either have to balance it on your lap and look down, or hold the Jukebox Multimedia in your hand. In both cases, this is an uncomfortable position to maintain if you want to watch a video that is more than 20 minutes long.