Customer Reviews

Archos DVR Station Gen 5 for 405, 605, and 705 Players

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Yes, the station is a must have for the 05 series, but be seriously warned . . . . I have had three stations, 2 of the remotes have died so far, and both after the 30 day warranty, and ARCHOS tell me that since I did not purchase it from them it is not their problem and I am waiting to see if any Amazon merchants will source or sell the remotes only . . . . by the way, just in case you don't know, the station is all but useless without the remote.

A "DVR" without a tuner seems hardly worthwhile. You can't connect your cable to the unit, you're going to have something else to tune and convert your cable signal to composite, RGB, or S-Video. Then you're going to have to carefully position the IR emitter of the Archos DVR station so that it's pointed into the IR receiver of your tuner. In all likelihood this means you can't put the DVR station where you want it.

You'll be better off without this. Get a tuner for your computer, use it as your DVR and transfer the recordings via USB.

The DVR Station works as described. The DVR function is a significant portion of the 605 capability. It was a snap to cable it, and the IR setup, to control the S-Video source, was one of the easiest yet. The programming guide was also easy to configure, and use (not sure about the fee structure after the "free" one year period).

I also liked the external charger (didn't have to wait 24 hours to charge before "playing with it"). The docking station makes it easy to connect & disconnect, which is often during the setup phase.

I gave it only four stars because of the lack of a Tuner.

overall, the DVR station is very good at its jobs. as a video recorder, it is excellent. there are some learning curve items, but once you get smart, it works as advertised. the only issue i have is the charging side of the DVR station. my Archos 605 gets very warm while charging. this heat will cause the battery to have a reduced lifecycle.

since it is the only game in town. you will have to get one.

i am not a crackpot.

I needed to copy content from my cable DVR box to the Archos for viewing on business trips. The 'Travel DVR adapter' would have done the job, but for $25 more, you get the full DVR docking station. This provides a nice, stable place to leave the A605 while it's charging, you get AV output connections as well as input, AND you get the QWERTY remote control. Buy the travel DVR and you're paying nearly $60 for nothing more than a socket that does input only. I'm now $500 into this system, what with the browser, codecs and input adapters.

It's kind of clunky looking - very square and a weird, slope-like design. I found the 'DVR adapter' in the original A605 box - luckily the misses hadn't thrown it away. This is a piece of silver plastic that you have to clip onto the top of the DVR station to enable your particular type of Gen5 Archos to sit on top. It's quite tricky to dock the A605 without straining the connectors - you have to insert it into a channel between 2 pieces of plastic with about a +/- 2° tolerance. if you get it right, it drops straight in.

I haven't even bothered trying the DVR functionality yet, since I already have a cable DVR box. All I do is set the cable DVR playing and make the Archos do a manually started but timed finish record from its A/V inputs. Incidentally, according to Archos tech support the Travel DVR can do the timed manual recording that I wanted; it just doesn't enable the DVR scheduler. This isn't mentioned at all in the ridiculously sparse user documentation.

Once the A605 is docked, it enables the 'Recorder' menu icon. The choice of encoding options is rather limited, with only AVI files with compressed WAV audio possible. I leave the aspect ratio settings on 'Auto' and it seems to figure out what size the input video signal is. Video bitrate choices are 500, 1000 or 1500kbps. Audio is either 32k or 48k. On the highest quality setting, files aren't that small - about 700MB for a 30 min TV show. I can get a whole DVD movie into that space using Handbrake. I will do some experimenting with settings and post results...

I have tried using the video editing features built into the A605 firmware. This enables you to remove sections from media - e.g. commercials from a TV program. You have to manually scroll through the video file and set a start/end point for each section you want to cut out. You can only set one pair of start/end points at a time. When viewing the edited content, I notice that it always fails to cut the last 0.5s or so of video - even though I placed the marks accurately. At that point you can choose whether to save your edited file to a new file, which takes AGES since it's reading and writing several GB from/to the same HDD - lots of head movement.

I recently picked up the DVR station mainly to enable me to stream media wirelessly from my computer. Previous to this, I'd have to burn a disc every time I wanted to get something from computer to television.

I hooked it up with a set of component video cables, and a single RCA for the digital audio, plugged in the power and set the unit in the dock.

My home theater setup consists of a 720p 42" plasma and a HDMI switching amplifier, and I've got to say the media I've played thus far looks and sounds great.

A worthy addition to the Archos player, and with a great remote!

The GOOD:

If you want to dock your Archos to your TV or you Entertainment Sytem to listen to music, watch video, or browse the web, this is cool The remote is a much better interface for web browsing than the archos itself.


The BAD:

If you want a DVR, forget it.
1. The DVR station does not have a tuner. This means that you have to make sure that your TV (cable box, etc) is on the right channel and you cannot watch anything else at the same time.
2. Only unprotected recorded video can be watched on your TV. If the original video stream is pretected (like most DVDs), you can only watch the recorded video on the Archos screen, NOT on the TV screen. You also can't watch your protected recorded video anywhere else like your PC. Some folks claim that some cable/dish providers protect ALL their content. That would mean that you could only record with your VHF antenna, until that's obsolete next year.

SUMMARY:

I think it's a good product that may be worth $85 as an entertainment docking station with remote for your Archos. It's a horrible DVR.

This is a must have product if you buy the Archos 605. It enables you to record from your TV and also enables you to play any videos you downloaded to your archos on your television. Also, the station enables you to charge your Archos PMP player much faster than the standard connection it comes with.

The DVR charges your 605 much faster than through USB. But the best function is to record TV or any other video sources directly. First, it does not have a TV tuner. With this limitation, I connect the DVR between my VCR and the TV. When I set up for recording, I have the DVR faces me and its remote. When finish, I have to turn it around so it's IR emitter faces the VCR's IR receiver. Other than this issue, it works well and relatively simple. One thing, I recorded a show that was four hours long (3 GB file in size), it plays fine in the Archos. But in transferring the file to the computer, the video actually was separated into two avi files--a avi and a av2 files. The av2 won't play in the computer. Just rename the xxx.av2 to xxx2.avi then they will play fine in the computer.

Basically I love this product. I've almost stopped using my dvd player because I can load up my Archos 605 player, put it in the dock and watch on the big screen without any fuss or bother -- that is, as long as it works.

The only drawback was the first unit I got lasted less than three months before burning out. I was plugging and unplugging the cables on a fairly regular basis because I was using the unit on more than one tv (won't make that mistake again), but I feel that is no excuse for such a ridiculously short lifespan. Luckily, I bought the docking station early in the holiday season when Amazon had an extended return/exchange period and to their credit they exchanged the defective unit immediately at no cost to me.

[edited to add on 2/27]

The day after I originally posted this review, my second dvr burned out. This time Amazon won't replace it, but they will refund my money. I'm getting a mini-dock instead which has only some of the functions I want from the dvr dock, but what can I do when the main dock does not work!?!

I really want love my Archos products, but none of it works right for very long. I wish Archos would build their products sturdier because I am getting completely fed up with them!