Archos TV+ 250 GB (Silver)

by Archos

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 10 x 1 x 6 inches ; 2.8 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000S6R93W
• Item model number: 500973
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,010 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description Consider yourself warned: Buy the Archos TV+, and you might never leave your sofa again. And really, why would you need to? This small box packs a punch, converting your TV into a gateway to movies, music, and information.

Operate your TV+ using the lightweight and responsive infrared, QWERTY remote, which includes a nine-point mouse, and navigation buttons. View larger.

Record TV
Love your DVR, but hate the monthly fee? The TV+ puts you in charge of what you watch and when--and it's yours forever. Using the included TV Program Guide, you have the convenience of one-touch activation or the reliability of scheduled recording. Programming is stored directly on the Archos TV+ or transferred to an external hard drive or computer.

Capable of recording from most any video source--including a satellite or cable box, VCRs, and DVD players--the Archos TV+ records in MPEG-4 and plays back in DVD (640x480) quality.

Wi-Fi Connectivity
The TV+ transforms your television into a Wi-Fi entertainment center, combining your favorite movies with access to your favorite Web sites and online videos. You can stream movies, TV shows, and music stored on your computer, and with an optional plug-in, you can enjoy clips from your favorite online video sites.

The included wireless QWERTY keyboard puts you in control, so you can surf to your heart's content--and download content directly to your TV+ using the new Archos Content Portal (ACP). ACP makes it possible to save your favorite media without a computer.

Setting up is easy, with clearly labeled ports and jack. Built-in Wi-Fi and Ethernet capability gives you options, and a USB 2.0 connection allows the Archos TV+ to be used as a hard drive for moving files on and off your PC. View larger.

Access Movies, Video
In addition to storing and replaying your videos and recorded TV shows, you can use the built-in Wi-Fi and Ethernet for on-demand video downloads through CinemaNow.

The TV+ can play the most popular video formats: MPEG-4 and WMV. It plays protected WMV, MPEG-2, VOB, and H. 264 with optional plug-ins).

Weighing in at less than 3 pounds, the Archos TV+ is a sleek addition to your entertainment center. Its small footprint belies its powerful performance and range of capabilities. View larger.

Music and Photos
Couple your best shots with your favorite tunes, then display them using transition effects. Not into sharing? Then put your 250 GB TV+ to work as an external hard drive: storing and organization up to 145,000 songs or a whopping 2.5 million images. Transferring files from a PC or most mass storage devices is a breeze with the USB 2.0 high speed interface.

Able to play all of the most popular music files (MP3, WAV, WMA and protected WMA, as well as AAC and AC3, with optional plug-ins), the TV+ also organizes your media. You can view by artist, album, type of music, and title, and you can create your own playlists.

What's in the Box
Remote control, power supply, two audio RCA/RCA cables, two S-Video cables, user guide, connection sheet, legal and safety notice, and warranty sheet.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

90 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Has potential, but purposely hobbled by Archos to get more money, March 16, 2008

By 

greg peterson (Midwest, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Archos TV+ 250 GB (Silver) (Personal Computers)

OK, first here's what the Archos TV+ will NOT do (as there is a lot of confusion out there)

1. It will not surf the Internet. This requires an additional $30 plug-in.
2. It will not play surround sound encoded movies. It's not that you just don't get the surround sound, it won't play the movie period. This requires another $20 plug-in.
3. It will not play H.264 (.mov or .mv4) movies. This will run you yet another $20 for the plug-in.
4. It will not record TV shows. It does not have a built in tuner, so you need to attempt a Rube Goldberg type setup where the Archos TV+ controls a real recording device (VCR, DVD Recorder) to turn it on, change the channel, etc... (Didn't work with my 2 year old DVD recorder.)

So, it will cost you another $70 to realize the potential of the Archos TV+. (Plus the as yet defined cost of the 'TV Program Guide' that is only free for one year.)

Without the additional money, any attempt to play a movie other than a MPEG-4 .AVI with (only) Stero sound will bring up message that you cannot play the file and need to purchase one of the various plug-ins, with a convenient button that lets you 'buy it now'. There is little doubt about their strategy to make more money here.

The Archos TV+ also has this weird Bright White top to it (check out my photo in the product images). All of the Archos photos for the TV+ show a distinctly silver top, and in multiple calls to Archos they were even confused about the color. I got stories that a few had white tops, that there were many different colors of tops out there, then finally as I went up the chain (I really wanted the silver), that ALL of them had a white top despite what the Archos photos show. The white top really sticks out like a sore thumb amid the rest of the A/V equipment.

Now that the random, things you wouldn't expect are out of the way, the reason I got the Archos TV+ was to get beyond the piles of DVD's that my kids watch. The DVD's get misplaced, or left out and scratched, etc... and the TV+ does a great job in storing them! It is also easy for my kids (Hi Kat and Maddy; ages 5 and 8) to browse the videos and select what they want to watch. Let me be clear, it is worth the price just for that. It is also fanless, so no extra noise.

Connecting through a home WiFi network was fairly painless (just set up a home network workgroup and share out a folder on your PC), although even with a strong signal from my router (about 20 ft away), it will still drop the connection about 20% of the time, and I will need to re-start the transfer.

So, I really like the TV+ to keep the kids shows on, and once I got my conversion workflow set up to avoid all of the annoying 'can't play this file buy the plug-in' messages, using it has really smoothed out.

You don't get HD quality, the Archos customer service is totally lacking (policy appears to be to tell you anything just to get you off the phone vs. get you a real answer), but if you can control your video file conversion to align to it's strict spec's, it's a nice little addition to your home entertainment system. (Except that white top!)

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Device, still a little rough around the edges, May 22, 2008

By 

O. Prusak (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Archos TV+ 250 GB (Silver) (Personal Computers)

I've had this device for over a month now and here are my impressions.

The first thing I had to do was to update the firmware. This was a REAL pain the rear. The device has an "auto-update" feature, but it doesn't seem to work without the latest version of the firmware. ACK. Newer buyers might have a newer version pre-installed.

Once I finally got the latest version of the firmware and had purchased a couple of the plugins, I must say it's a really cool machine.

My main purpose was to put all of my kids DVDs on it - this seems to be a common theme :)

I won't go over the specs, but here are few things you should know before you buy (in no particular order).

This device is NOT rock solid. Overall, it's stable "enough", but about once a week I run into a situation where I need to reboot the device. Personally, that's acceptable.

The dual USB mode is awesome. I can either attach it to my PC and copy stuff over (I use the mode where it looks like an external HD, but it also has "media player 11 support" whatever that is) OR I can attach an external HD to it and copy stuff over via the interface on my TV.

The main functions in the interface are easy to use and pretty intuitive, but some of the more advanced stuff took me a while to figure out. The manual wasn't always that helpful either. Still, this is just a one time thing.

The remote sucks big time. I understand they wanted something with a keyboard for web browsing (and file administration which is nice), but I really don't like the "feel" of it. 99% of the time there are just 8 buttons you'll be using. I've considered getting a learning remote to use most of the time.

It's great that it can play .vob files (these are the raw video files on DVDs) but I REALLY wish it could have played a directory with all of the DVD files as if it were a DVD. lots of video players on my PC can do this.

The TV recording function is "nice" but only useful if you know exactly what time and channel the program is in advance. The TV listing is purely an online TV guide you can browse and set to record something. On the other hand, it's nice to have a real time digital recorder to convert old VHS tapes or just record what I'm watching now (if I have to leave in the middle).

If you're recoding something from TV, the IR transmitter is on the front of the device. There is no "extender" like the tivo has. This means you need to either (a) change the channel in advance (b) have the tv+ facing your cable box (c) have something in front of the tv+ that will reflect the IR signal back to your cable box. As I said earlier, the recording functionality is "nice" but don't think this will replace a tivo.

The browser is surprisingly usable. I was able to do just about everything including 99% of the flash based sites I tried.

I wish it directly supported streaming audio (Internet Radio) like shoutcast.com. It DOES support flash through the browser, including sound. I tried to use pandora.com (it uses streaming audio via flash) but it never fully loaded the page.

If you only have composite video (just a single "standard" connector) then the Apple TV isn't even an option! My TV is 7 years old and composite is the only video connector I have. Apple TV does NOT have composite (which is one of the reasons I didn't get it).

When you're browsing your video files, it shows a thumbnail for the video (nice) but the really cool thing is that the thumbnail will show about 10 seconds from the video when you "hover" over it. This is VERY helpful for my 4 year old daughter.

My final thoughts would be that if you're a bit technical and want the ultimate flexibility - get the archos TV.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible device, August 15, 2008

By 

Doug Wood (Bellevue, Wa USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Archos TV+ 250 GB (Silver) (Personal Computers)

I was a huge archos fan after I picked up a portable unit from them a few years ago. It was great. So I bought this as soon as it was available. Its horrible. I only was ever interested in playing back video with it. Not playing music or not recording, so I dont know if those actually even work. Probably not. First I had to buy a plugin to actually play my videos. Thats so ridiculous, but I did it anyway. It did play my videos, but way way worse than my pc ever did. The unit just doesnt have enough horsepower to play them without them being choppy (these are big mpeg2 files) The ui is horrendous! fast forward and rewind are just plain unusable, as is the bookmark feature. I also tried the websurfing plugin. Unusable! The mouse is horrible, the keyboard is too delayed to do anything useful. good luck trying to type an email!
I waited and tried all the latest firmwares, but nothing made this pos any better. And then it was too late to return it.
Please run, dont walk, away from this nightmare!