Sunday, December 05, 2004

Piffle on the iPod

I was cruising the internet in search of one of those iPods and found something so spectacular that I bought one not only for myself but for a friend. The Archos Jukebox is also a portable hard drive, but it shames the ipod. The AV380 80 gig version not only records music (1200 hours of MP3), it records video. It will pack in 160 full-length movies. And that includes perfect copies from copy-protected DVDs. You can also store 800,000 digital photos. You can edit music and video, which makes it easy to cut out parts that you don't want or don't need. Oh, and if you plug it into your computer, it will act as another hard drive, meaning you can store any other type of data on it. If you get tired of watching movies on the 8.3" color high-def LCD, no problem. Just plug it into your regular TV set and enjoy DVD-quality video. It also works as a voice recorder and converts ANY kind of music input into MP3 format. With a few accessories, it will also work as a digital camera or a video cam. This is simply the coolest toy I've seen in a long time -- knocking TiVO into second place. As an overpayed, underworked member of the media, I like to pamper myself, so I bought the best model available. But it also comes in 20 gig and 40 gig versions. Check it out here. They're phasing out the 300 models for a 400 line. I'm not sure the 400 line will still be able to record copy-protected media, so it might be good to grab a 300 before they're all gone.