Reviews
Archos
Pocket Media Assistant 430
The big question: Is more really better?
Archos
wants to know how much you can take, literally. I'm not talking
about how much media and other data you can cram onto a 30-gigabyte
hard drive ÷ the upper limit of that is fixed. No, what they want
to know is how many functions you want in one pocket-size device,
and when that threshold is found, how much money are you willing
to hand over to possess one? First attempt: the almost ridiculously
well-endowed Pocket Media Assistant 430, now shipping for a mere
$799. That's a lot of cash, but when you read the list of what
the PMA430 can do, it doesn't seem so bad:
• Video recording from any analog media source at slightly
better than television resolution in the MPEG4 format for video
and MP3 for audio
•
Playback on a crisp, bright, 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen with 320x240
pixels and 262,000 glorious colors, or connect to any television
monitor/home theatre system with standard RCA or S-Video input
ports
•
Store, organize, and play thousands of digital audio files in
MP3, WAV, and WMA formats
•
Record and rip stereo audio straight to MP3 using an external
mic, the internal mic, or any stereo line level source, up to
192 kHz at 48 bits, or lossless stereo WAV format;
•
Store, organize, and view thousands of digital photos in JPG,
BMP, PNG, and GIF file formats, either copied from your computer
of downloaded directly from your digital camera using USB Mass
Storage compliance;
•
Play widely available games in either Mophun or Qtopia formats;
•
Go to any hotspot and connect to the Internet wirelessly via 802.11b
WiFi to browse the web and check your email accounts, or use an
optional USB ethernet adapter to connect to wired networks;
•
Maintain your calendar appointments, task list, address book,
and notes, then sync them with Outlook on your Windows PC; ăView,
but not edit, standard Office documents including Word, Excel,
and PowerPoint, as well as TXT, CSV, and soon (Archos promises)
Adobe PDF documents, either copied from your computer or as emailed
attachments;
•
Legally enjoy any Windows Media Player-compatible DRM-protected
digital media file, including movies and music downloaded from
online services;
•
Run Linux programs;
•
Create your own applications using the Archos SDK.
Crikey!
All that for a paltry 800 clams? And you can do all this for up
to ten hours at a stretch on a single charge of the easily removable
3.7-volt lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack. The PMA430 ships
with an elaborate cradle sprouting connections for just about
everything under the sun. All jacked in and sitting next to your
home theater rig and media computer, it's almost comically well
connected, but it all works as advertised.
Storming
the citadel
Now
the reality. I hate to break it to you, but the Archos PMA 430
is as much a technology demonstration as it is a useful consumer
product. All but the geekiest among us will stumble over user
interface quirks, playback limitations, and byzantine media preparation
procedures involving multiple pieces of software from all over
the net. The PMA 430's interface clumsiness I can forgive ÷ this
is a Linux-based device, so it's not exactly been given Apple-class
treatment in the polishing and user testing department. With Linux,
you take the rough with the smooth because you are (a) cheap and
(b) like to fix things yourself. Thus, the fonts look yucky, the
colors are amateurish, and the various interface controls work
differently depending on which part-time student programmer hacked
out the code on that piece of the puzzle. It's a UI trainwreck,
but once you get used to the abuse it's really not so bad. Like
a Stockholm Syndrome for bad software, over time you can learn
to love your kidnappers in spite of your better judgment. It's
a human survival mechanism that had made Bill Gates the richest
person on Earth, money earned from the profits gleaned from decades
of software abuse. If he wasn't such a generous philanthropist,
his tens of millions of victims would have stormed his mighty
citadel and forced him to use his own software until he went completely
insane.
This
machine's media playback hassles are also forgivable, as they
really aren't Archos' fault. Without, for example, the inability
to play back a recorded DVD on any device but one unique PMA430
and not on a computer screen or TV, Archos would have been suffocated
overnight with restraining orders from the legal goon squads of
media moguls. Oh well.
The
one thing I cannot forgive is the almost comically complex hoops
you, the end user, have to jump through to take piece of visual
media and make it playable on the PMA430. Even the documentation
that comes with the device is apologetic about this atrocious
state of affairs. MPEG4 is not really a single specification as
much as a collective set of guidelines. A QuickTime movie, for
example, encoded in proper MPEG4 format, won't work in the Archos
without transcoding it into another variant using third-party
software you have to pay for. There are many examples of media
that won't just work in this device ÷ basically, anything that
isn't ripped either by a PMA430 or on another computer using DivX
or XviD encoders will probably fail to play without a fair bit
of tinkering. If you like downloading lots of little pieces of
utility software from the net, installing it, then making it all
work like an assembly line, then you'll love this aspect of PMA430
ownership.
To
be fair, most potential PMA430 buyers will be most interested
in recording TV shows for viewing elsewhere and elsewhen, like
a mobile TiVo with a built-in display. After this will be those
who want to copy DVDs and old videotapes into the device for personal
use. Beyond media use, the obvious mobile computing aspects of
wireless net access and personal information management are pretty
compelling. If this unit had a phone and a mapping GPS receiver
in it, the word ăconvergenceä wouldn't begin to describe it.
ö David
MacNeill
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