Archos604 - How To Select A Multimedia Player That Meets Your Needs

What would you call a single device that can store and display several hundreds of thousands of photos, or plenty of movies, download audio and video from the Internet, be used as a camcorder, playback video either on a in-built screen or on your TV, and give you wirefree access to the Internet? New generation Multimedia Players do just that.

There are many global consumer electronics manufacturing companies offering premium digital entertainment solutions that include multimedia players, with or without WiFi.

If you travel often, a multimedia player player is a perfect companion. It comes with a hard drive which can store several movies encoded with a PC. The LCD color screen gives a quality image; alternatively you can use your TV and play in high resolution, up to 720 x 576 DVD quality.

A typical multimedia player package includes the player, headphones, dedicated USB 2.0 cable, DVR station adapter, pouch, QSG, and a legal and safety notice.

The optional DVR station enables you to transform your multimedia player into a digital video recorder. You can record from your TV or other video sources like VCR, DVD player, camcorder in MPEG-4 format.

The Hard Drive is useful to store many movies and photos; or you can store plenty of songs on the hard drive and play most popular music files such as MP3, WAV, WMA and protected WMA files. The ARC Library allows you to organize songs and customize them by album, artist, title, type of music or you can create a playlist without the use of a computer. You can view JPEG, BMP, PNG.

A WiFi model of multi-media player, as the name implies, provides access to the internet and, using the built in browser, you can browse your email. If you have a WiFi enabled network PC, the multimedia player can exchange and play files directly from it. The multimedia player normally supports SHOUT cast internet radio transmissions.

You can use your WiFi multimedia player as a camcorder by connecting digital cameras using an optional DVR travel adapter. You can also connect to its high resolution helmet camcorder and record video directly on its 30 GB hard drive in MPEG-4 format.

Another feature of the player is capturing podcasts; it uses an Integrated podcatcher software to record audio and video podcasts and does away with the need to use a PC. When you come across your favorite digital items on the net, the Direct License Acquisition facility of some of the players allow you to purchase and download them directly to the player without the use of a PC.

The battery life of good multimedia players allow music playback time of up to 16 hours and video playback time of up to 5 hours on the built-in LCD.