Buy Archos 400 30 GB Pocket Media Assistant (PMA430)Archos 400 30 GB Pocket Media Assistant (PMA430) Product Description:
- Record, playback, and store up to 120 hours of video
- Record, Listen and store more than 6500 songs or 650 CDs
- Transfer, View and store up to 300,000 Photos
- Features built-in 802.11b WiFi to browse the Internet and access e-mails from any wireless hotspot
- Includes personal information manager software offering a selection of applications such as an address book, agenda, calendar, PC synchronization and PDF viewer
Product Description
Hold the future in the palm of your hand. The PMA400 Pocket Media Assistant is a revolutionary Linux-based 30GB HDD device that allows you to record directly from TV, playback video, browse the Internet, record and listen to music, store and view photos and more. Use the PMA400 to manage your agenda too. Keep contacts and task lists, read PDF files and even add or develop your own applications. This slim pocket-size assistant handles most popular video, music and photo formats. It's powered by internal rechargeable Li-Ion batteries but also comes with an AC charger/adapter. 8/10Hx4-9/10Wx3-1/10D".
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
67 of 67 people found the following review helpful.
Almost Perfect
By Aram Vartian
FIRST LOOK: GOODThat aside, I am quite pleased with this device. Right out of the box the weigh and construction of it felt right; some might find the 9.9 oz weight a bit hefty, but I prefer sturdiness over a light, plastic casing. And it looks sharp too, though I wish Archos would leave its 1970's tech school logo behind once and for all.SET-UP: GOODSetting the device up was easier than I anticipated, though the amount of wires involved along with the stiff docking cable to power/connect the PMA430 to the dock were bothersome, though all work well. I have average to good skill with Audio/Video hook-ups and it took me only 15 minutes to get the device running and ready to record. However, there are some rather odd quirks that keep me from giving this a GREAT rating (for instance, resetting the time/date is a major hassel, and for no aparent reason)VIDEO RECORDING: GREATMy friend Michael has been eager to get his massive Dr. Who collection off VHS tape and into a digital format, so we started playing with the PMA430 there. The set-up was easy after the initial one and we were recording within minutes. And even though there is a natural less then DVD quality about recording from tape, I was still very impressed with both the picture and sound that it captured from my VCR. We soon switched to digital cable as the recording media and were left with a DVD quality recording of the Simpsons. So far, so good...NOTE: For whatever reason (read: to avoid crippling lawsuits), Archos has decided that once programming has been recorded onto your device, that is the end of the line. No burning movies to DVD. No transferring files onto a laptop or sharing with your friends. That is fair; intellectual property rights do need to be protected, but it is still bothersome to those of us who just want to back up some of our legitimate purchases.PDA FUNCTIONALITY: FAIRNow, not everything is good about this device. The PDA functionality is awkward at best, slow and unresponsive at its worst. The lag time between clicking an icon and the activation of the program (or even the expanding of a simple file tree) is slow and arduous. I must have clicked through a dozen applications because I though the screen had not registered my tapping. Also, the writing capture (when the PDA screen actually translates letters you are jotting down) is so poor it is nearly unusable. Maybe this will change with a Firmware update. Right now, I just use the integrated keyboard, or the optional rubber USB keyboard that you can roll up and tuck away when finished.UPDATE: Okay, I have had a little more time with the device and gotten somewhat used to its speed, and it is reacting much better now, so no more "POOR" rating. However, it is still a very clumsy, unintuitive PDA design.MP3 PLAYER: GOODSimple and functional, complete with an equalizer (though a rather anemic one with only 5 sliders) and functionality that will automatically index your songs according to author, song title, genre, etc. This works well, but is nowhere as functional as a flywheel on an iPod, but still easy enough to use. I was also surprised to see that on legitimate MP3s you are frequently show the album cover along with the song. That's a nice little touch.SOUND: FAIRThe small front speaker is laughable at best. I cannot imagine anytime where it would be used, as it would annoy both the user and anyone around him with its mono, tinny sound. The sound improves greatly when headphones are used, and the ones that come with the PMA430 are good enough, if a tad uncomfortable.WIRELESS: GOODThis was one of the nicest functions about the device. I already have a wireless network at home and locking into the signal was quick and painless. The PMA430 uses an Opera browser for surfing the internet and Microsoft Outlook for email. Again, both were easy to get set-up and running within 15 minutes. There is also support for wireless access through a cellular provider, but I have not tried that out yet.PHOTOS: FAIREh...I mean, its there. You can look at photos, even display them on another TV screen. However, any television that is capable of making digital photographs not look like crap probably has a memory card slot anyway. And just viewed on the PMA430, pictures just look okay. And I don't take a lot of pictures, nor do any of my friends. So, moving on...BATTERY LIFE: GOODDecent. I am getting about 8-9 hours out of it purely as a MP3 player, and about half that if I am using the video playback or browsing the web (anything that involves the screen being on, really).SYNCHING: FAIRA few problems here that were not helped much by the grossly inadequate PMA430 User's Guide, but I eventually stumbled my way through it. The PMA430 comes with a 2.0 USB hub, allowing me to quickly transcribe all my MP3s, video clips and pictures onto the device. With a few free downloads you can even have the device synch with your desktop copy of Outlook. There is an infrared port to beam informant, but sadly no Bluetooth support, which eliminates such novelties as wireless headphones and some advanced networking. Drat.Other problems with synching are minor but truly annoying. Every time I synch, the date and time change buy a few weeks/hours or more. I have no idea why this happens. Also, the Archos is supposed to work in synch with Yahoo! TV to allow you to set a schedule to record your shows. I am beginning to believe that there is actually no way to make this work.SOFTWARE: GOODThe software that comes with the PMA430 are useable enough, but I am eager to see what new titles will be released, and if there will be a Firmware update to handle some of the outstanding bugs I have noticed with the PDA functionality.
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Best MP3 player, and plays and records movies and way more.
By Keith
The PMA430 is the size of a PDA but a little thicker. Not much though. It has a nice big screen, so the bigger size is worth it. And this is the only PDA you can buy at the moment with a 30 Gig hard drive. And the only PDA with built in video recording. So you can get videos on it without a computer. That makes things much eaasier.It has Wi-Fi, which I have used at my home to surf the internet from any where in my house. And I have connected to my companies Wi-Fi network at work.It is seen as a hard drive when you connect it with USB. So you can just drop files, liekl say MP3 fiels on it. And once you have MP3s on it, it will create playlists automatically for them. So it is very easy to play music. Movies are very easy to play too. And it automatically puts bookmarks in movies to mark your last position. Great if you want to watch a two hour movie but only have say fifteen minuites at a time.It also has built in photo viewer. I tried it with my 6.3 megapixel photos straight from my camera. No problem, and I didn't have to resize them.Also it has a USB host port. That means that if your camera supports it you can plug your camera directly into the PMA430 and download pictures directly into it. Great for vacations. Not only can you view pictures this way, but you can store them, so you don't need to bring five memory cards for the trip...And since it is a USB host port, if your camera doesn't support it, just connect a USB card reader and put your cameras card in that. Not only that but USB keyboards can be plugged into it. Now you don't need a special keyboard for your PDA. Just so you don't get confused, there are two USB ports, one is USB host (like the one on your computer) and one is regular USB 2.0 (like on your camera)It also has the usual Contacts, calendar, to do, calculator, email, etc. And it can sync to Outlook. (I haven't used that though since I don't use Outlook).It comes with several games. And it can play the Morphun game standard for more games. And I expect mroe games will come otu for this, it is running a Linux version afterall. Since i mentioned it, soon they will release the software developers kit so that any one can create programs for it.As for video recording,w ell it comes with a dockign cradle. You can put teh PMA430 in it at 60 degree or 90 degree angle. The cradle has video and audio in and out and even has s-video in. Adn it has a IR Port on the front. The PMA ships with a big full size (TV style) remote control. Oh, did I mention the PMA430 can display on the TV? It can display full screen. So you can sit on the couch and watch a video fromt he PMA430. And the PMA430 can play and record at better then TV quality. I think 720 or 740 by something. Or of course you can go lower in resolution.You can also set up delayed recordings. So at 8PM you can record channel 13. And it has a IR blaster. With that you can set it so that at 8PM it changes the cable box or satelite dish or VCR, to change to channel 13. And of course once you have it, you cna fast forward through comercials.You can buy a travel AV cable. This is the audio video cable only, without the docking station. This is made for when you travel so you don't need to carry much to view on TV. But with it you can also carry a small camera that runs off a 9 volt battery and turn the PMA430 into a camcorder. Soemone already did it at Cebit. Here is a link - www.i4u.com/article3032.htmlThe built in Opera web browser is good for surfing the web. It will even format teh web page so it is single column so that you don't need to scroll sideways on the web page, just scroll down. adn it will change text size easily. You can switch between two sizes.Oh, and the unit is multitasking. That means you can listen to music and type a document. Or listen to music and view photos. etc.I have seen some say well this is just a PDA with a hard drive. They don't know about many of the other features. This does so much, I am sure I have forgotten some things.Any way, my review, well I love this thing. It does so much. In fatc I seems to learn new things it can do every day. For example just today i learned that the USB host port can supply power. Some one is using it to power one of those SIIG FM transmitters. So now he can listen to his MP3s on his stereo and he doesn't need extra batteries or DC power in the car. Gee maybe I will plug in a USB fan for the hot summer months.OK, now for the negative things. This is a small computer with a hard drive. As such sometimes you have to wait for it to read things off the hard drive. Just like with my desktop. Also the unti is new and has some bugs in it. But I expect that will smooth out a lot with firmware. In fact one small problem I reported, they have said is fixed in the next firmware. But I haven't had that many problems. And as is I love it. This is a pocket PC, no er, pocket Tivo, no its a camcorder(just need a cheap camera, see ebay), no game boy, no its ....
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Great Music and video, Not bad Wi-Fi; USB Host Mode Problems
By K. J. Maxwell
The other reviews are mostly accurate and fair but you may want to know about a couple of important "gotchas". After 3 months of evaluating alternative devices (iPOD, Epson, dedicated external drive, etc.), indecision and refinement of my "requirements", I bought and I will keep the Archos PMA430. All of the conventional PDA features, music and video work very well. The Wi-Fi works up to about 25-30 ft from my Microsoft MN-500 wireless base station at home. I still need to go out in public to see how well it might work at, say, Panera or Starbucks. But the USB host mode (for digital cameras, etc) has limitations. First, you need to have the PMA430 on external power to get it to connect to a USB device like an external hard drive or thumb drive. Otherwise it just sits there and you get no indication that it IS or ISN'T doing anything. After long connection times (yes, I decided to wait it out) it gives a cryptic error message. But, connect it to external power and it quickly detected my 20GB Buslink external hard drive and my 512MB Kingston thumb drive. That means when you're away from home, you're gonna need the cigarette lighter adapter if you plan to connect through this port. The USB Host port will not connect to my Canon EOS 20D nor will it connect to my (sample of 1) USB Compact Flash reader. I plan to try others but if this port is important to your buying decision, I recommend "try before you buy". This renders the USB Host port useless for extending my camera's in the field storage space. The opposite function, connecting the PMA430 to a computer's USB port works flawlessly!For me, the delays reported for start up of the individual applications was not an issue once you know it's going to happen. You simply adapt to it and it's a pretty short delay. My character recognition was excellent (I had the latest OS 1.13-2). The music is awesome! The video is great. The "sync" is a bit awkward but no worse for me than the first few times I used my old Palm Pilot. When you remove the battery, the internal clock seems to reset to 8AM on 16 May '05 for some reason (mfg date maybe). The pen is indeed flimsy and the cover kinda cheesy. All in all, I'm satisfied with my purchase and expect that a later revision in the OS is likely to overcome the USB Host port issue. When you plot function versus cost for a dedicated hard drive ($250-ish), iPOD ($350-ish) and high quality PDA ($500-ish) the PMA430 offered the most bang-for-the-buck against my "needs" and I CAN carry it in my shirt pocket without significant problem.If you want a recommendation to wait or buy, I recommend buy if these things don't intimidate you, otherwise wait for a "next-gen" device.UPDATE:Purchased a Promaster CompactFlash USB2.0 reader. Connects without need for external power, and strangely, neither do the two USB devices that previously did. I'm now happy that I can get around the lack of camera recognition by the simple expedient of taking along the USB reader.Wonder if I can figure out how to get it to brew up a cup of tea?
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