Portable Media Players
In the second group, you'll find portable media players like the $500 Archos AV420, the $529 MobiNote DP7010 distributed by AMA Technologies, and RCA's $419 Lyra RD2780.
While Microsoft-based Portable Media Centers all share a common operating system, each of these companies uses its own OS. The result: Each unit comes with its unique sense of identity. For example, each comes with its own interface, support for a wide variety of video and audio formats, and its own set of idiosyncrasies--especially when it comes to converting video into a format the player understands.
A major selling point of this class of players is that they can also record TV programs directly from a TV (or a cable or satellite box), or from another digital video recorder (such as a DVD recorder with a hard drive, or a PC with a TV tuner); they can also be used like a VCR or video recorder to schedule and record programs--assuming, that is, you can make sense out of an octopus of composite-video and audio-input and -output cords. However, once you figure it out, the scheduling and recording process is relatively easy. You will get some--but not much--guidance from the enclosed support materials.
Since these devices are different by definition, they handle specific tasks in various ways. For example, the PVR software in the Archos AV420 can schedule up to five recordings. You can also go online and remotely schedule two weeks' worth of programming using Yahoo Calendar and Yahoo TV.
By comparison, the MobiNote DP7010's PVR software can preschedule only a single recording from an external source, and it doesn't allow online remote scheduling.
Ad Choices