The ARCHOS Jukebox Multimedia Mpeg4 player

[NeVeRLiFt]

The Archos Multimedia Player is due out in May/June and represents a new approach to digital portability. It is not only an MP3 player but also a Mpeg4 video player/recorder a digital camera, a digital camcorder, a digital VCR and a digital wallet.

http://www.archos.com/us/products/product_jbmm.html





Format Supported: MP3 (30 to 320 kBps - CBR and VBR) Decoding
MP3 VBR (30 to 160 kBps) Real-time encoding
Photo Carousel to display image files
BMP & JPEG (Any size)
;) MPEG4 simple profile (Max. CIF format - 352x288 pixels, 30 frames/sec., VHS Quality, AVI File format, MP3 stereo sound tracks)



The Camera Module turns the unit into a digital camera and Camcorder with a 2X digital zoom to shoot movies in MPEG4 format with an MP3 sound track.

The Video Recorder Module is similar to a VCR recorder. It can record and playback MPEG4 quality videos from and to a TV.

The Jukebox Multimedia provides a total, portable entertainment solution for music, photos, videos and data - all in the palm of your hand.




read this http://www.ti.com/sc/docs/news/2000/00104.htm

The press release of the DSC21 chip that will be in the AJMM (Archos JukeBox Multimedia)

"The chip supports the broadest offering of popular digital audio and video formats including real-time MPEG1, MPEG4, JPEG, MJPEG, H.263 and MP3, as well as data communication standards such as IrDA, USB, and RS-232."

[Charbax2]

yep, I got it now, I've had it for a week now!


It playsback DivX5.02 at 352x288 resolution, encoded 2-pass, bi-directionnal, psychovisual and pre-processing is supported.

Mp3-audio on the video.


the tv-output is PAL and NTSC, and is very good,


a soon to come firmware upgrade will hopefully support better resolution, and the soon to be released Camera and Video modules will hopefully bve of good quality and the JBMM will hopefully be able to encode to 352x288 resolution 1-pass DivX or more!

you can read something about it on http://divx.com/products/archos.php (though they are saying CIF is 320x240 which is wrong, CIF is 352x288.. and DivX5.02 is supported (not quarter pel nor CMG DivX pro features yet))


(if you make a search for Archos here in this forum, you can see I posted a message first about it in December 2001, so I've been waiting for it a long time, its release has been pushed back again many times, but now I'm very satisfied by it cause it's awesome!)

[Charbax2]

what is wrong with you people? Why aren't more comments comming on this thing?


!!!*This is a portable stand-alone DivX player*!!!


even if it would never support higher resolution than 352x288, DivX5.02, 2-pass, b-frames video. Then I still think this thing should be a good topic of discussion..

or overall prospects of standalone DivX player recorder technology... This is the FIRST ever consumer electronics that supports our all's favourite video-codec, Mpeg4, DivX!

I mean I have this thing in my hand right now, I'm lucky I found 400 dollars to buy it.. But how about prospects of maybe upcomming even better stand-alone DivX players/recorders/cameras? Imagine, if they can make this on a 290 gram portable thing today, what they should be able to do for a stand-alone DivX player/recorder in the living-room, with heavy hardware, not having to worry about space too much.


And the video-player intel is talking about, with xScale processor and 4-inch LCD.. Texas Instruments who might or might not have a better processor available or soon to be available than the one that is inside the Archos Multimedia... If Texas Instruments can make a faster processor, later models of such portable players would probably support full resolution DivX.

Though this currently available Archos player hardware could allready support better res (when better firmware is releaased), when you see how clever video-codec experts can make DivX work on Dreamcasts and PDAs..

ok anyway, I'm just frustrated no people seem to talk about this in neigther DivX.com forums or theese Doom9 forums.. not to menchion projectmayo.com's forums..

There is plenty of discussion going on at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/archosmultimedia/ though..

[kopelen]

Hey Charbax, what's your other name in the Yahoo! Group? ;)

[Charbax2]

my name is donkkkkkk in there.. are you alaysias with the 40GB JBMM and who provided the pictures on this page: http://www.hotmp3gear.com/ProjectAJMM40.htm ?

Those are awesome!


people from doom9 forum, think about it. Someone on this planet has got 40GB of divx/xvid files in his pocket to plug directly to any TV and playback.

[smiller667]

Well ... I guess I am not too impressed because of too low resolution (CIF? C'mon, even my webcam does that!), high price (my 70$ portable VCD player does a similar image quality) and limited compatibility (what's the sense of re-encoding all my movies to a format suitable to this particular player?). For a third of the price, I get a really nice DVD portable (wo/screen, admittedly) with way superior image quality and support for VCD, SVCD (including selectable subs), miniDVD and of course DVD - any standard disc will play. So why bother? A stamp-sized screen is no buying incentive for me, sorry.

NB: 40gigs of movies is a nice point - but is it really worth having choice ad nauseam?

[Charbax2]

if you don't care about DivX, mpeg4, I understand.

But not only that, this player has harddrive inside, you don't see portable harddrive-based VCD/SVCD players anyplace..

this thing is supposed to take 1,3 megapixel or 2 megfapixel pictures to JPG to store directly on the harddrive. You've seen the price of normal digital cameras, haven't you. They aren't much less than the 400 dollars (339dollars on computers4sure.com or thenerds.com) that this thing costs. And this thing isn't limited to 16mb smart media memory but 20gb or as much as 9-mm laptop-sized harddrives can manage. So that's hundreds of thousands of pictures.

And it's supposed to be a video-recorder also. With camera (hopefully better quality than your webcam) or with video-in module.

So, this does more than a portable VCD-player or DVD-player... I think..

[smiller667]

I admit my post was (meant to be ;)) a bit provocative & I am sure my point of view is a minority one on this forum ... my point is: I like to watch my movies on a TV (or projector) - not on a PC. That's why I personally prefer formats which are supported by standalones ... true, the Archos is a (portable) standalone, but it is hampered simply by the lack of a standard for mpeg4 material (video codec, resolution, audio encoding). VCDs, SVCDs, DVDs - I can just take them along/borrow to just about anyone with a proper DVD player & it simply works ... no special data preparation necessary. In a similar way, I would never get a portable audio player that requires me to convert my standard mp3 stuff to some proprietary WMA/atrac/whatever format before being able to transfer it to the player ...
I am not opposed to avi-based formats per se - it's just that they haven't reached a sufficient degree of standardization for me personally.

[Charbax2]

well I believe this Archos DivX-player is a step forward for DivX to reach a sufficient degree of standardization so people can compfortably use DivX as their primary video-compression codec.. (I've been using DivX for a while, even though it only works on TV when you got a PC with a good grafics card that has tv-out, I think preferably Matrox DVD-max..)

Sure people will have to buy new hardware, new mpeg4-standalones. But I don't think I'm the only one who thinks Mpeg4 (specially DivX) is the future. Cause video is going to be meant to be downloaded off the internet, and it's quite proven I think, DivX is the best way to get good quality video at smallest file-size.

This Archos player doesn't support Mpeg-1 VCD yet, but as it's able to decode DivX at 352x288 I'm sure a firmware update should make it possible for it to playback VCD soon, which is same resolution and less processor-requiring decompression algorithme..

Also I think this DivX-player is a good reason to chose it instead of a portable Mp3 CD player.. 20GB or 40GB is allready quite a bunch of 700mb CDs.. (nearly 30 and 60 pieces).. those do take up space and it's nice not to have to open up CD-players and change disc for changing the content.. though off-course I'm also very much looking forward to cheap portable DivX CD-players, which might accelerate even more the real-serious widespread of DivX codec outside of the people-with-PC-and-tv-out area..


> A stamp-sized screen is no buying incentive
> for me, sorry.

well 1,5 inch diagonal still is a quite big stamp I think. And as discussed in the yahoo group recently, a glass magnifyer adaptor might fit very well on this to give more compfortable display experience if you want really portable video-playback.

The big cool thing here is specially tv-out. for example you take it with you at your friends to playback the video on their TV, or wherever you are at work or on holliday in a hotel-room or such.

> I guess I am not too impressed because of too
> low resolution (CIF? C'mon, even my webcam does
> that!)

I think CIF allready is very good thinking any standard TVs can't display much better resolution anyway. And plenty of tv-episodes and non-dvd-rips are available on the internet in DivX allready at CIF or lower resolution.

But sure full DVD-resolution is different. This might and I hope will happen very soon. Reliale sources (you can search in the yahoo forum) say that DivXNetworks and Archos are working together to release a firmware upgrade so higher resolution DivX is supported. So if/when this happens, you'd be thinking differently about this wouldn't you.


Another hypothetical use I see in this is a speciallyy programmed emulator for it to emulate video-games that are then outputted on any TV. That is SNES, NES, Mame, GameBoy, Dreamcast, ps1, N64... that is if you'd think a processor that can do 352x288 should be able to do such games.. you could then have plenty of roms on the 20gb or 40gb and plug this 290grams portable thing to any TV and play with a standard gamepad plugged into the module-connector on the thing..