Archos DVR Station Gen 5 for 405, 605, and 705 Players

This docking station works beautifully with my home entertainment center, enabling me to play music, video, and photo slideshows on my Archos 605 WiFi media player on my TV and sound system. I can also connect to my wireless network to access network files and the Internet. Response time through the provided remote can be a little slow, but with a little perseverance I can do *most* of the things I want without trying my wife's patience. I haven't tried recording DishNet TV through my satellite receiver yet, but I will post again once I've attempted that trick.

I needed to copy content from my cable DVR box to the Archos for viewing on business trips. The 'Travel DVR adapter' would have done the job, but for $25 more, you get the full DVR docking station. This provides a nice, stable place to leave the A605 while it's charging, you get AV output connections as well as input, AND you get the QWERTY remote control. Buy the travel DVR and you're paying nearly $60 for nothing more than a socket that does input only. I'm now $500 into this system, what with the browser, codecs and input adapters.It's kind of clunky looking - very square and a weird, slope-like design. I found the 'DVR adapter' in the original A605 box - luckily the misses hadn't thrown it away. This is a piece of silver plastic that you have to clip onto the top of the DVR station to enable your particular type of Gen5 Archos to sit on top. It's quite tricky to dock the A605 without straining the connectors - you have to insert it into a channel between 2 pieces of plastic with about a +/- 2° tolerance. if you get it right, it drops straight in.I haven't even bothered trying the DVR functionality yet, since I already have a cable DVR box. All I do is set the cable DVR playing and make the Archos do a manually started but timed finish record from its A/V inputs. Incidentally, according to Archos tech support the Travel DVR can do the timed manual recording that I wanted; it just doesn't enable the DVR scheduler. This isn't mentioned at all in the ridiculously sparse user documentation.Once the A605 is docked, it enables the 'Recorder' menu icon. The choice of encoding options is rather limited, with only AVI files with compressed WAV audio possible. I leave the aspect ratio settings on 'Auto' and it seems to figure out what size the input video signal is. Video bitrate choices are 500, 1000 or 1500kbps. Audio is either 32k or 48k. On the highest quality setting, files aren't that small - about 700MB for a 30 min TV show. I can get a whole DVD movie into that space using Handbrake. I will do some experimenting with settings and post results...I have tried using the video editing features built into the A605 firmware. This enables you to remove sections from media - e.g. commercials from a TV program. You have to manually scroll through the video file and set a start/end point for each section you want to cut out. You can only set one pair of start/end points at a time. When viewing the edited content, I notice that it always fails to cut the last 0.5s or so of video - even though I placed the marks accurately. At that point you can choose whether to save your edited file to a new file, which takes AGES since it's reading and writing several GB from/to the same HDD - lots of head movement.

It's a simple stuff to use and quality too ! I just like it ! I enjoy recording my song and posting on my Facebook pages !

All of the Archos components were in one way or another defective or deficient. This piece seemed to work when everything else was repaired and/or replaced. Then, when the main recording unit failed to function, it made all of the accessories, such as this, unusable.

Well, I might of rated this product higher had I not had to send it in for repair after owning it for just one month. I have read other reviews that say the DVR Station sucks. I don't think of it that strongly but the fact that it failed so soon is why I rated it lower. It had an issue where when connected to my also new 605 wifi, it stopped showing a recording tab in the recorder. It also wouldn't allow the 605 to show on my TV when pushing the TV button. The red LED would come on but no picture would appear on screen. For some reason, since the repair, the LED isn't showing as brightly and my 605 wifi is now really having some issues with downloading and setting up the channel menu and seems to make the hard drive on the 605 churn forever, which it only used to do that when I would download the two week channel schedule. That I could understand. It also freaked out with the sound and wouldn't play back any sound until I completely reset the power on the 605 and DVR Station. Now, I think, they are working like normal. I have it set to record a program tonight. We'll see what happens. I also gave it lower marks because of the very small output jack that is used for connecting the SPDIF. I don't know why ARCHOS couldn't have installed a normal RCA type jack for that connection, just like all other audio equipment I own that also supports an RCA type connection for the subwoofer as well. I do like that it has component jack inputs and outputs for a better picture quality, as well as s-video. All in all, I think the whole idea of using all these devices interconnected together to make a small yet compact DVR solution is a pretty good idea. I still feel that ARCHOS needs to provide it all as one large package for the consumer at a reasonable price so when he or she buys the product, they don't find theirselves waiting for several different deliveries so that they may enjoy everything ARCHOS specifies in it's owners manuals the product is supposed to be able to do. This is a much better solution than asking people to hunt and peck for the rest of the devices they need and waiting for delivery for a full functioning unit. If the person doesn't want to use some of the package at the time, they don't have to. If you're like me, you'll be thankful you have the other pieces already bought and paid for and safely stowed away for use at a later date, than having to come up with the extra cash and hope they are still available at your favorite shopping place on line when you decide you are now ready for the full enjoyment of the product.