portable media devices, colon, things sab wants! the michael scott story, by dwight.

[sab]

Okay. I'm deciding between the Cowon A2, the Toshiba Gigabeat and the Archos 604.

I'm leaning toward the Cowon (because it supports the most file formats, including XviD/DivX, which is pretty important), I think, but let's ask you savvy folks some questions. Like, the Cowon's drawback is that it doesn't support Windows Media DRM. How much does that matter to me? That is at this point the only thing keeping me from the Cowon.

The Archos is a beautiful device and can be used as a tabletop DVR and a video/audio recorder. Now, do I need a video/audio recorder? Because the Archos is also bulky and not intuitive and seems to require a whole lot of peripheral hardware and software to make it do things. On the other hand, maybe I don't NEED the peripherals, in which case, the Archos is not so cumbersome after all.

And the Toshiba just strikes me as outdated? Like it was the video ipod killer in its day, but that day has passed? Any info on the Toshiba device in real life testing?

Assuming everybody clocks in at roughly $300, and everybody's roughly 30 gig -- anyone have data on these products? I mean, in real-life trials?

Comments

[mercurydraconix.livejournal.com]

also, there's this program called iSquint? which if you decided to get another iPod, changes nearly every other video format into the iPod supported format. slightly lower resolution, but lets face it, the screen for nearly any portable player is damn small.