Archos TV+

Archos is best known for its portable media players, so when we found out that it was going to have a go at producing a media streamer, we became interested and began to salivate very slightly. The product in question is the Archos TV Plus, a product with more uses than a swiss army knife. It is billed as a PVR, media streamer and internet device it certainly makes some bold claims about what it can do. There is one major chink in this little chap’s armour though. Namely, it isn’t HD capable. At all. That’s right, if you want to watch anything that isn’t standard definition you’ll have to look elsewhere. We think that’s a real shame, because this little device could be pretty useful if it could coupe with high definition. On the plus side, the Plus can record TV shows for you, although to do this, you’ll need an external tuner, because it doesn’t have anything built in that can receive Freeview. We had a play with this, and apart from the hassle of having to set a timer on the unit AND on your Freeview box, the quality was okay. The bonus is that you can transfer video from the Archos TV to an Archos PMP or your computer and watch it in other locations. Hooking up the Archos TV plus to your Freeview tuner can be done via component, composite or s-video. Adaptor leads are supplied with the unit to make Scart connections possible too. There is also, for some reason, an HDMI socket, which seems moderately pointless as the machine doesn’t do HD. To get video from the internet, or local network you can use either both wired or wireless access, and the wireless antenna is hidden, which is a nice design decision. Sadly, some extra features like the custom Opera browser and the ability to play back MPEG-2 VOB files and Quicktime, can only be enabled if you are prepared to pay extra. And it isn’t a small sum of money either, if you want all three plug-ins you’ll have to pay £50. That takes the cost of the 250GB Archos TV+ up to £300. For this kind of money, we think you’d be better off buying an Xbox360 or a PS3, both of which can do video streaming as well as play some awesome games. I’m Ian Morris and this is the Archos TV Plus.