Archos AV 700 TV review

Selecting most of the options brings up a new file browser. For example, if you select 'Video', you're taken to a tree of all the video files on the hard disk, including any you've recorded yourself with the built-in tuner -- and because the digital signal features programme info, these are automatically named correctly. Then you select your file and away you go -- it's nowhere near as streamlined as, say, the iPod's user interface, but finding your desired file shouldn't take long.

Select the TV option and programmes pop straight up, as long as you've got a good signal. When testing it, we never had any problems whatsoever getting reception, so the picture was stutter-free. This being digital telly, you also get programme info via the electronic programme guide (EPG), but sadly this only gives you details of the current show and the one immediately after, not of what's coming up for the next seven or eight days. You can also, of course, connect the AV 700 TV to your television or projector and use the device as a digital tuner -- although it isn't possible to get a high-quality RGB video signal out of it.

Recording is simply a matter of pressing the correct button when your desired programme comes on. You can fit 35 hours on the hard drive. You can't set timed recordings, but this makes sense given the device's limited battery life.

The USB-on-the-go feature is handy. You use a USB host adaptor and simply enter the 'External USB' folder in the file browser. Any files will show up there, and can then be moved on to the AV 700 TV's hard drive.

Performance
The television section of the AV 700 TV works like a dream. The signal is clean, the picture sharp and the colours bright. One or two channels took a while to be found by the on-board tuner, but apart from that the device performed brilliantly as a mobile digital Freeview TV.

Picture quality is also good with encoded video files, although the large screen is not particularly hi-res (it's 480x234 pixels) so it can look a touch soft at times. Still, if you download or create high-quality videos, you won't be disappointed with the results here.

Audio is another matter. Output from both the built-in speakers and any connected headphones is simply too quiet -- on a plane, even with the volume maxed out, we had trouble hearing subtler film dialogue through the headphones (you could fix this by buying better headphones, or noise-cancelling ones). The speakers, too, need to be kept at full volume most of the time.

Battery life isn't jaw-dropping, but it is respectable: you can watch around 3.5 hours of TV, 4 hours of video or listen to around 30 hours of music on one charge.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide