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July 07, 2005
Now I can be a Hammock Potato
Is it too late to trademark that phrase?
TiVo created its TiVo-To-Go program that allows you to carry your recordings on portable devices such as a laptop. This blog reported about Echostar investing in Archos to do that same thing with their DVRs in a program called PocketDish.
Television is quickly becoming an "everywhere" kind of thing. Cheap hard drives, flash memory and color displays are quickly causing the TV and DVD player and portable music player to merge into a fascinating class of device called the portable media center. Everyone's getting into the act. To a lesser extent, even cell phone makers and service providers are jumping on the bandwagon. The newest cell phones will soon download songs and play video.
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While doing my research on Archos, the company who received the $9M investment by Echostar, I ran across what looks to be a great device -- the AV700. It really shows what happens when a number of popular consumer electronics merge together. Archos has been pressing the case for a device that is more independent of the PC and, as a result, a little more functional than Microsoft's Portable Media Centers.
The concept of the device is simple. Take a large hard drive and combine it with a nice liquid crystal display and enough electronics to sync with a PC, a TV set-top box, stereo system or other entertainment device. The result is part Apple iPod, part TiVo, and as portable as a paperback novel.
What interested me about the AV700 is the screen size and weight. There have been many portable media devices unveiled in the last year, but, at 7 inches, the AV700 is nearly twice as big. It's sufficiently large enough to watch a full-length movie or a TV show.
It's also light--weighing a bit more than 20 ounces. It's 8 inches long, about 4 inches wide and less than an inch thick. It can fit in the pocket of briefcase or even in a small purse.
I am not sure that I would buy one for the hammock just yet because these things can only get better with time. However, they do appear ready for prime-time today and are on sale at Amazon.com.
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