CeBIT 2002 Part 1 - A/V Devices & More

Detailed specs can be found here on Archos' website. The Jukebox Multimedia's display isn't that great (very angle-dependant); however Archos had a TV connected to it - and the quality of the TV out is amazing. There were no visible compression artefacts, and the image was very crisp. When paying very much attention, one could however notice that the playback sometimes wasn't perfectly smooth. In addition to MPEG4 video, the Jukebox can also play MP3, and display JPEG and BMP images. In addition, it acts as an external USB hard drive.

The question many of you will be asking now is: Does it play DivX? Archos couldn't answer this question; the only info provided was that it plays MPEG4 in CIF format - 352x288 pixels. Our guess is that it won't play DivX 3.X content; however it might be possible to encode video using DivX 5 and/or DivX 4 in a way that it is compatible with the Jukebox. This remains to be seen once the unit makes it on the desks of the reviewers.

The Jukebox Multimedia should be available already in April. Let's just hope that it will really appear on the market, and that the MPAA or similar organizations won't find a way to put legal or financial pressure on Archos. According to Archos, this has not happened yet, but they indeed fear it.

MPEG4 for the PDA

As we've already recently seen at IDF, ASUS has made their intentions clear for entering the PDA market. At CeBIT they presented a couple of Windows-based PDAs. The interesting thing about the PDA shown here is that it features video playback in great quality.