Archos AV500 30GB Multimedia Player and DVR

I couldn't be more pleased with this item. I have downloaded several thousand songs from DVD to Computer to Archos. The process went very smoothly. The instructions in the booklet are a little lacking and it could be improved some but the product itself is excellent'

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Excellent product

I bought this 2 days ago and it does everything I wanted. Record TV, playback onto TV, transfer files from my Digital cam, and rename, move, and delete files on the go, etc.. I love the fact that you can connect it to your computer as a hard drive and just drag and drop files. I hated having to sync everything on iTunes. But if you like syncing, you can with Windows Media Player. You can also "browse" your music files and go through the folders as you have them created (if you did create them) or search by Artist, Album, Genre, etc. I personally like the folders much much better.

Pictures/videos look fantastic with it's 4" screen and sound quality is great as well (I havn't yet bought great headphones to really test it). The built-in speakers are nice and clear, but fairly week, so you'll need a quiet room if you intend on using it.

I did my research and this one appeared best for it's price (you can find it for $300).

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They have a problem

I have purchased archos DVRs before and was looking forward to using the AV500. It is true that it has a very nice screen, and it plays the file types that I need. However, within a few days of purchase, the battery stopped taking a charge. After some fiddling, I reluctantly returned it to Archos. It came back after a few weeks, and I was very surprised to see that the content that I had on it was still there! What kind of fundamental repair was this, I wondered. In fact, the device exhibited exactly the same behavior as it had when I sent it out--literally nothing was changed. I reluctantly returned it again, and have been waiting six weeks for a fix. Their customer service is abysmal and keeps changing their story (next week, Christmas delay, etc.) I have now attempted to get a refund, and have been told by Amazon that my period for refund has expired. I have had the device for about two days in total and it hasn't worked, period. I am attempting to get a refund from archos and this really is not acceptable for a device this costly. Don't buy this.

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