While it’s not suitable for you, it is way more useful than AppleTV. It can record at a resolution that exceeds current broadcast standards and is better than standard TV resolution (not everyone has HD TV’s or sources yet). It connects to more TV’s with less hassle. Way more storage. It supports way more formats. Yes of course it handles MP3. It will handle DivX and XVid and with plugins will handle H264, ACC, VOB, and AC3, among others. It will stream from your PC – wired or wireless. The HDMI connector is because you can acquire better content than you can record – downloaded or ripped.

I agree that the lack of a built in tuner reduces it’s appeal, but it also makes sense – it no doubt supports both PAL and NTSC sources (as other Archos devices do) so a single product can be marketed worldwide – adding a tuner would have made it more expensive and would have required separate models for each market. And after all – a tuner is not that hard to come by – a cheap VCR will do.

So no, not the perfect device (as few are) but a better first attempt by far (in my opinion of course) than the AppleTV.

It’s just a set-top browser with a truly impressive remote, not enough inputs to be useful for switching, apparently only support for WMA (really no MP3 or OgV?), and awful recording resolution, 640 x 480 max, which limits its use for timeshifting. What’s the point of HDMI connectors if you’re barely recording at NTSC quality? It’s also apparently useless for digicam users, since the standards there are for iLink/Firewire, NOT USB. A cool widget to suck down uTube content. and web surf on your TV.

I wanted to love this, I’m looking for a new PVR, but this ain’t it. I’ve got a six year old replayTV that can switch between and record from its built-in tuner, a cable box on vidA, and a security camera on vidB with more aplomb and less fuss.