Combined AV Devices > Professional video cassete recorder/player Combined AV Devices

Advantages: Low cost
Disadvantages: Dodgy menus, very disk fussy, lousy DVD burner that will fail.

...eventually replaced the DVD burner in mine with a Liteon 20X unit for about £16. This solved the problem, and for the moment, it's been working perfectly. Fitting a replacement burner is straightforward enough, though getting it to neatly fit into the existing front fascia is a bit more challenging. ... Read review

Advantages: Looks, sound, originality
Disadvantages: battery life, loudness of speakers

The Samsung YP K5 mp3 player is immediately striking. Its sleek design and black finish would seamlessly fit into Batman's arsenal of gadgets. When I first bought the product it was immediately noticed by friends and strangers and as an aid to 'street rep' it works wonders. I was at first dubious of the sound of the speakers - I bought it over the internet and so had no way of trying out the player to check the sound capacity. However, my worries ... Read review

Advantages: The media center interface, decent codec support, HD movies stream really well.
Disadvantages: The DVD player is terrible.

Okay, the big pull of this DVD player is the built in Media Center Extender software, which once set up runs really well. You need to have vista installed on a PC (which needs to be on for it to work) and you also need a good network connection between the two. I have tried both a 200mbps powerline ethernet network and a wireless N network and for me the wireless network performed better for HD movies, but this will differ for most people so just ...
...wifi connection. The built in DVD play is poor to say the least, it doesn't scale DVD's out to widescreen it simply takes the DVD's basic resolution and outputs it to the middle of the screen. I tried watching an old cracker and had to stop as it was displayed as a 640x480 picture in the middle of my 720p HDTV, believe me this looks terrible. Its worth it for the media center as it works seemlessly and is a lot easier to access than the XBOX 360 ... Read review

Advantages: CHEAP. (BUY THE BOX, NO MORE CHARGE)
Disadvantages: NEEDS GUIDE UPDATING EVERY SO OFTEN (SCREEN GOES BLACK WITH LITTLE MESSAGE TILL DONE)

FREEVIEW IS NEW, CHEAP, EFFECTIVE AND GETS OVER 30 CHANNELS INCLUDIND CBBC CITV CHANNEL, BBC 1, BBC 2, BBC3, BBC4, ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, C4, C4+1, E4, E4+1, C4 FIRST LOOK AND MANY MANY MORE. T ALSO INCLUDES MANY RADIO CHANNELS AS WELL. ANOTHER THING IS IT CAN USE THE "RED" BUTTON FEATURE ALSO KNOWN AS THE INTERACTIVE FEAUTURE. MANY WILL AGREE THAT IT CAN BE BETTER THEN SKY. IT HAS A 14 DAY TV GUIDE THAT WILL TELL YOU WHAT WILL BE ON FOR THE NEXT ... Read review

Advantages: Huge storage, good screen quality, best device of its type.
Disadvantages: You have to pay for extra plug-ins, heavy, ugly.

...is perfect. At times, the archos can be slow, but this is expected with any hard drive based media player. It is considerably bigger than an iPod touch and is not as sleek, however, for me, I need lots of storage and the iPod Touch's 32GB is not nearly enough. The touch screen is very good for internet browsing and flicking through photos, but the choice to include buttons was a good idea. Sometimes when you are listening to music, you do not need ...
...the speaker quality is poor when playing at full volume. I recommend the Archos 605 WiFi to people that NEED the extra storage, however, if you have under 32GB of media that you will put on the device, the I suggest you go for the iPod Touch or iPhone. ... Read review