Archos launches digital video recorder

Chicago (IL) – Archos is gearing up to launch a Tivo-like digital video recorder, documents published by the FCC revealed Thursday.

The new Archos TV+ WiFi, resembling the look of a compact family room DVR in Mac mini format, surfaced on the FCC website today and is apparently ready to be introduced. The main purpose of the device is to act as a digital video recorder as well as a wired or wireless media hub between the TV and PCs.

Video and audio can either be stored directly on the device or streamed via Wi-Fi or Ethernet from a PC to the TV. According to the manual of the Archos TV+, the device supports MPEG4 and WMV formats as well as H.264 and MPEG2 via additional plug-ins. Regular playback is limited to a resolution of 640x480 and can be increased to 720x480 via these plug-ins – which is rather strange as the unit does integrates an HDMI interface that provides room for much higher (HD) resolutions. Video-recording is limited to 640x480 pixel at 25 or 30fps.

Additional features are audio playback (MP3/WMA) and recording (WAV), a photo viewer (JPG, BMP, PNG) as well as a PDF viewer.

Input interfaces include analog stereo audio, composite video, component video, S-video, Ethernet, USB slave and USB host ; output ports include analog stereo audio, composite video, component, S-video, and HDMI.

Archos declined to comment on a possible introduction and price of the TV+.