This review is incomplete - at the bottom you will see my notes for the rest of the review. I plan to add pictures and recording samples as well.
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My JBMM came on 8/14/2002 (shipped from Scott and hotmp3gear.com on 8/7/2002 via UPS ground). I opened the shipping box to find the nice-looking JBMM box. At this point, of course, I could hardly contain myself. There are no words for finally holding in your hand something you've been drooling over for 8 months. I must say I was impressed by the packaging. The cardboard of the outer box was robust. The interior plastic molding was well designed - and securly heldthe product. The plastic welds wern't too much of a pain to undo. I get the JBMM out of the box. It is small and light! I've held an iPod and, onhestly, it felt plasticy and cheap. The JBMM has just enough weight to fell like a quality product without being too heavy. Its back is metal and its front is molded plasic. It fits well in your hand and feels great. I also notice the AC adapter is small and light - much ligher than most DC converters. So, I power it up. Great! It already has a half-charge. Immediate satisfaction! So, I navigate around a bit... I immeditaly disliked the buttons (I have the black ones). They are stiff, hard to press, and hard plastic - some sort of rubber would have been better. Together with the UI often stalling out to spin up the hard drive, you are left wondering if you really pressed the botton or not. The layout of the bottons, too, is strange. It seems layed out for a left-handed person (which I am, actually, but I do most things right-handed). Mostly, the On and Off buttons aren't very convinient. Also, the manual refers to the 3 buttons on top as "F1, F2, and F3", but they are not labled on the JBMM. Lastly, in must lighting conditions, with the black buttons, you cannot see the raised symbols. It is not obvious that the center button is Play/Pause for example. These are nitpicks - the buttons work fine and you get used to them. So, I'm navigating around. The JBMM comes from the factory with 3 MP3s, !@#$% JPGs, and 3 AVIs (4, but one has two copies). The unit is slow when it has to spin up the HD - which is often. It seems to spin down the HD after 1 sec of no use. Every directory or file access requires the HD, so, unless you are fast, it seems to be always spinning up the HD. I'm adding a "adjust HD spin-down timeout" to my wishlist. So, I fire up one of the videos. The colors on the screen are gorgeous. The car and train videos aren't that interesting. The train video played jerkilly - to my immediat concern (I tested this video later on the computer and it was jerky there too, bad demo video). Then movie-trailer, though, (the only one with sound), played very well and looked great. Now, I find the screen to be too small. I almost think I'm going to get a headache (and I have 20/20 vision). Well, later I realized that I had a stiff neck and was getting a headache from that, but the screen is small - only a little bigger than a US Quarter. Secondly, when showing full-screen-color, the viewing angle is very small. Side to side is ok, but up and down, it seems like you have a 5 deg window. Noticing this - and not having noticed the problem when browesing around, I cancel the video. Sure enough, the ugly yellow-on-black text is viewable from a much larger set of angles. So that is why they chose those colors! I can't complain now. You can read the yellow-on-black from almost all angles. JPG viewing was ok, pan and zoom wasn't very good (later, when I upgraded the firmware it was better, but still awkward.). MP3 playback was great - and the included JBMM headphones wern't bad. The JBMM displays just about all the info you want when playing a song. My only small wish is a progress bar in addition to the 3 times (time-since-beginning, time-till-end, total time) at the bottom of the screen. You can even press one of the F keys and get more info like the file's date - very nice. So, theres my out-of-box experience! Excellant. My only grips: want a bigger screen, better buttons, and a more responsive UI. |
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Okay, lets get some real files on there! So, I plug in the USB cable to the JBMM and my little sister's computer (I'm visiting my parents). I had to install drivers for Win98SE, but then it worked great. Just a normal harddrive. Win98 reports it as a 18.6gb hard drive (bummer that hard drives are always smaller than their advertized size!). I transfer some files. The JBMM's built-in USB1.1's transfer rate is right around 1 meg / sec. Now I notice another small gripe - I cannot play the MP3s - or do anything for that matter - while the JBMM is connected to the computer. So, I wait for the computer to finish copying. Looks like verything is done, I unplug the JBMM. And I crash Win98! Great! My only guess is it wasn't really done. The JBMM's screen had turned off at that point - maybe it was actually displaying the "USB in use Do not unplug USB cable!" message, but I couldn't see it (Archos, the screen should stay on when this message is up!). Ok, well, I use the line-out to connect the JBMM to my parents sound-system with Axiom M3ti bookshelf speakers - incredible $270 speakers by the way you won't find better speakers for 2x the price. I am impressed by the quality. I cannot detect any degradation, and with these speakers, and me being a low-end audiophile, that is saying a lot! So, I have to rush away to an appointment at this point, but before I go, I d/l the new firmware and put it on the JBMM - not loading it yet. So, connecting to Win98SE, be very careful about when you unplug the JBMM. USB1.1 is too slow, but we expected that - waiting for my USB2.0 cable which should be in the mail. Audio-out quality is excellent. |
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On my way to my appointment, I flipped on the JBMM and told it to update its Firmware (since I had d/led it).No prob - 15 seconds are I was back up with the new firmware. I downloaded the firmware instruction TXT file to the JBMM, too, and it occured to me how much I wanted a text viewer. After my appointment I played around with recording from the mic. It is a very sensative mic and you can clear hear everything going on with the JBMM - every little hard drive noise, every button press, even the LCD screen. However, once the LCD and HD shut down, it is pretty good. It is MONO, even though I think the JBMM records it in stereo. The JBMM tells you how big your file is as it records, so, out of curiosity, I set it to the highest quality and let it record for as long as it could before spinning up the HD again. It spun up the hard drive at about 10megs. So, that means there is at least 10megs of RAM in the JBMM. Therefor I believe their 16 meg claim. If you do the math, that is a lot recording time without HD noise. The way naming works for recording is better than I had been led to think. You initial filename must be unique, but you can set it to whatever you want - and the JBMM remembers. Then, while you are recording, you can "advance to the next file" without missing a beat and it start recording a new file. Given your "filename" it records to "filename_01", "filename_02", etc... The anoying thing, though, is when you stop recording and start again, you have to give it a new file name - you can't continue the sequence. This should be fixed so you don't have to enter a filename to start recording. I tried Digital recording. As you can see in my FAQ, you just plug the AV cable into the LineIn and then use the yellow plug for your spdif, digital in. Now you just have to set the JBMM to the digital recording source and you are ready to go... Well, almost. First you have to wait for Archos to fix some bugs. First, while you are monitoring digital in, you immediatly notice the volume is way too loud. Yes, digital in clips. This is something digital is never s'pos to do. Bug #1. Now, okay, so it clips, maybe I can turn down the volume on my source (you shouldn't have to, but hey), but when you start recording, the JBMM just days: "Copy Prohibited". No matter that you are recording - even if nothing is pluged into the JBMM (recording nothing), it gives this same message. So, guess what? You can't digital record at all until they fix this. I was pleasantly surprized to see 48khz recording support. Too bad the max mp3 quality is only 160kbps - that tops out at around 15khz (about 30ktz digital). So, its wasted. Heres hoping for higher bitrates or just raw, WAV file recording! When setting to highest quality recording, 160kbps VBR mp3, it says 172kpbs while recording, but later reports when you play it, it says 160kbits. I played the file with winamp and it said yet another number. It was closer to 170kbps. Not quite sure what this all means (haven't used VBR at all). I was very pleasantly surprized to find that the JBMM can play back mp3s without any gap between them. That means if, say, your mp3s are from a live album where there is no hard song-breaks, it will playback on the JBMM without any gaps! Even winamp has had a hard time with this. There does seem to be glitches every once and a while, but for the most part, it works. While recording, and playing around with setting volume levels, I realized you really need a clipping indicator in the JBMM. It's not hard to do, just show the volume indicators in Red every time they hit maximum volume. Once again, heres hoping Archos is listening. In my wishlist I added an item that I was sure the JBMM wouldn't do -
the ability to setup an ID3 tag that it remembers for all of your recording.
Well, guess what? It does exactly that. This makes it very easy to record
an album (LP) for example. Just setup all the info, once (Well, save for
song names), then start recording. Press the next button at the end of
each track and, presto. When you are done, you will have each track in
its own file, each with all the ID3 information - save the individual
song names. Good job Archos! |
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Crashed NT by unpluginb while unsafe. Damn that's stupid. Then the JBMM wouldn't come up as a drive in NT - had to reboot the JBMM. So, the neither Win2000 or Win98SE are safe. With this last case, the JBMM said it was done, but NT still croked!. I tested this: you definatly cannot play dir and all of its subdirs. There isn't even a good way to do this in the current UI. I guess if they changed the play buttom from going into a dir to just playing the dir, that would work. After testing, I discovered the JBMM's internal max resolution is about 640x480. You can see this resolution with the AV-out. Background: Every digital device that outputs and analog video signal
(VGA is analog) has a framebuffer, a chunk of memory dedicated to storing
the current displayed image. Each framebuffer has a fixed size - of course
on your computer you can change your video mode and change your framebuffer
size. But anyway, the JBMM will have a framebuffer, too - I expect it
is fixed in hardware in some way. I had my JBMM connected to my computer via USB and was just handling the device and NT wigged as if I had unplugged it. I guess the plugs on the JBMM aren't that solid. So, don't move you JBMM while it is connected to your computer. I noticed the JBMM doesn't display files that it can't play. This is
annoying. What if I wanted to delete one of these files so I could record
or xfer images from my camera? Can't do it without a computer! I also found I really wanted Move right off the bat. I though I might. When you record lots, it fills up your root dir pretty fast. You want to be able to make some sub-dirs and move your files into them. Can't without Move! For that matter, I want Copy, too. LCD should have a never-turn-off mode - or should never turn off while pluged into AC. When I have an AC connection - I'm not going to run out of battery. I don't want my LCD turning off all the time. When I'm using my JBMM in my car with a DC adapter, I want the LCD to stay on there, too. It would be nice if the backlight brightness setting worked - it is kinda bright for nighttime driving. |
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My 192 kbps, Lame-encoded VBR song is reported as 128kbpts and gets the song length wrong - 50% longer than it is. So, I can confirm that the JBMM gets song lengths wrong sometimes. I also found out later that some of my 192kbps CBR songs showed up wrong. Winamp never had a problem, so I'm assuming it is the JBMM. Rewinding a song doesn't always rewind to the beginning of the song. Once this happens, the song reset halfway through playing. This was weird. I was playing a song, then I held down back to rewind to the beginning. When I let up - at the beginning where it wouldn't go any further, it started playing from somewhere in the middle. I tried again - then it started playing the LAST song I played - still displaying on screen the current song. Bug-o! You can't seem to setup MONO recording on the JBMM. That would make sense
for dictation with the MONO mic that is built in... |
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Yesterday I watched Final Fantasy with my dad and little sister on their TV - played off of the JBMM. The first thing we noticed was, FF being a dark movie anyway, and their TV having some problems with dark colors, that you lose a lot of detail in the dark end of the spectrum. This isn't the JBMM's fault. However, I would really have appreciated a gamma adjustment on the JBMM's TV out to correct this problem. Lets add brightness & contrast to that list, too. The second issue is audio-sync. Over time the audio got out of sync. I thought it was the AVI that I ripped from the DVD, but today I tested playing it back on my computer - no problems. By the end of the movie the audio was 1-3 seconds out of phase - early - from the video. This is abysmal to watch - luckily my dad and sister didn't care that much. I tried stopping and restarting the playback. Even starting from the beginning and fast-forwarding. Its the same. The JBMM gets audio out of sync on long AVIs! I'd say by about 1 second per hour. The third issue is we had about 3-4 glitches watching the movie while the JBMM spun up the hard-drive. The glitch lasts about a second and is mild, but everyone noticed it. The JBMM has glitchy video playback sometimes when spinning up the hard-drive. The final issue? We need an IR remote badly! My FF file is a 352x240x29.970fps Divx 5, 807 meg file with 850kbps video and 192kbps Lame MP3 soundtrack. |
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8/19/2002 - Listening to Audio in the Car and Making Audio Notes |
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Also, yesterday, while driving home, I was listening to MP3s in my car - on ear-bud, waiting for my FM modulator so I can have an AUX in for my CD-deck. The first thing I noticed is, when the LCD is off, all of the buttons only turn it back on - they don't do their function. So, you have to press a button twice to get it to do anything. This is a bug that needs to be fixed - no other device has this problem. The JBMM's button should to their designated function even if the LCD is off - at least during mp3 playback. I also wanted to take some voice-notes (for this page actually) while driving and I found a bug: when you record, it saves the file in the current directory, but it checks the ROOT for duplicate file names (bug)! I also discovered what a pain it is to make a simple voice-note - particularly when you are already listening to MP3s. You have to cancel play. Move to the root. Hit record. Rename the mp3. Start recording. Finish, change back to the Dir you wree plaing mp3s in, select the right song and play it. This is a lot to do - particularly while driving. So, I have a suggestion for Archos: Make F3 the hot-record button. If you hold it down for 3 seconds, it starts recording immediatly with the current record settings - adding the the _01, _02, _03 sequence if the file already exists. When you stop, the JBMM resumes whatever it was doing (video, audio, browesing) right were it left off. |
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Plugging the AV cable into the OUT slot and connecting the Video cable to the Digital-IN on my amp, when I turned on the JBMM, it gave me color bars! And the JBMM was thoroughly confused. I had to take out the battery to reset it. Well, I did it again and my JBMM is now dead! Dead means: red and green LEDs work right. When you press the on button, it turns on the red light. When you hold the on-button for EVER, nothing ever happens. No screen, nothing. Looks like I'm sending my JBMM back to Archos... Damn! |
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This was a major headache. No, I am not impressed with Archos customer support. Here is the short and the skinny:
The new unit is working great so far! And the UI isn't quite AS bad as I remembered... Learning how to use the playlist and hold-play really makes a big difference. I think Vladimir Pantelic was the first to figure out you can add a whole directory tree by holding play. Works great! Of course, it isn't close to what I put in my Ode, but it is better than I thought it was. So, archos's customer support stank. I never once got an apology for
this miserable experience. However, I did get something out of it. So,
presuming my JBMM doesn't die, I'm happy. |
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Before I list a bunch of gripes, let me say, I am extremely pleased with how it performed. Nothing out there could have done better for my needs on this trip! The JBMM, for the most part, performed flawlessly for 40+ hours of MP3 playing and 100+ image downloads from compact flash. Play-hold playlisting is the bomb! This makes a big difference in using the JBMM. It is really easy to queue up the music you want. Except for that 999 play-list-length limit! That is very annoying! I want the JBMM to remember the current playlist when turned off - at least in "resume" mode. Might want it to be easier to make a new playlist (clear the current playlist), too. Song glitch - one in every few hundred times, paying a song, it glitches in the middle of the song. It either stops or goes to the next song. I still want an LCD-never-off mode. But, if we have that, I'd like some way to turn the LCD off now - something easy that works everywhere. I'm not sure if I like the having to press a button twice to get a response when the LCD is off. I don't want to lose that until we have a full HOLD feature, but it is annoying when trying to skip a song while driving. It should be a once-press deal. I used a 4.5 volt, 2amp car adapter - worked great! It powered my JBMM just fine and it actually charged it, too. I did some research online trying to find out what was safe to try. Here is the skinny. Most electronics are rated to run +/- 5% of their specified voltage. For us, that means 4.75v to 5.25v. I also ran across a post talking about 4.5v or 6v for a 5v minidisc player. The suggestion was trying a lesser voltage was okay - it might not work but it shouldn't damage anything. Trying a higher voltage could be dangerous. Well, I took out my multimeter and checked my adapter - it said my voltage was 4.67. That is pretty close to 4.75, so I decided to give it a try. I have another adapter for my minidisc player that says it is 4.5 volts but the multimeter shows it runs at 5v. It even fits my JBMM (it is a little large, but the JBMM plug is forgiving) - positive tip, too. However, it is only 1 amp, so I decided not to use it. Image downloading. Would like a way to rename the images as they download. Since the camera auto-names them image_xxx.jpg. I'd like to be able to download them and have the be named DatAtTheBeach_xxx.jpg. This is just a nice feature most of the time, but at one point I needed it. I wanted to get a copy of my friends pictures from his digital camera. I plugged in his compact-flash and started downloading them - no problem. However, his name in sequence overlapped mine and so there were duplicate file name in my directory. The JBMM handled that ok "Do you want to replace?". But, in order to download all of his files, I had to make a new directory and download them there. I would have rather downloaded them as "DevonsPicts_xxx.jpg". I s'pos if making a sub directory were somewhat easier (meaning you could create one when you are picking where you are going to download too without it aborting the download), that would be okay, too. We badly need full file management - Move and Copy are the big ones, but also just a tag-ing system where we can select a bunch of files to delete, move, copy, etc.... With known directory-creation bugs, I basically avoided doing anything but downloading JPGs and playing MP3s. I did my file management when I got home on my PC. My hard-drive space was always misreported, just like everyone else. Want to be able to view JPGs while MP3s are playing. This is common: as a passenger, you're driving down the road, playing your favorite tunes on the JBMM and you want to view yesterday's pictures. Well, you can't! Mp3 playing stops. My Ode doesn't even do this right - need to fix that :). The LCD screen is very hard to read in bright daylight. We need that no-repeat random, too! I also want to be able to skip back a track, when I am in shuffle mode, to the last songs played. My ODE does all this - it isn't hard, Archos, get your act together! |