have you heard of the opera browser, its like the one for the wii. its pretty easy to use nothing fancy but gets the job done. Archos also have flash 9 support so it can view youtube but its a bit slow but it will work with most flash sites

Hi, regarding the PMP market, I understand there are quite a lot in the market, but I'd regard most as MP3 players with capability to play videos. My take is that a PMP has to come with at least a 4" screen and above. Anything smaller can be a strain on the eyes.. So far for international markets, only cowon/archos and maybe aigo offer 4inch screens PMPs.

Yup I have heard of Opera.  In fact, the first time I heard of it was in 1997.  Back then I thought it was going to be a big hit because of its light weight.  Turned out that most users still prefer fancy features.  

By the way, how do you compare iphone or iTouch to Archos?

iphone is a phone so i m not going to compare it, where as the touch its a better compare. But i will still favor the archos every way because i was thinking about the itouch before the archos, and after doing some research i found the archos suited my needs more. i will list some examples :-  archos has a bigger screen which displays dvd quality at 800x480, support alot more codec, with additional dvr dock itact as a digital recorder. the actual screen size is 4.3 inch and last of all the deciding factor was its storage size(mine is 80gb) and it acts as a external hard drive too. archos supports upnp for media streaming which is also good.

now itouch :- nicer design, the screen is nice too with a sleek user interface. but crap codec support with, storage too small for my liking and screen size not big enough to be comfortable in watching a movie. itouch has got more applications and app store which is a good point.

i dont think itouch is a bad product at all, but imo i think the archos offer a lot more at a very reasonable price. There are alot of areas where is archos is bad but i can live with those rather then have a verynice looking itouch but don't have all the functions.

i hope i answered your questions

regarding mywords reply.
yes you are right in what you saying that most of these players out there are more of a mp3 player rather then pmp and that archos and cowon are really the only big ones in the international market. but if you do go back to hk go visit golden in shum shui po you will see many many many china brands PMP player lol they all have great spec on paper too but you just dont know how long it will last. but then again you can buy around 2 - 3 of those players and still wont be as expensive as cowon or an archos. Btw the iriver players are pretty cool too you should take a look at that.

Thanks 收買佬, I got a lot of info from this thread.. it'll help me make purchase next time, when my Cowon dies, or when I get so sick of conversion from rmvb to avi. Right now conversion time is 25 minutes for a 45-minute epidsode.. Brrrrr

Haha!  Thanks 收買佬 for the fair comparison.  I am not an iPhone user nor a Archos/Cowon user, so I don't lean toward either side.  But I am also a more practical person like you.  Before I spend the money, I think about how much it will satisfy my needs.  Appearance always go second.  Good point about the available codecs for Archos.  If I don't care about the warranty and hacked iTouch, can I install more codecs?


Hahaa!!  I can't agree with you more!!!  I saw all those, and they were even playing TVB dramas (RMVB) to attract customers.  But like you said, you don't know how long it will last!