Archos - TV+ review

Archos is best known for its music and media players, which are among the best liked, by those not buying Apple. The TV+ box is something of a departure for the company; a media streamer and PVR. This isn't a TV tuner - there's no Freeview or Sky compatibility built in - so it sits between a set-top box and your TV, feeding the signal through.

What it does do is take media from a server on your PC, via Ethernet or WiFi connections, and play it back on your TV screen. It can record up to 250GB of material on its built-in hard drive, too (there's an 80GB model for around £160).

Archos has remembered its media player customers with type A and B USB sockets on the side, so you can easily download media from the box to a player. On the back are connectors for composite, component and S-Video in and out, as well as S/PDIF and analogue, stereo sound. Two SCART conversion cables are also supplied.

The main box is controlled from a small square remote control, complete with QWERTY keypad and thumbpad for navigation. This is one of the best features of the box, and the on-screen menuing system is adequate, without having the flair of something like Apple TV.

To get the TV+ box to operate your TV tuner or set-top box and make recordings, it needs to be able to communicate with it. Somebody at Archos obviously decided to ‘think outside the box' and fitted it with an infra-red emitter, so it could simulate the signals from a manual remote control and work with a wide range of TV setups. To do this, though, the TV+ has to face the TV's I/R receiver, which means you can't stack it with your other TV equipment.

Other problems include the unit's lack of HD support. Although it has an HDMI socket on the back, it can't process HD signals so you're left with plain old TV. The take-up of HD is by no means universal, of course, but a device designed for the high-tech community, as the price tag suggests the TV+ is, should cater for it.

The box price isn't all you'll be paying, either; there's some important software missing, too. While you might argue that a Web browser for the TV+ should be an optional extra - it's a £20 download - things like MPEG-2 and QuickTime plug-ins should be standard equipment on a media streamer. If you buy all the plug-ins, the unit scrapes £300.