Archos and Wibrain in home TV action!

I’ve retro-fitted my TV with a new Internet, streaming media, uPnP-capable, portable device solution. Its not Apple TV or anything big and cumbersome like that, its the device that didn’t make the MID grade. The Archos 605 Wifi . I’ve entered a new world of uPnP and online TV on demand. My productivity has gone through the floor. Its great!

I bought the 605 WiFi last November to test its mobile Internet capabilities and it failed miserably. From a MID perspective it was slow, unsatisfying and only had WiFi. It has been in the cupboard-of-shame ever since.

Until last week that is, when my wife briefly mentioned getting a flat screen TV in the bedroom. Not being a big fan of the TV-in-the-bedroom concept I threw the idea away. Those wifey types are crafty though aren’t they. Damn them! Only 24 hours later I was watching Cranky Geeks in my bed on a ultra mobile PC and the seed sprouted. Wouldn’t it be nice to watch it on a flat screen TV on the wall in the bedroom.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

My wife should be in marketing. The subliminal type.

What if I could put a PVR up here and get all my videos and English TV [we live in Germany] and start syncing video podcasts into the server and… and, and, and. (You know how those thought-chains get out of hand right?)

At first I thought about MythTV but having done that project 4 years ago and having spent way too many hours on it I started looking for a simple solution. What I needed was a simple solution and that’s where the 605 WiFi thought came in. I had done a successful impromptu test in the UK with High School Musical (oh how the kids loved me) and a 5-hour music mix on new years eve. The 605 had worked easily and flawlessly. I remembered that there was a DVR station add-on with SPdif and S-Video output and it was beginning to sound perfect. This wasn’t going to be a HD setup but seeing as I didn’t have any HD sources it would probably be fine.

Using the battery docking station I was able to rig it up on a test TV (the main TV in the living room) and start messing around. I fired-up a uPnP server (TwonkyMedia on my favorite distro, OpenSuse 10.3) in the cellar and BANG! there was everything. Working, with a nice UI, my SMB shares, Internet widgets and….wait a minute, there was YouTube in full-screen glory. Cranky Geeks too. The thing that suprised me the most though was that the browser was enjoyable. Using it on a TV like this puts the slow browser into perspective. The last time I had really looked at searchable info on a TV was while waiting for page 26 of 52 to come round on the Teletext road traffic site. Opera on the 605 Wifi is light-years ahead in comparison and this change of context made it incredibly impressive. After installing the Archos PC-based podcast sync software (it would have been nice to have this as an application on the 605 itself) I was soon catching up on old Diggnation and CrankyGeeks episodes. Awesome!

But now I have another problem. The Archos 605 Wifi is a better playback device than my Mini-ITX PVR that I built 4 years ago. It boots in 5 seconds (current PVR takes 3 minutes as it is diskless and boots over the network) it’s silent and it supports uPnP which is so much easier than SMB or NFS shares. The best thing is that it’s highly portable. I probably won’t use it myself as a PMP but I know my daughter will love it in the car. I still need to add the DVR station accessory which gives the ability to use a remote control and do recordings but I plan to order that ASAP for even lazier on-sofa Internet action.

I think we can call that a success…

Oops! The wife. She wanted a new TV didn’t she. I wanted Cranky Geeks in bed and my solution, the 605 Wifi, is now installed in the living room and I don’t want to move it upstairs. Do I buy a second 605 Wifi or do I go for something else.

[Here comes the ultra mobile PC part.]

I was looking at the prices of the LCD and plasma TV panels and thinking – mmm. Expensive. And thinking… ‘What about getting a simple PC panel and feeding it data through the VGA connector.’ What about using the Everun and the docking station with a DVB-T module. Mmm. A tad under-powered for this applications. Looking at the WiBrain B1H sitting on my desk I remembered the DVD-capable docking station and the WiBrain’s ability to stream well from the Internet….Bingo!

So that’s where I am right now. The 605 is working well in the living room, i’m ordering the PVR station and am starting to work on the WiBrain. The WiBrain will be tested with a USB DVB-T stick and Sage TV. I’ll use the VGA-out dongle for testing and when the docking station comes out, I’m going to connect the DVB-T sitck to that, add some powered speakers and connect permanently to a LCD monitor. If it works, the WiBrain B1H will be the smallest XP-based media center possible and a really tidy solution.

I’ll be blogging about the WiBrain PVR project on UMPCPortal so stay tuned over there for progress reports and if you have any suggestions or ideas, please let me know.

More information available on the Archos 605 Wifi in the database.