.srt subtitles work very well, there even is a menu to resize or de-activate the subtitles.
http://gmail.com : works perfectly (I don’t know yet if all AJAX features in Gmail are smooth, I’d like to see more testing of compatibillity, usabillity and performance)
http://last.fm : the flash player for this kind of Flash-based audio player does not seem to work (at least not for now, there seems to be flash displaying but does not let the user interact with those in terms of clicking on certain Flash features, games, flash sites and such.)
Comparative video of the browsing experience with the Archos 605 WiFi compared with the iPhone is going to be posted at GenerationMp3.com soon.
http://metacafe.com : does not work, upon trying to play flash video from that site, it asks about installing a new version of flash
http://video.google.com : WORKS GREAT! Full screen streaming of Google Video is great and smooth.
http://sevenload.com : The website works but it’s not possible to watch the videos. I’ve heard from desktop Linux users that they also are having problems with Sevenload. It might be using some newer Flash features that might not be available yet for Linux.
http://kewego.com : This video site works fine and the flash videos play smoothly in full screen mode.
Full screen flash video playback works perfectly and overall is reported to be very impressive. But embedded “small video window in browser” mode is not smooth. It is to be seen if that mode becomes smooth upon the video being completely buffered as with the Nokia N800’s latest Flash 9 firmware update. I guess Archos has figured to do a great trick in the full screen flash playback mode where the browser CPU and memory usage is suspended giving full access to the CPU, Memory and DSP for the flash video playback.
If you have more ideas for things that should be tested, come and post in this thread in the forum.
If I had the 605 WiFi right now, I would try and test following:
- Which is the speed of the browser compared to the 604 WiFi, compared to the Nokia N800 and compared to the Apple iPhone.
- Which is the quality of the video streaming over Samba and Upnp compared with the 604 WiFi. In terms of being able to smoothly fast forward anywhere in the video, load thumbnails, resume playback, bookmark and such.
- Which is the performance of AJAX in the browser compared with the 604 WiFi, the Nokia N800 and the Apple iPhone.
- Is there a speed improvement in the use of the new user interface compared with the 604 WiFi.
These things we already know that are the advances of the 605 WiFi compared to the 604 WiFi:
Price -40% (-60% for 4GB)
Weight -30% (-45% for 4GB)
Thickness -20%
Screen resolution x3
Video playback resolution x2
Startup time (wake-up from sleep) /10
Those are some of new features:
Video-on-demand
Flash video playback in full screen
Progressive download of videos launched from the browser
Automatic firmware upgrade
Direct download of the plug-ins
Secured one-click payments
Wake-up from sleep-mode (to test: how long does the battery last in sleep-mode)
Upnp file-sharing
Do you have more suggestions for describing briefly the advantages of the new Archos 605 WiFi and the 5th generation? That is, while I haven’t tested the 605 WiFi yet, I’m sure it’s got many positive surprises in store for us, and I am eagerly looking forward to read more initial reports from ArchosLounge.net and GenerationMp3.com
http://stage6.com : does not work, it asks to download DivX Web Player for Linux
http://maps.google.com : does work, but not totally fast and there are a few rendering bugs with this advanced type of AJAX Javascript
http://addictinggames.com : the flash games do load up, but it seems it is not yet possible to interact with the flash games. To test if it is something to do with the shockwave format or what it might be.
http://youtube.com and http://dailymotion.com : those work great, the navigation is fluid and works perfectly for full screen flash video sites like these. When flash video playback is detected it pops up the choice box asking if the user wants to experience the flash video in Full Screen or in Embedded mode. Test of the performance of the Embedded mode has not been reported yet.
http://ustream.tv : does not work, it says that the version of flash installed is not the correct one. Live flash video seems to be some other type of flash video.
It is to be said that I believe Archos will be able to more often update the firmware regularilly since the firmware update is automatic, meaning nearly all users get the updates when they are released, thus work on improving rapidity and fluidity of the system as well as to add new features will be more worth it than previously where users had to update the firmware manually.
