The Register is reporting that the Plymouth headmounted camera trials using Archos to record from headmounted cameras was successfull.

An evaluation of the pilot run by Devon and Cornwall Constabulary showed that, compared with incidents when the cameras were not used, the body worn video devices led to an increase in the number of convictions of offenders. Their footage provided clear evidence that made it difficult for offenders to deny their involvement, leading to less paperwork for the police, earlier guilty pleas, less time spent in court and an increase in convictions.

For the year long pilot 300 Plymouth police officers were trained to use any of the 50 cameras available during day and night patrols. The evaluation found that violent crime was reduced by 8 per cent in the pilot sectors, compared to a 1 per cent reduction across other sectors. The number of incidents in which people were wounded were reduced by 18 per cent in pilot areas of the city, compared to no change in other areas.

Plymouth police using the new technology increased their detection of violent crime by 40 per cent and arrests for violent crime went up by 85 per cent.

Alongside the Plymouth report, the Home Office has published guidance to standardise police procedures for body worn video devices. The document says that police should tell people they are being recorded and that recordings should not be made of general patrolling duties, unless this is part of a specific operation such as a football match.

Thanks to Archos, and the british love for having security cameras everywhere, crime is going down in the UK.

So now the UK is going to use 3 million pounds to equipe the police nationwide with this system. Is the new 605 WiFi 160GB with battery docks going to be the new pocket video recorder of choice for the UK police? It is 55 grams lighter, 3 millimeters thinner, offers a better screen, and an instant-on OS. I guess that there must be some clever video storage and organisation software that the police might be using with the Archos docked using USB2 to their computer systems, unless they just store all recordings on some hard drives, since basically it is only to be used if the police officer or the judge needs some evidence material from a certain event.

Nastyatak of ArchosLounge has performed some more tests using a test page I setup at http://archosfans.com/progress.html

Following are formats that give the abillity to playback progressively and instantly:

- DivX in the .avi container
- DivX in the .divx container
- H264 in the .mov container
- Mp4 in the .mp4 container
- WMV
- FLV

What does this mean? It means that any http link you can find on the Internet to videos in those formats will offer the choice of eigther Playing instantly and downloading to a specific folder or Downloading only.

What this means is that anyone can design a Video-on-demand Interface using any video format to work directly on the Archos 5G.

Currently normally embedded DivX, WMV or Quicktime video files are not working. I would expect it to be possible for Archos to detect when such an embedded OBJECT tag is present in the HTML page and if it is in auto-play mode or not. Then display the popup asking the user if he wants to Play instantly and download or Download only. Since this is a 4.3″ 800×480 screen, we’d mostly like to deal with any type of multimedia file being streamed in Full-screen mode than to have to deal with tiny embedded windows of content inside of the high resolution browser.

While we are waiting for fully detailed tests of the exact way that Flash is supported, and of possible official details about current and future firmware updates concerning Flash support, here is what I think is going on:

- Flash 9 is supported

BUT

- Only .flv Flash Video files can be processed in full screen using the DSP processor when they are detected to be embedded in the HTML page. When that HTML page is loaded and the .flv is detected, Archos asks if that should be played in Full Screen, and only in Full Screen mode can it utilise the full power of the Digital Signal Processing chip (a very powerfull Texas Instruments DSP that supports video up to HD resolution)

Supported Flash 9 .flv video streaming sites supported are reported to be following:

- YouTube.com
- video.google.com
- Dailymotion.com
- Kewego.com

To remind you, with the 605 WiFi we are getting COMPLETE instant streaming access, in full screen, at full framerates and at the full resolution to the whole video contents of each of those sites.

- Flash files that are in the .swf container are displayed on the Archos, BUT, right now the touch-screen does not interact with those .swf files and the .swf playback is slow BECAUSE the .swf is currently only processed with the ARM core of the processor.

Flash 9 video sites that use .swf to display video are currently not supported:

- Vpod.tv
- Sevenload.com
- vids.myspace.com
- metacafe.com

Other popular .swf “Shockwave Flash” implementations that are displayed and animated only using the ARM core and offer no interaction using the touch-screen currently are:
- Flash Games
- Webradio and embedded music using Flash
- Websites with Flash navigation of Flash functions

The question is following: (hopefully that Archos can respond officially)

Will a firmware update manage to take those .swf files and hand them over to the DSP chip to handle them in Full screen mode just as currently Flash 9 .flv files are. I guess that Archos, Adobe and Opera might be working on this right now, .swf files are more complex since they do interaction, they can grab information from a database, they can process stuff on the client and on the server side.

Thus I hope that Archos will provide us with more official detailed information about this soon.

I am not the total expert in Flash and Texas Instruments DaVinci processor of the Archos 605 WiFi at all, so if you have more knowledge about how Flash works and how Archos could possibly make all flash work over on the DSP chip, then please post in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?p=24577

Download higher quality Mp4 version

Thanks to ArchosLounge.net for doing these tests!!

Why does support for the progressive download of DivX in the AVI container matter so much? Well this means you can access all videos from the whole Internet immediately on the Archos without waiting for the download to be completed. And once you have finished playing it once it is stored on your Archos so that you can watch it again without having to re-download it.

What this means is, if you have a collection of terrabytes of DivX films at your home, using a low power router with a HTTP server on it, and connecting NAS or usb-hard drives to that router, or having your computer always-on at home hosting this HTTP server, this means you could access all your personal collection of terrabytes of DivX films from all over the Internet, you could password protect it for security, thus having instant worldwide access to your complete personal multimedia collection, as long as your home broadband internet connection has at least 1-2mbit/s upload, enough to provide at least as much upload bitrate as most of the videos in your collection are. I have 2mbit/s upload, so this will work great for me. This is better than ORB, Slingbox, AMD Live and Sony TV Anywhere since this is native full DivX instant playback.