Archos AV500 User Manual

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ARCHOS

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MOBILE VIDEO RECORDER

AV 500 SERIES

ARCHOS

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MOBILE VIDEO RECORDER

AV 500 SERIES

Video Player & Recorder / Music Player & Recorder / Photo Wallet & Viewer / USB 2.0 Hard Drive

English Language User Manual

User Manual for ARCHOS™ AV 500 series Version 2.4 Please visit our website to download the most recent manual and software for this product

Dear Customer,

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ARCHOS to your home entertainment system. You can connect the AV500 to your TV system to record your television shows as well as connect it to your PC to transfer over your favorite photos, videos, and music. By connecting to a computer, you get the advantage of being able to download legal music and video content from the Internet. Since it is a PlaysForSure For more information about the PlaysForSure

This manual will explain, in detail, the functionality of your device. We have packed this product with many functions and capabilities. The better you know how to use it, the more enjoyment you will get from it. Remember, with the AV 500, you can…

• Play MPEG-4 SP & WMV video ﬁ les* on the built-in screen, a television or video projector

• Record and edit MPEG-4 video ﬁ les from a television or other video device

• Listen to MP3, WMA, or WAV music ﬁ les* or PlaysForSure

• Record music ﬁ les into digital format directly from your home stereo without a computer

• Synchronize your Windows

• View JPEG and BMP digital photos and create slide shows

• Copy Pictures directly from your digital camera via the built in host USB port

• Store .DOC, .PDF, or any type of data ﬁ le – it’s a portable hard drive too!

thanks you for your choice of this exciting AV 500 product. The AV 500 is designed to be the companion

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device, you have a wide choice of music and video content available on the Internet.

Media Player music and video library to your AV 500

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program, see www.playsforsure.com .

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downloaded music ﬁ les

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TTable of contents

We wish you many years of enjoyment from your AV 500 product. Please do register your product at our website www.archos.com to ensure that you get have access to our help line and to be informed of technical support and free software updates for your product.

Wishing you the best Video, Music, and Photo experience,

The ARCHOS

*For full information on compatible ﬁ le formats, see the technical speciﬁ cations.

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TEAM

Please take the time to read though this manual. There are many things that this device can do that you may not be aware of.

able of contents

1 INTRO – Buttons and Connections 8

2 INTRO – First Time Usage 11

2.1 Charging the battery 11

2.2 Turning on the AV 500 11

2.3 Shutting off the AV 500 and Battery saving features 11

2.4 Changing the Interface Language 12

2.5 Foreign Character Sets 12

2.6 Caring for the AV 500 12

2.7 Hardware Reset 13

3 VIDEO – Playing Video Files 14

3.1 Video Playback Action Icons 15

3.2 Resume Function 16

4 VIDEO – Playing Video Files from the Internet 17

4.1 Protected Internet Video content 17

4.1 Non Protected Internet Video Content 17

5 VIDEO – Recording Video Files 19

5.1 Video recording connections 19

5.3 Setting the Recording Parameters 21

5.4 Where is the Recording Saved? 22

5.5 Copy Protection 23

5.6 Manually Setting the Scheduler 23

6 VIDEO – Automated Yahoo!® TV Recording Scheduler 26

7 VIDEO – Setting the Infrared Emitter Code* 28

7.1 Part 1: Choose your Device and Brand 29

7.2 Part 2: Finding the Right Emitter Codes 29

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8 VIDEO – Editing Video Files 31

9 VIDEO – Creating MPEG-4 Video Files with your Computer 34

9.1 Installing the PC Software 35

9.2 Using MPEG-4 Translator 36

10 MUSIC – Playing Music Files 39

10.1 Button Control 40

10.2 Play Screen Icons 40

10.3 Browsing through your Music Library 42

10.4 Playing Through your Stereo System 43

10.5 Setting a Bookmark 43

10.6 The Resume Function 44

11 MUSIC – Putting Music onto your AV 500 45

11.1 Synchronizing Music from Windows Media® Player (WMP) to the AV 500 45

11.2 Comparison of Windows Media Player 10 to Windows Media Player 9 46

11.3 Transferring your CD collection to the AV 500 47

11.4 Installing Windows Media

11.5 Installing Windows Media

12 MUSIC – Playlists 48

12.1 Playing a Playlist 48

12.2 Creating a Playlist 48

12.3 Saving a Playlist 49

12.4 Adding songs to a Playlist while listening to Music 50

13 MUSIC – Recording Music 51

13.1 Cable Connections for Audio Recording 51

13.2 Recording Procedure 53

Microphone 54

13.3 Where is the Recording Saved? 55

13.4 Audio Editing 55

14 MUSIC – Using iTunes™ with your AV 500 57

Player 9 (WMP9) 47

Player 10 (WMP10) 47

15 PHOTO – Viewing Photos 58

15.1 Viewing Photos 58

15.2 Viewing a slideshow 59

15.3 Transferring photos to your AV 500 60

16 BROWSER – Using the Browser 62

16.1 Navigating the Directory Structure 63

16.2 File and Folder Operations 64

16.3 Using the Virtual Keyboard 67

17 Connecting/Disconnecting* the AV 500 to/from your PC 68

17.1 USB Connection Type (‘Hard Drive’ or ‘Windows Device’) 68

17.2 Connecting the AV 500 68

17.3 Disconnecting the AV 500 from your Computer 70

18 Connecting Devices to the USB Host Port 72

19 SETTINGS 73

19.1 Sound Settings 73

19.2 Play Mode Settings 74

19.3 Clock Settings 75

19.4 Display Settings 76

19.5 Appearance settings 77

19.6 Power Settings 77

19.7 System Settings 78

19.8 TV control 79

20 Updating the AV 500 Firmware Operating System (OS) 80

21 TV docking pod Description* 82

21.1 Remote Control Description 83

22 Connecting the TV docking pod to your Television System* 84

22.1 Connect & Test Method 85

22.2 Connection (1): Powering the TV docking pod 85

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INTRO – Buttons and Connections

22.3 Connection (2): Breaking your regular TV Connection 85

22.4 Connection (3): Put the TV docking pod between your TV and Tuner 85

22.5 Connection (4): Connect the AV 500 to the TV docking pod 86

22.6 Connection (5): the S-Video In 87

22.7 Connection (6): the Infrared Emitter 87

23 Replacing the battery 89

23.1 “Thin” version 89

22.2 Standard version 90

24 Technical Support 91

25 Troubleshooting 94

25.1 USB Connection issues 94

25.2 Charging and Power issues 95

25.3 AV 500 locks up (freezes operation) or Stops 95

25.4 File issues, corrupted data, formatting, and partitioning 95

26 Technical Speciﬁ cations 98

27 Legal 100

28 Index 104

INTRO – Buttons and Connections

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a On indicator

b Hard drive activity indicator (read/write)

c Battery charger indicator (blinks when battery is charged)

d Infrared sensor for the remote control

e Loud speaker

f Move UP (also increases volume during media playback)

g Move DOWN (also decreases volume during media playback)

h Move LEFT (also plays previous song or fast reverse through song or video)

i Move RIGHT (also plays next song or fast forward through song or video)

j Accelerate UP – go up the list of items at high speed

k Accelerate Down – go down the list of items at high speed

l Play/Enter/On o – Hold for 3 seconds to switch on the device

m Stop/Escape/Off x - Hold for 3 seconds to switch off the device

n UP action button (move up on the list of action icons)

o SELECT action button (select the highlighted action icon)

p DOWN action button (move down on the list of action icons)

a LCD/TV button – Hold down to switch between the LCD and an external TV display

b USB Host port – to connect compatible USB devices

c Microphone

d USB 2.0 High speed device port (USB 1.1 compatible) to connect to your computer

e Power Connector (Use only the supplied Archos power charger/adapter)

f Multi-connect jack* – for headphones, TV docking pod, FM Remote and AV in/out connections

* The AV 500 is sold with different options. It is therefore possible that you do not have a TV docking pod, FM remote or ‘traveler kit’ multi-connect adapter. These are available for purchase from the ARCHOS™ web site - www.archos.com.

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INTRO – First Time Usage

2.1 Charging the battery

2.2 Turning on the AV 500

2.3 Shutting off the AV 500 and Battery saving features

2.4 Changing the Interface Language

2.5 Foreign Character Sets

2.6 Caring for the AV 500

INTRO – First Time Usage

2.1 Charging the battery

• Use only the included ARCHOS™ charger/adapter.

• You can charge the internal battery of the AV 500 by plugging the included adapter/charger directly into the device, or you can charge it by plugging the adapter/charger into the (optional) TV docking pod and connecting your AV 500 to the Pod.

• Before using for the ﬁ rst time, charge the battery completely. The charge indicator (CHG) light will start to blink when the battery is charged.

2.2 Turning on the AV 500

• Hold the PLAY/ON button o for 3 seconds. The green “On” indicator light will turn on. Be patient, it will take a few seconds for the operating system to boot up.

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• If the unit shuts off after holding the ON button for several seconds, plug in the ARCHOS make sure the battery gets charged.

2.3 Shutting off the AV 500 and Battery saving features

To shut off the unit, press and hold the STOP/ESC/OFF button x for 3 seconds.

In the Power menu [Display setup screen Power: Battery Operation] there is a Power Off parameter. Thus, if your AV 500 is idle for a couple of minutes, it will shut itself off. This setting can be changed from one to nine minutes or to never .

In the Power menu [Display setup screen Power: Battery Operation] there is a Backlight Off parameter to save battery power (the lighting of the screen consumes a lot of the battery power). That is, if the AV 500 is not being used, the screen will shut off in order to save battery life. To turn the screen back on, just click once on any button. See the section Power in the Settings chapter for a complete explanation.

adapter/charger to

2.4 Changing the Interface Language

The AV 500 interface can be set to English (default), French, Spanish, German, or Russian.

• Using the UP action button, highlight the Settings icon (showing a wrench) and then click the center SELECT action button.

• Highlight the Display icon and click the PLAY/ENTER button.

• Highlight the Language parameter using the UP/DOWN buttons.

• Click the RIGHT or LEFT button to choose the desired language.

• The language displayed will change immediately.

• Click on the STOP/ESC button to return to the Setup page and again to return to the main menu screen.

2.5 Foreign Character Sets

You have the option of displaying ﬁ le names, folder names, and music tags in various character sets (ex: Korean, Japanese, Simpliﬁ ed Chinese, etc.). You can ﬁ nd the language ﬁ les CodePage_name.4FZ in the font folder under /Data/Foreign Fonts on the AV 500 hard drive or on the ARCHOS™ website under the heading Software. If, for example, you would like to have the Korean language display, then you would copy the ﬁ le CP949.4FZ into the folder /system on the AV 500 and shut down and restart the AV 500. File names, folder names, and music tags written using the Microsoft one .4FZ can be used at a time, thus you should only put one .4FZ ﬁ le into the /system folder. When an .4FZ language ﬁ le is used, the interface language will be set to English.

codepage for the language will now be displayed in that character set. Only

2.6 Caring for the AV 500

The ARCHOS™ Video AV 500 is an electronic product that needs to be treated with more care than typical consumer electronic products.

• Do not subject it to shock.

• Do not subject it to heat. Keep it well ventilated.

• Keep the AV 500 away from water and excessively humid areas.

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2.7 Hardware Reset

VIDEO – Playing Video Files

• Keep the AV 500 away from high electromagnetic ﬁ elds.

• Keep any connected cords to the AV 500 neatly arranged. This light product could fall if a cord is accidentally pulled by a child.

• Do not open up the AV 500. There are no user serviceable parts inside. Opening will void your warranty.

2.7 Hardware Reset

In the event that your AV 500 freezes operation (due to electrostatic phenomena for example), you can reset the AV 500 by holding down on the STOP/ESC button x for 15 seconds. In normal operation, the STOP/ESC button x will shut down the AV 500 after being held down for 3 seconds.

VIDEO – Playing Video Files

Click on the Video icon in the main menu, highlight the desired video ﬁ le, and then click on PLAY/GO

Button controls while playing a video ﬁ le

Vol + Increase volume

Vol - Decrease volume

Rew. Fast Forward

FF Fast forward

HSR High speed reverse

HSA High speed advance

O Play/Pause

X Stop

o. The thumbnail images on the right side will show you a frame from the highlighted video ﬁ le (center) as well as a frame from the ﬁ le above and the ﬁ le below the highlighted one. By clicking on the Video icon in the main menu, you will enter into a ‘video only’ mode. Other playable ﬁ le types, for example music ﬁ les, that may be in this folder are only listed if you enter the folder via the Browser.

To watch your videos on a television, you must hold down the LCD/TV button for two seconds (or click on the TV button on the remote control). The AV 500 screen will go black and the video will be sent out to your connected television. Switch your television to auxiliary video input (often found just below channel 1 – sometimes called L1 or L2). If you don’t see a clear color image, you may have to set your AV 500 to your local television standard (NTSC-North America or PAL-Europe) in Display (Setup action icon > Display Icon.

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3.1 Video Playback Action Icons

3.2 Resume Function

Video Browser Action Icons

Hide the Thumbnails

Reset thumbnails. The thumbnail images on the right side of the screen will be reset to their original default setting.

3.1 Video Playback Action Icons

While a video ﬁ le is playing, click on the Select action button. The action icons on the right of the screen allow you to make video adjustments to your personal taste.

Play & Sound Settings

Use this setting if you would like to have the video ﬁ les play one after the other, or just play one and stop. You can also adjust the sound settings and the amount of time the On Screen Display (OSD) information remains on the screen when you start a video ﬁ le.

Built-in Speaker

Turn on or off the built-in loud speaker.

Slow Motion

Put the video into slow-motion view. You can cycle through the values Normal , ½ , ¼ , and 1/8 speed. The sound is muted when in slow motion. While in slow mode and paused, you can step image per image with the RIGHT button.

Set Screen Format

Video ﬁ les come in various aspect ratios. That is, they can be TV sized (almost a square image), or in cinema size (much longer than high). To change the screen to your personal tastes, the following screen format options are available.

Auto Format Default mode. Adjusts the video size to best adapt to the built-in screen or television.

Maximized Image Enlarge the image to ﬁ ll the screen (LCD or TV). Sides may get slightly cut in this mode.

Full Picture Format The entire picture will always be seen on the television and the built-in screen. No cutting.

Set a Book mark

If you are watching a video and would like to place a bookmark in it in order to continue from this point at another time, you can use the Bookmark function. Highlight the icon and click on the Select action button. This will set a bookmark in the video ﬁ le at the current position. You can only set one bookmark per ﬁ le. When you look at the ﬁ le in your browser, it will have a yellow check mark on its icon indicating that this ﬁ le has a bookmark set within it. You can have a maximum of 16 ﬁ les book-marked. Setting more bookmarks will then start to erase the oldest bookmarks. The next time you play this video ﬁ le, you will be presented with three options:

Resume Start playing from the book-marked position.

Ignore Keep the bookmark but start playing from the very beginning.

Clear Clear the bookmark from this ﬁ le and start playing from the very beginning.

Save as Thumbnail

Save the current image on the screen as the video ﬁ le’s thumbnail in the Video browser view.

On Screen Display (OSD) off

Select this icon to shut off the On Screen Display (the status bar, action icons, and other overlaid informational graphics).

3.2 Resume Function

When you turn on your AV 500 you may notice that the icon which is highlighted on the main screen is not the Video icon but rather the Resume icon. This icon is highlighted when the AV 500 can resume the last played audio or video ﬁ le.

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VIDEO – Playing Video Files from the Internet

4.1 Protected Internet Video content

4.1 Non Protected Internet Video Content

VIDEO – Playing Video Files from the Internet

When using Windows Media protected video content from the Internet. When you see the PlaysForSure Windows® Portable Media Center (PMC)**, then these protected downloads will be playable on your AV 500.

4.1 Protected Internet Video content

If you check the PlaysForSure™ website (www.playsforsure.com) you will ﬁ nd web retailers who offer rental, subscription, or purchasable video content. Remember, web sites must carry the PlaysForSure™ symbol in order for their videos to play on the AV 500.

4.1 Non Protected Internet Video Content

The AV 500 plays .AVI ﬁ les that are encoded with in MPEG-4 format. It can play such video ﬁ les at a maximum size of 720 x 576 pixels (25 frames/second). It can also play .WMV ﬁ les (WMV9 SP) up to a maximum size of 352 x 288**. The AV 500 will not directly play ﬁ les of type .mov, .mpg, or .mpeg.

The number of encoding and compression schemes currently used to create video ﬁ les is very extensive and seems to change on a weekly basis. There are so many standards and formats that it is very possible that the video ﬁ le you download from the Internet will not play right away on your device. Due to certain “variations”, even when video ﬁ les are formatted in “MPEG-4” they may not play right away.

If you have some video ﬁ les that do not play directly on your AV 500, they will have to be converted ﬁ rst. Windows

Player 10 (Available only for Windows XP) will convert your video ﬁ le automatically when you sync the

Media ﬁ le that is on your PC to the AV 500. It will display a little message ‘converting’.

* MPEG-4: ISO standard by Moving Picture Experts Group ; AVI: audio/video ﬁ le container by Microsoft. MPEG-4 SP with B-frames AVI up to

704x480@30f/s NTSC or 720x576@25f/s PAL.

** Microsoft WMV9 SP up to 352x288@30f/s and 800 kb/s ; supports WM DRM.

Player 10, you will have the advantage of being able to download

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symbol on a web site for

You can also use the software MPEG-4 Translator included on the AV 500 hard drive to re-encode your video ﬁ les into the proper MPEG-4 SP format that the AV 500 can play. See the chapter Video – creating MPEG-4 video ﬁ les with your computer for more details.

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VIDEO – Recording Video Files

5.1 Video recording connections

5.2 Recording a video ﬁ le

VIDEO – Recording Video Files

With your (optional) TV docking pod or AV cable properly connected to a VCR, cable box, or satellite receiver, making a recording is simple.

5.1 Video recording connections

See the relevant chapter for instructions on connecting the TV docking pod to your television system.

To connect you AV 500 to your TV (or another tuner such as a VCR, cable box or satellite receiver) using an (optinal) AV cable and multi connect adaptor, see the illustration. Plug the colored connectors to your TV’s audio and video outputs. European user may need ot use the Scart Out plug. Then plug the other end of the cable into the multi connect adaptor, and plug this into your AV 500.

5.2 Recording a video ﬁ le

Recording connection using just the multi connect adaptor.

Pre-record Screen

1. Select VideoCorder on the main menu screen. On the following screen (the pre-record screen), you should see movement on the sound level bar indicating that sound will be recorded. Adjust the sound level by clicking the LEFT/RIGHT buttons. Before starting the recording, you can adjust the recording parameters via the Setup action icon.

Setup Parameters

2. In most situations, the video recording will work ﬁ ne without your having to adjust the settings. However, by selecting the recording settings , you have access to a number of parameters that you can change before you start the recording. See the table below for descriptions.

During Recording

3. Click on the PLAY/PAUSE button o to start the recording. While recording, you will see the length of time of the recording in the top of the screen as well as a red “record” indicator. Click on the PLAY/PAUSE button o again to pause the recording. Click on the STOP/ESC button x to stop the recording. The AV 500 will take a few seconds to complete the proper saving of the video ﬁ le.

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5.3 Setting the Recording Parameters

5.4 Where is the Recording Saved?

5.3 Setting the Recording Parameters

You can set the recording parameters manually to suit your speciﬁ c needs. Click the Setup action icon in the VideoCorder’s pre-recording screen.

Rename Allows you to change the ﬁ lename before the recording begins.

Auto Stop Rec On, Off. If set to On, the AV 500 will stop recording after the duration set in the next line. For example, you want

Duration This is the duration of time your manual recording will last if Auto Stop Rec above is set to On.

Pre-record This is a safety margin added to the beginning of a scheduled recording which was set via the My Yahoo!

Post-record This is a safety margin added to the end of a scheduled recording which was set via the My Yahoo!

Source Composite, S-Video, Auto. You can choose which video input you want the AV 500 to use. Normally, with a good

Format Auto, 4:3, 5:3, 16:9, 2.35. This is the aspect ratio of the screen that the AV 500 will record. You can set this manually,

Resolution Optimal, VGA . Use this to set the resolution of the recorded image. You can leave this on Optimal. Optimal (512

Bitrate 500 kb/s, 1000 kb/s, 1500kb/s, 2000 kb/s, 2500kb/s . Use this to set the encoding quality (similar to the idea of

Sampling 32kHz, 48kHz . The sound sampling rate. The higher value gives a higher quality sound but will take up more space

to record a television show for two hours but do not want to stay around for the two hours to manually stop the recording. You would set this parameter to On and the next parameter to 2 hours. If set to Off, the recording will continue until you click on the stop button or until the entire hard drive ﬁ lls up.

scheduler of your personal Yahoo!® calendar. It affects ONLY these recordings. This is just in case the clocks between your AV 500 and the broadcast station are different or if the broadcast station starts earlier than expected.

of your personal calendar. It affects ONLY these recordings. This is just in case the clocks between your AV 500 and the broadcast station are different or if the broadcast station runs overtime.

video signal, you can set it to Auto, and the AV 500 will scan the (optional) TV docking pod’s two inputs to see which one is receiving video (AV In or S-Video).

but in most cases you can just leave it on Auto.

x 384) will give the smoothest image quality, with the smallest ﬁ le size. VGA (640 x 480) will give sharper images, which are less smooth during fast moving scenes. However, the ﬁ le size is larger.

JPEG image quality settings). The higher the encoding rate, the higher the image quality but also more hard drive space will be used. Lower bit rates will use less hard drive space.

on the hard drive.

TV scheduler

Brightness Use this to increase or decrease the recorded image brightness

Contrast Use this to increase or decrease the recorded image contrast

Saturation Use this to de-emphasize or saturate the colors in the recorded image

Hue Use this to change the color spectrum in the recorded image

Reset Change the above settings to the AV 500 default settings

• Once you have ﬁ nished changing the parameters, click Stop/escape button to return to the pre-record screen.

• Concerning the video standard, the AV 500 will automatically recognize whether the incoming video signal is NTSC (American), SECAM, or PAL (European). There is no need to set anything. You will see the signal type, as well as the selected aspect ratio on the top left of the pre-recording screen.

• Click the LEFT/RIGHT buttons to adjust the sound input level. Too far to the right will often give an overdriven distorted quality. Too far to the left may make for a very soft sound. Try a few recordings to get a sense of what is the best sound level. Do not let the headphone volume fool you. That can be adjusted independently with the UP/DOWN buttons.

• If you would like to make a recording in another folder instead of the default “Video” folder, go to the desired folder via the main Video icon, then click on the Videocorder action icon.

5.4 Where is the Recording Saved?

The default location for video recordings is the folder called Video. If you click on the Video icon in the main menu, you will go to this folder. Notice that there is a Videocorder action icon. Each time you use this button to record video instead of the VideoCorder icon in the main menu, you set the recording default location to the current folder. For example, you have created a folder called /Video/Television/Documentaries. If you go to this folder and then make a recording using the Videocorder action icon, you will set the default record location to this folder. Now, each time you use the VideoCorder icon to start a recording, your recording will be saved in the folder /Video/Television/Documentaries.

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5.5 Copy Protection

5.6 Manually Setting the Scheduler

5.5 Copy Protection

The AV 500 video recording system is designed to respect the Macrovision source of your video is copy protected, the AV 500 will record in protected mode. You will see a ”P” icon on the recording screen (not during playback) indicating that the ﬁ le will be a protected ﬁ le. Protected ﬁ les can only be played back on the AV 500 that created it. The ﬁ le will not play on a computer. Further, the playback of protected ﬁ les will be limited to the built-in LCD screen and not to an external television.

5.6 Manually Setting the Scheduler

If you would like to make a video recording for a future date or time, you can use the scheduler. You can ﬁ nd it in the main menu. You can program up to twenty different recordings up to one month in advance. Once you program your dates and times of recording, press the action button Save to set them. You must now put your AV 500 into standby mode by pressing on the red Standby/wake-up button on your ARCHOS a few minutes.

Please note: Using the scheduler is particularly useful when you have the TV docking pod and you have set up the Infrared connector. Otherwise, the AV 500 will be unable to change channels on your tuner. It will record the currently selected channel. Furthermore, the AV 500 needs to be powered by a charger in order to go into standby mode rather than switch off completely.

1. Click the Scheduler icon.

2. Select the line you want to edit using the UP and DOWN buttons, then click RIGHT to start editing.

3. Set each line to the desired date, time (and channel if you are using the Infrared emitter to control your VCR, cable box, or satellite receiver).

4. Click on the bottom action icon Edit program title and give a name of your choosing. Click on the Save action icon to save the program. Click on the STOP/ESC button to return to the previous screen.

5. DO NOT shut off the AV 500! Set the AV 500 to Standby (red ‘standby’ button on remote control) or go back to the main menu screen and allow it to automatically (after a couple minutes of inactivity) go into standby mode.

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remote control or just leave it alone. If left alone, the AV 500 will go on standby itself after

Notes about setting the Scheduler.

• The scheduler automatically reorganizes the recording events chronologically.

• In order for a scheduled recording to start, you must leave the AV 500 in the main menu screen or set it to standby mode (press Standby button on remote control). That is, if you are listening to music, watching a video, or looking at photos on your AV 500, it will not interrupt you in order to go make the scheduled recording.

• If you have connected and will be using the IR Emitter system (see the TV docking pod chapter as well as the chapter Setting the Infrared Emitter code below) with a video cassette recorder (VCR) please note that in order for the IR Emitter to properly control the VCR, your VCR should not be left in sleep mode.

• When the AV 500 user interface is in English, the Date format is set to Month/Day.

Empty Scheduler, ready to be programmed. Once a valid record time is entered, and the save button pressed, the empty box will get a green checkmark.

Scheduler after having been set. The “--- Current” means that the AV 500 will record the current video signal (no channel changing). This is for people who do not use the stick-on infrared emitter.

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VIDEO – Automated Yahoo!

TV Recording Scheduler

• If the end time is earlier than the start time, then it is assumed that you start recording on the start date, and the recording ends on the following day at the end time.

• Once a scheduled recording has been made, or the date of a recording has been passed, without the recording having been made (the AV 500 was not connected to the pod or not in Standby mode), the schedule entry will be erased from the scheduler.

• Long recording times (2 hours and more) can create ﬁ les that are larger than 2 gigabytes (GB) each. The AV 500 will create multiple ﬁ les in order to make long recordings. Thus a long scheduled recording may produce video ﬁ les called VID0000, VID0001, and VID0002. This is only in the case of recordings that are over 2 GB in size. This 2 GB ﬁ le size constraint is due to the Windows

• When you set the scheduler, the AV 500 will create a text ﬁ le in its System folder called DVRTimer.txt. You should not erase this ﬁ le.

FAT32 AVI ﬁ le type speciﬁ cation.

VIDEO – Automated Yahoo!

For those who have a My Yahoo!® account and use the calendar feature, the AV 500 can read the TV programs scheduled into your personal calendar and transmit these to your AV 500 to be included in the AV 500 scheduler. This way, you do not have to input all your scheduled recordings manually. You can sign up for an account and learn how to use the My Yahoo!® TV and calendar functions at the Yahoo!® Website (www.yahoo.com).

You must do the following:

1. Connect your AV 500 to your computer.

2. Go to your personal Yahoo!

3. Choose the Week view – starting with the current day as the beginning of the week.

4. Click on Printable View to show a cleaner printable version.

5. From your browser menu click on File > Save As … to save the ﬁ le.

6. Do not change the File Name , but do change the Save as Type to Web page , html only. Now save the ﬁ le to the folder System on your AV 500.

7. Once you disconnect the AV 500 from your computer, the AV 500 will automatically update its scheduler with the newly saved TV programs from your My Yahoo! name that it does not know the channel number for (was never set), it will indicate so, and direct you to go to the scheduler to manually assign a channel to the station name.

TV Recording Scheduler

calendar which has your TV programs scheduled.

calendar. If the AV 500 encounters a television station

Page 14

VIDEO – Setting the Infrared Emitter Code *

Notes:

• If the TV programs from your personal calendar do not seem to be correctly copied to the AV 500 scheduler, go to the ARCHOS (Operating System) as explained in the chapter Updating the AV 500 ﬁ rmware Operating System.

• If you change your Yahoo! new programs will be added to the AV 500 scheduler when you save the html ﬁ le to the AV 500. If you want to delete scheduled items, you must do this in the AV 500 scheduler itself.

• Missed recordings (because you did not have the AV 500 connected to the pod at the record time) will be deleted from the scheduler.

• If a personal calendar recording event does not ﬁ nd the station name in your list of channels, it will put the event into the scheduler and mark it with a ?, indicating that you must assign a channel number to the name. Move the cursor to the line containing the ?, and click on the action icon “Set Channel”. You can now scroll through the channel numbers and assign a number to the station name for that event. You only have to do this once. The AV 500 will keep the station name and its channel number.

™

web site to make sure that have the very latest version of the AV 500 ﬁ rmware. Update your ﬁ rmware

personal calendar by deleting some TV programs and adding new ones, only the

VIDEO – Setting the Infrared Emitter Code *

This is a one time step to set your AV 500 to send the correct infrared codes to control your video

Before beginning this procedure of setting the emitter code, your AV 500 must be connected to the TV docking pod, the pod powered with the charger/adapter, and the IR emitter connected to the pod. Hold the IR Emitter in front of the IR receptor (remote control reception panel on your tuner) so that the IR Emitter can control your device. See the chapter Connecting the TV docking pod to your Television System section Connection 5 : the Infrared Emitter of this manual if you do not know where the IR receptor on your VCR, cable box, or satellite receiver is located. Once you have veriﬁ ed that the AV 500 is controlling your VCR, cable box, or satellite receiver, (explained below) you can peal off the white ring protecting the adhesive, and stick the IR emitter to your device.

Your tuner may be your VCR, cable box, or satellite receiver.

cassette recorder, cable box, or satellite receiver. This is done so that the AV 500, via the TV docking pod, can turn on and off your video device and also change its channels. If you do not plan on making scheduled recordings, then you do not need to install the IR emitter or set the infrared emitter code.

* Concerns users with TV docking pod only.

Page 15

7.1 Part 1: Choose your Device and Brand

7.2 Part 2: Finding the Right Emitter Codes

Parameter Description

7.1 Part 1: Choose your Device and Brand

Select the Settings action icon and click on the TV Control icon.

1. Select the type of device that you will stick your IR Emitter to. You have the choice of either a VCR (video cassette recorder), Cable Box , or Satellite Receiver .

2. Select the brand of your device.

3. Click on Tune IR Emitter button.

4. The TV Channels button allows you to give names to each channel. For example, if channel 6 is CNN where you live, then you can give channel 6 that name in this screen. Or, if you use the My Yahoo! the AV 500 will allow you to assign a channel number to a station name given from your scheduled TV programs. (see the chapter Automated Yahoo!

7.2 Part 2: Finding the Right Emitter Codes

This screen allows you to correctly set the codes and parameters to allow the Infrared emitter to correctly control your tuner (VCR, cable box, or satellite receiver).

1. Tune device code (one code available): Some manufacturers use only one code for all of their products. The code does not change from one model to another or from one year to another. In this case, there will only be one single code available. You can now test the channel select.

2. Tune device code (multiple codes available): Some makers of video equipment don’t use the same set of control codes for all of their products. They have various code sets for various models and various years. You will have to try each of the codes to ﬁ nd

personal calendar to set your recording scheduler,

TV Recording Scheduler for details).

out which code works with your device. In the example screen, you see the code V009. If this code does not work when doing the Test: channel select , advance it to the next code and then test to see if that next code works.

3. Test channel select: When you press the Test channel select button (highlight test channel select and press ENTER), the AV 500 will send a signal through the pod to the infrared emitter and change the channel on your tuner (VCR, cable box, or satellite receiver). If the Number of digits parameter is set to three, it will try to select channel 123. If that parameter is set to 2, it will send the code for channel 12. If your tuner does not change channels when you click on this test button, try the next code for your device (step 2 above).

4. Test ON/OFF: When you click on the Test On/Off button, the AV 500 will send a signal to the infrared emitter and turn your device on or off. Click this test button again and your device should change from on to off or off to on. If pressing this button does not turn your device on or off, try the next code for your device (step 2 above). If none of the codes work, check that the infrared emitter is stuck directly over the infrared sensor on your tuner device. Note: In some rare cases the ON/OFF functionality may not work.

5. Tune channel select: These four parameters usually do not need to be set. Keep the default values to start with. See the table below for an explanation of each.

Parameter Description

Key: -/-- Set this to On if normally, you have to press this same key on your device’s remote control in order to select a channel.

Number of digits Set the number of digits that your device can recognize for a channel. Example: Set to 3 if you need to choose a

channel greater than channel 99.

Key: Enter Set this to On if normally, you have to press the Enter key on your device’s remote control after you enter the channel

number. Example: If you normally press 1, 3, Enter for channel 13, then you would need to set this parameter to On.

Key Delay Change the delay between the emission of each digit of a channel. You may need to adjust this if the AV 500 seems

to send only half the digits of a channel or more digits of a channel. Example: Adjust the key delay and retest channel

select if it sends channel 2 instead of 12 or sends 112 instead of 12.

Page 16

VIDEO – Editing Video Files

Video ﬁ les recorded by the AV 500 can be modiﬁ ed by deleting the sections you do not wish included. The editing you can do is either cropping or cutting of particular segments of the video ﬁ le. You will mark a segment of your video ﬁ le, and then you will tell the AV 500 to delete everything except the marked segment (crop) or to delete the marked segment (cut) from the video ﬁ le. These operations can be done multiple times on the same video ﬁ le. Once ﬁ nished, you will have the option to save the edit marks with the video or to write a new video ﬁ le. If you save your ﬁ le with edit marks, you can always go back and change your edits at another time. The actual video information is not deleted. On the other hand, you can write a new ﬁ le which will only include the video parts that you speciﬁ ed in the edit session. This ﬁ le will be smaller but you can never un-edit it.

Example 1: You have recorded a music video program and would like to keep one single music presentation. The rest of the television recording you do not care to keep. In this case, you would set a Start mark (a) at the beginning of the desired segment, and an End mark (b) at the end of the desired segment. You would then choose the Keep selected part action icon which would then delete everything except the designated section.

Example 2: You have recorded a television program but would like to remove certain sections before the program started, parts during the program, and the program afterwards because you had recorded a little extra. In this case, you would make a Start mark (a) at time 00:00 and then forward to the end of what you want to delete and make your End mark (b), and choose Remove selected part. This part of the video recording will now be cut out. Fast-forward to the center of the recording and make a Start Mark (c) where the section that you want to delete begins, and make an End mark (d) when it ﬁ nishes. Again, choose the Remove selected part action icon and this section will be cut out. Do the same for the ﬁ nal section that you want to cut out.

IMPORTANT NOTE

When you pause at a given point to make a Start or End Mark, the actual point of the cut will be the nearest I-Frame. I-Frames are special frames in the video ﬁ le which come about every one to four seconds. The editor can cut ONLY at an I-Frame. It is thus recommended that when you pause at the point you want to make your Start or End mark, that you click the LEFT button once (will jump to the previous I-frame) and then click the RIGHT button (shows the next I-frame) so that you can see your choice of I-Frames to cut at. Go to the I-Frame you desire and then set your Mark. Trying to set a mark between I-Frames is ineffective since the AV 500 will just choose the closest I-Frame.

Page 17

VIDEO – Creating MPEG-4 Video Files with your Computer

1. Play the ﬁ le and pause at the spot you want to make your Start mark. Select the Set a mark-in here action icon. Let the video play – you will notice a small blue mark.

2. Now click on Pause at the location you want to mark the end of your segment. Select the Set a mark-out action icon. Now that you have deﬁ ned a segment in the video, you can click the Remove selected part or Keep selected part action icon. Although the set-mark action icons are available, you can only mark one segment at a time.

3. Continue to select or delete other segments as in 2. Once satisﬁ ed with your edits, you can Save the selection which keeps the edit points and allows you to re-edit another time, or you can Save Selection as a new File which will create a new edited ﬁ le named (name_Edit0000).

VIDEO – Creating MPEG-4 Video Files with your Computer

How to create an MPEG-4 video ﬁ le

Video ﬁ les that come from your digital camcorder, sent to you via e-mail, or which are freely available on the Internet are encoded in many different ways. If not already in the proper MPEG-4 Simple Proﬁ le or WMV9 Simple Proﬁ le format, a transformation operation must be done in order that these video ﬁ les can be played by the AV

500. This transformation process is called re-encoding.

There are basically two ways to do this; 1) Use the Synchronize button in Windows Media the PC tools which are available on the AV 500’s hard drive. The ﬁ rst method is very simple and merely requires that you synchronize a video ﬁ le in your Media Player library to your AV 500. You do not have much control in this converting process though and Windows Media encode. The second method, though it requires some learning, will allow you to have much more control over the ﬁ nal quality of the re-encoded (converted) video ﬁ le. It is described below. There are other tools available on the Internet, some free and some for sale, that can also convert your video ﬁ les into the appropriate MPEG-4 SP video ﬁ le format for the AV 500. See the web site www.mpegmobile.com for a list of a few of them.

PC Tools

The AV 500 is delivered with two Windows video ﬁ les. They are the MPEG-4 Translator and Virtual Dub™. The MPEG-4 Translator will call the Virtual Dub program and give it the correct parameters to encode your video from its original format, .avi or .mpg (mpeg 1), and then encode it into a MPEG-4 SP .AVI ﬁ le. The ﬁ le will be scaled in order to be played back properly.

based programs that allow you to create MPEG-4 Simple Proﬁ le .AVI

Player determines which video types it will and will not re-

Player 10 or 2) Use

Page 18

9.1 Installing the PC Software

9.2 Using MPEG-4 Translator

9.1 Installing the PC Software

If your video ﬁ le is not an MPEG-4 Simple Proﬁ le .avi ﬁ le of the proper size, you will need to re-encode it using the following utilities. For the AV 500, you will need to create an AVI ﬁ le that is MPEG-4 Simple Proﬁ le with a resolution up to 720 x 576 (depending on frame rate) and a sound track that is stereo MP3 or WAV. In actuality, in all cases, a resolution beyond 640x480 does not add any advantage.

MPEG-4 codec (Compression/Decompression)

In order for MPEG4-Translator to compress the video in a ﬁ le of the format MPEG-4 SP that the AV 500 can read, it requires an MPEG-4 codec to be installed on your computer.If you do not have the approporiate codec installed, MPEG-4 Translator will tell you on start up which codec it requires. You will be able to download it for free from the Internet.

™

Virtual Dub

A utility for transcoding one video ﬁ le into another. This is a general purpose transfer and cleanup utility which has many options allowing for even the most difﬁ cult video translations. It will prompt you to save it to C:\Program Files\VirtualDub. You should use this default directory location. Otherwise you will have to instruct the MPEG-4 Translator program where to ﬁ nd it. For more information on Virtual Dub org.

MPEG-4 Translator

This program, developed by Archos, is a “Front-end” for the Virtual Dub program. It has a simple interface which you use and it then tells Virtual Dub how to process the video ﬁ le. It sets all the parameters for Virtual Dub speciﬁ cally to create a video ﬁ le in the right size and format to be read by the AV 500. When you run it for the ﬁ rst time, the MPEG-4 Translator will need to locate the Virtual Dub program. If you did not install Virtual Dub in the default location, you will have to show the program where Virtual Dub is. If you forget, Windows error when you try to launch it.

™

see the website - http://www.virtualdub.

will give you an

MP3 Sound Codec

For Windows XP, click on Start > Settings > Control Panel > Sounds and

Internet (FlaskMPEG, Rippack, etc.) that may be downloaded in order to help you with these ﬁ le types. A good starting place is the website www.mpegmobile.com.

If MPEG-4 Translator detects a suitable MP3 codec on your PC, it will use it, and your video ﬁ le sound track will be MP3. Otherwise, it will use the standard IMA ADPCM codec. There are MP3 encoders (usually packaged together as an encoder and decoder) available on the Web for you to download. If you choose to use the LAME codec, make sure that you have a version built with the ACM front-end. You can ﬁ nd other MP3 codecs on the web by using the search terms ACM , MP3 and CODEC in your favorite web search engine. Once this MP3 codec is installed into your system, MPEG-4 Translator will be able to create ﬁ nal video ﬁ les with MP3 sound, even if the source video ﬁ le does not have an MP3 sound track.

If you are unsure what codecs (audio and/or video) have been installed on your computer, you can see the list by going to the following location.

Audio Devices Properties > Hardware, choose Audio Codecs, then click on Properties. You will ﬁ nd a list here of all the audio codecs that are installed on your computer. Decoding of MPEG 2 video ﬁ les is currently not supported by MPEG-4 Translator. These are usually .mpg or .mpeg format ﬁ les, not the required AVI ﬁ le. There are other tools found on the

9.2 Using MPEG-4 Translator

Here you see the image of the main MPEG-4 Translator program. When you ﬁ rst run the program, if the required codec has not been installed yet, you will be notiﬁ ed. You should download the codec and install it on your computer. If the Virtual dub program has not been installed, you will also be notiﬁ ed, and you should install it. If you have placed the Virtual Dub program in a folder other than the installer default folder, it will ask you to locate the ﬁ le.

Page 19

Change Settings

Select Source & Destination Files

In the example, a source ﬁ le 24 hours of Lemans.avi has been selected as the source video. You can see on the bottom of the window its original characteristics (width 720, height 576, frame rate 24). Next, you must then tell the program where to place (Set Destination ﬁ le) the newly recoded version of the ﬁ le (don’t worry, it will not erase the original). You should give it a new descriptive name, such as shown above Lemans.avi . Make sure you add the .avi extension.

Next, you can change the parameters (Change Settings) of the encoder to adjust the level of quality of the ﬁ nal image. Like MP3 music, the higher the bit rate setting is made, the higher the quality of the music, or video in this case, that you will get. However, this will also take up more space on your hard drive. A setting of 900 kbps will give you a nice looking image for viewing on a television. For near DVD quality, you can set it up to 1200 kbps.

Target & Priority

™

If the AV 500 device is not listed, select “ARCHOS see a Priority box appear. This control is to allow you to select which feature of the video to be guarded. If for example you are re-encoding a video ﬁ le that is 800x600 in resolution and 30 frames per second, this is beyond the maximum resolution that the AV 500 can play. Thus, the MPEG-4 Translator program will have to decrease the resolution. Choosing LCD optimizes the ﬁ nal video format for viewing on the built in LCD screen. Choosing the TV option will optimize the movie to keep the highest possible frame rate. You can see what the size and frame rate will be by looking at the Video Image Size : Destination parameters. When choosing TV , it is understood that the output will be optimized for a television, and not the built-in screen.

Start

Click on Start and the program will call Virtual Dub to start processing the video. Depending on the power and speed of your computer, this could take real time (a 60 minute long video re-encoded in about 60 minutes) or much longer. As shown to the left, you will see the progress as it processes the video ﬁ le. If the Start button is grayed out, it would be for one of two reasons. 1) The source ﬁ le is not a true AVI ﬁ le. Even if the ﬁ le name ends with .avi, the internal ﬁ le data determines if it is truly an AVI ﬁ le. 2) The Virtual Dub program was not located when MPEG-4 Translator was started up. Close the program, restart it, and make sure you locate the Virtual Dub program.

Default”. You will

Page 20

1 10

MUSIC – Playing Music Files

10.1 Button Control

10.2 Play Screen Icons

Status

MUSIC – Playing Music Files

When you click on the music icon in the main screen, you will be sent directly to the ARCLibrary. From here you can choose to either browse your music by the ﬁ le system (Browse hard drive) or by music characteristics (Album, Artist, title, Genre, Year). Use the LEFT, RIGHT, UP, and DOWN buttons to locate one of the factory installed music samples and then click on PLAY. If you hear nothing at ﬁ rst, make sure you have adjusted the volume control on the headphone cord.

Display during music playback

1. Current Directory

2. Play Mode: One Directory

3. Status: Playing

4. Battery level

5. Volume (maximum:99)

6. Song title* or ﬁ le name

7. Artist* or parent folder

8. Album* or current folder

9. Next track to be played

10. Relative location in the track

11. Elapsed, remaining, and total song time

12. Time of Day

13. Album picture*

14. File format and rec info

15. Volume level meters

*If the ﬁ le contains these tag data

1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8

10.1 Button Control

Vol + Increase the Volume

HSA High speed advance

FF Click once: Play the next song in the folder or playlist.

Hold: Fast forward through the song.

Rew Click once: Play the previous song in the folder or playlist

Hold: Fast reverse through the song.

HSR High speed reverse

Vol. - Decrease the Volume

o Play/pause/resume

X Stop Song

(during ﬁ rst 10 seconds of song) otherwise go to the beginning of the song.

To lock the AV 500 buttons, select the lock action icon on the main screen and press the Select button.

The AV 500 will display the “locked” icon in the top left corner of the screen. Press the Select button again to unlock the buttons. You can still use the UP and DOWN buttons to change the volume.

10.2 Play Screen Icons

Status

Stopped

Blinks while Playing a track

Current track is paused

Recording a track

Page 21

Play Order

Play Mode

10.3 Browsing through your Music Library

Play Order

(no icon) Play once

Repeat playing

Shufﬂ e (Random) track selection

Play Mode

AV 500 is currently playing from a Playlist

Folder: Play all tracks in the current directory

All: Play all tracks on AV 500

Single: Play a single track then stop

Queue: User can queue the next track to be played *

Scan: Plays ﬁ rst 10 – 90 seconds of each track*

* See the PlayMode section in the Settings chapter of this manual for details.

10.3 Browsing through your Music Library

You can reach the PlayMode settings screen from the Setup action icon > PlayMode . The play mode determines how your music is played (just the current folder of music, all music, one ﬁ le, etc.). See Playmode in the section Settings for a description of how each one works.

The ARClibrary is your AV 500’s music library. It is a system for indexing your music by album, artist, song title, etc. When you synchronize music ﬁ les from your PC using Windows Media the ARCLibrary will get updated to include the new songs you have added. As shown in this screen capture, you can select your music by Artist, Album, Song Title, Genre, or Year.

All music ﬁ les that you purchase have internal ‘tags’ which identify the artist, the album, and the song title. If your music ﬁ les do not have internal tags (ex: WAV ﬁ le format or untagged WMA or MP3 ﬁ les) then the ARCLibrary will put them under the category ( Unknown ). Audio ﬁ les created with the AV 500 from analog sources are indexed as Artist = (ARCHOS) and Album = ( Audio Recordings ).

Player to the AV 500,

Page 22

10.4 Playing Through your Stereo System

10.5 Setting a Bookmark

10.6 The Resume Function

10.4 Playing Through your Stereo System

To play your music through your stereo system, you can connect your (optional) pod audio outputs (red and white plugs of the cable connected to AV Out) to your stereo system inputs. You can also use the AV cable and plug it in directly.

Playing through a Stereo system with an AV Cable

10.5 Setting a Bookmark

If you are listening to a song, or perhaps a long recording, and would like to place a bookmark in it in order to pick up from this point at another time, you can use the Bookmark function. Simply select the Set Bookmark action icon. This will set a bookmark in the audio ﬁ le at the current position. You can only

its icon indicating that this ﬁ le has a bookmark set within it. You can have a maximum of 16 ﬁ les bookmarked. Setting more bookmarks will then start to erase the oldest bookmarks. The next time you play an audio ﬁ le which contains a bookmark, you will be presented with three options:

set one bookmark per ﬁ le. When you look at the ﬁ le in your browser, it will have a yellow check mark on

Resume: Start playing from the bookmarked position.

Ignore: Keep the bookmark but start playing from the very beginning.

Clear: Clear the bookmark from this ﬁ le and start playing from the very beginning.

10.6 The Resume Function

When you turn on your AV 500 you may notice that the icon which is highlighted on the main screen is not the Browser but rather the Resume icon. This icon is highlighted when the AV 500 can resume the last played audio or video ﬁ le.

Page 23

1 11

MUSIC – Putting Music onto your AV 500

11.1 Synchronizing Music from Windows Media

Player (WMP) to the AV 500

11.2 Comparison of Windows Media Player 10 to Windows Media Player 9

Functionality WMP9 WMP10

MUSIC – Putting Music onto your AV 500

Your Archos™ product is a certiﬁ ed PlaysForSure™ digital device which means that wherever you ﬁ nd music for sale on the Internet with this symbol, you can be certain that it will ‘Play for sure’ on your AV 500*.

The AV 500 is designed to work seamlessly with Windows Media 9 and 10. The Windows Media from the Internet to your computer and organizing it. You will also use it to synchronize (copy) the contents of your Windows Media comparison chart below for an explanation of the different features available when running Windows Media Player 9 and 10 or check out the web site www.playsforsure.com.

*Subscription services require you to be running Windows Media® Player 10.

11.1 Synchronizing Music from Windows Media

The Synchronize button in Windows Media That is, it will add music, video, and photo ﬁ les to your AV 500 so that you have the same digital media on your AV 500 as you have in your Windows Media media library. Of course, you can choose to sync only certain songs, videos, or

in the Sync tab and then check the box labeled Synchronize Device Automatically . This is the auto-sync advantage of WMP10. If this box is checked, then each time you connect your AV 500 to your PC, Windows Media® Player will automatically start up and check to see if there are any new music, videos, or photos in your media library, and if so, will then copy them to your AV 500. You also have the possibility to decide what types of media automatically sync when you connect your AV 500. For example, you may only want music ﬁ les to be synchronized. On the other hand, with Windows Media to sync, WMP9 cannot synchronize automatically when you connect your AV 500 to your computer.

photos, or sync your entire library. On WMP10, you can click the button Set up Sync

Player 9, you have to tell it what you want

Player software is used to download digital media content

Player media library to your Archos™ device. See the

Player (WMP) to the AV 500

Player (WMP) is a one way ‘sync’ button.

Player (WMP) versions

Player

Note for WMP10 users: Files added to your AV 500 from another computer or ﬁ les which are recorded from an analog source cannot be added to the Windows Media® Player Library when you connect your AV 500 to the computer. Songs which have been added, will however, be listed in the device’s ARCLibrary.

11.2 Comparison of Windows Media Player 10 to Windows Media Player 9

Windows® Media Player 10 is only available for Windows is worth your while to upgrade to Windows list below shows the advantages.

XP (home or professional) and to Windows

Functionality WMP9 WMP10

Auto-synchronize the WMP library to ARCHOS™ AV 500 on connecting to PC no* yes

Can synchronize subscription music (‘to go’ services) to your AV 500 no yes

Carefree USB disconnection (no special green arrow unmount procedure) no yes

Will convert video ﬁ les** to play on your AV 500 if not in correct format no yes

Supports protected Internet video downloads no yes

™

PlaysForSure

audio content yes (download) yes

XP (service Pack 1) and newer operating systems. It

Media Player 10. The

* Must use WMP9 manual sync function to copy purchased music to the AV 500.

**Microsoft reserves the right to limit which video ﬁ le formats it will convert with WMP10

Page 24

11.3 Transferring your CD collection to the AV 500

11.4 Installing Windows Media

Player 9 (WMP9)

11.5 Installing Windows Media

Player 10 (WMP10)

1 12

MUSIC – Playlists

12.1 Playing a Playlist

12.2 Creating a Playlist

11.3 Transferring your CD collection to the AV 500

The process of transferring music from a CD into music ﬁ les for your AV 500 is known as ‘ripping’. It is actually a re-encoding process, taking the CDA (CD Audio) format and converting it to WMA or MP3 format which the AV 500 can read. There are many music ripping programs on the market, but ARCHOS Media® Player to do it. In fact, when you place a music CD in your computer, Windows® will ask you if you would like to rip it. Depending on the power of your computer, to rip a 60 minute CD, it will take anywhere from 10 minutes to 60 minutes. Once this is done, the album will become part of your music library. Connect your AV 500 to your computer with the supplied USB cable. Now, you go to the Sync tab and tell Windows Media® Player to synchronize that album to your AV 500. It will then transfer that album to your AV 500.

Note: Some music CDs have a special copy protection system that will not allow Windows Media® Player to make music ﬁ les from them.

11.4 Installing Windows Media

If you have Windows Microsoft® Website to download the very latest version, or install the version found on the AV 500 itself in the folder /Data/PC Installation.

ME or Windows® 2000, you should use Windows Media

11.5 Installing Windows Media

You must be running Windows Please visit the Microsoft

Website www.playsforsure.com to download and install the very latest version.

Player 9 (WMP9)

Player 10 (WMP10)

XP (Service Pack 1 or higher) in order to install Windows Media

™

recommends that you use Windows

Player 9. You can visit the

Player 10.

MUSIC – Playlists

12.1 Playing a Playlist

shufﬂ e the music entries in a random order, you can click on the Manage Playlist action icon, then choose Shufﬂ e . If you delete a Playlist from your AV 500, you are only deleting the list and not the music itself.

12.2 Creating a Playlist

A Playlist is a list of songs that the AV 500 will automatically play one after the other. The AV 500 can load one Playlist at a time into its internal memory. You can create new Playlists, add or delete songs from a Playlist, or Save a Playlist to be used another time. There is no limit to the number of Playlists you can save on the AV 500 hard drive. Playlists are indicated by a special list icon (circled icon to the left).

To play a Playlist, you simply scroll to the Playlist, such as ‘Sample Playlist’ shown to the left, and click on PLAY o. The list of songs will be loaded into the internal memory of the AV 500 and then be displayed in a separate panel.

Click on PLAY and the songs will be played in the order shown. To

To create a Playlist, select the Open Playlist panel action icon while you are in the Music browser. A second panel will open on the right side to display the Playlist contents. You can now start adding songs to the current Playlist. In the left panel, locate the songs you would like to add to your Playlist. Once the song is highlighted, click on the RIGHT or ENTER button or select the Add to Playlist action icon to add it to the Playlist. The song will be added to the Playlist and a small mark next to the music icon will be made to indicate that it is in the Playlist. Continue searching and adding songs in this manner until you are satisﬁ ed. You can select the Add or Insert action buttons

Page 25

12.3 Saving a Playlist

12.4 Adding songs to a Playlist while listening to Music

when highlighting a folder, artist, or album. All the contents of the folder, artist, or album will be added (that is, appended) or inserted before the selected song in the current Playlist.

You can jump back and forth between the browser and the Playlist by selecting the Focus buttons. A Playlist can have a maximum of 5000 songs. We recommend that you save your Playlists.

12.3 Saving a Playlist

It is recommended that each time you create a Playlist, you save it to a separate folder called Playlists. These lists take very little space on your hard drive and if well named, give you easy access to your favorite songs. Go to the Playlist by selecting Music from the main menu and then select the Open Playlist panel action icon. You will then see the list of songs in the current Playlist. Use the action button to focus on the right panel, then select the Manage Playlists action icon, and select Save . ATTENTION : Make sure that your left panel is the Playlists folder because the open panel on the left is the location the AV 500 will be saving your Playlist to.

Save Saves the current playlist to Playlists or the folder open in the left panel. The * after the Playlist name indicates that

Close Clears the Playlist and closes the Playlist panel.

Rename Renames the current playlist.

Clear Clears the contents of the current playlist.

Shufﬂ e Randomly shufﬂ es the order of the songs in the current playlist.

The following Playlist action icons are also available

Icon: Remove Track Will delete the highlighted song from the Playlist. It will not delete the actual song itself from your hard drive, just from

Icon: Move track Allows you to change the place in the list of the highlighted song. Click on Move and then click on UP or DOWN to

this playlist has not been saved.

the current Playlist.

move the song up or down the list. Click OK when ﬁ nished.

Important: Once you save a Playlist it is important that you do not move or rename the actual music ﬁ les since the Playlist searches in the original ﬁ le location. If you need to move your music ﬁ les to a different folder, you’ll have to recreate your Playlist.

12.4 Adding songs to a Playlist while listening to Music

This can only be done if you have entered your Music folder via the Music icon and not by the general browser. To add the song you are listening to or any other song to the current Playlist, do the following:

• While playing a song, choose the action icon Playlist Editor . A new window will open with two panels, the hard drive contents on the left, and the Playlist on the right.

• Select the Focus on the left panel action icon to go to the hard drive browser panel.

• Select the song or folder of songs to add, then click PLAY or the action icon Add to Playlist .

• Click ESC to return to the playing screen. Remember to save your changes before closing the Playlist.

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1 13

MUSIC – Recording Music

13.1 Cable Connections for Audio Recording

MUSIC – Recording Music

With the AV 500 series, you do not need a computer to create digital music ﬁ les. It is capable of recording from any standard analog line source (ex: HiFi system, Boombox, CD Player, etc) into a standard Windows format, either PCM (uncompressed) or ADPCM (compressed).

13.1 Cable Connections for Audio Recording

If you are using the (optional) TV docking pod, then you will have to plug the Red and White connectors of the AV In cable to the output of your Hiﬁ or other audio device that you are recording from.

.WAV

If you are using the (optional) multi-connect adapter (can be purchased from www.archos.com) and an AV cable, you should plug the AV cable into the AV In side of the adapter, and then plug the adapter into the AV 500.

Page 27

13.2 Recording Procedure

Before the actual audio recording begins, there is a pre-recording screen which will allow you to adjust your recording settings.

1. On the main screen, select AudioCorder then click on ENTER.

2. In the pre-recording screen, adjust the recording level* by clicking on the LEFT and RIGHT buttons. Click on the record action icon (or Enter button) to start recording. Attention, the ﬁ rst time recording you should adjust your Settings .

* You should try some test recordings before deciding on which recording level gives the best sound quality. Don’t be tricked by the volume of the headphones which can be adjusted independently with the UP and DOWN buttons.

3. Click on the Settings action icon to reveal the recording parameters screen as shown.

4. Once you have clicked on the Record action icon (or Enter button), you can pause the recording by clicking the Pause action icon (or Enter button) and then stop the recording by clicking on the STOP button.

You can record from any line-level audio source to the AV 500. Be careful that the source audio is supplying a line level and not an ampliﬁ ed signal (turning down the volume on the player will work if you are using the headphone out signal of your audio device). A signal that is ampliﬁ ed too much will make for a terribly distorted recording.

Microphone

The built-in microphone is located on the top of the AV 500. Make sure that you have selected Microphone as the input source in the pre-recording Settings screen. The microphone level is preset.

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13.3 Where is the Recording Saved?

13.4 Audio Editing

Incremental Recording

While recording, you will notice the incremental recording action icon. This allows you to create incremental recordings. This means that the current recording stops and a new recording instantly begins. The next recording has an additional number appended to its name. Thus if you create multiple

This is good for recording old cassettes and old vinyl records. You can click on this icon during the blank space between each song. That way, each song of the vinyl disk or audio cassette will be one single music ﬁ le.

13.3 Where is the Recording Saved?

The default location for audio recordings is the folder called Music . This can be changed though. For example, you click on the Music icon in the main menu and then you choose Browse Hard Drive . Notice that there is the Launch Audiocorder action icon. Each time you use this button to start the Audiocorder application instead of the AudioCorder button on the main menu, you set the recording default location to the current folder. For example, let’s say you have a folder called / Music/Vinyls/Soul . If you go to this folder and then make a recording using the action icon, you will set the default record location to this folder. Now, all your recordings you make with the Audiocorder icon will be saved in the folder /Music/Vinyls/Soul .

13.4 Audio Editing

Audio ﬁ les (only recordings that were made from the AudioCorder icon) can be modiﬁ ed by deleting the sections you do not wish included. If you would like to edit an audio recording, you have the possibility to cut the ﬁ le down to the speciﬁ c part you want to keep. In the example below, you have recorded a lecture of 33 minutes and 22 seconds in length. You would like to cut out and save just one particular important section from 12 minutes and 15 seconds to 21 minutes and 5 seconds. The diagram below illustrates the situation.

To keep just this section (cropping it), you will:

incremental recordings, you might, for example, have ﬁ les names of REC0000_01, REC0000_02, etc.

• Locate this ﬁ le via Browse hard disk in the Music application.

• From the action icons, select the File Management action icon and then select Edit .

• In the edit mode, set the Cut In point (12:15 in our example). This will remove the part of the ﬁ le BEFORE the desired segment.

• Now set a Cut Out point (21:05 in our example. Please note: As you have cut part of the ﬁ le, this position will actually be earlier in the ﬁ le now).

• Validate and Save the edit. The ﬁ le will be saved with the word ”edit” appended to the ﬁ le name in the same folder as the original.

• If you do not want to save your modiﬁ cations, click the STOP/ESC button and select OK.

Highlight the ﬁ le to edit and select the File Management action icon. Choose Edit . Only ﬁ les which have been created with the AV 500 recording function will show Edit in the ﬁ le menu. Files created from CDs or downloaded cannot be edited. Once you enter the edit mode, the audio ﬁ le will play in a continuous loop so that you will be able to hear the changes to the edit as you make them.

Use the fast-reverse and fast-forward buttons (LEFT/RIGHT buttons) to locate the points you want the new ﬁ le to start and end. These are the Cut In and Cut Out points. Once you have set these points, you can save the edit. In this example, a new ﬁ le REC0001_Edit will be made. Your original ﬁ le is left untouched. You will notice that your Cut In and Cut Out times are marked just below the ﬁ le name.

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1 14

MUSIC – Using iTunes

™

with your AV 500

1 15

PHOTO – Viewing Photos

15.1 Viewing Photos

MUSIC – Using iTunes

™

with your AV 500

The easiest way to transfer music ﬁ les between a Macintosh Finder™ to drag and drop the ﬁ les to and from your Macintosh use the AV 500 with iTunes /Data/i-Tunes Plug-in on the AV 500 hard drive or at the ARCHOS for Mac OS 9.x and another folder for Mac OS 10.x. You will also ﬁ nd a JPEG image illustrating where you need to copy the plug-in to. Once this is done, iTunes™ will recognize the AV 500 as a ‘Device’.

Your AV 500 needs to be set to “Hard drive” mode (see the section System

Settings in the Settings chapter or the chapter Connecting/Disconnecting the AV 500 to/from your PC on how to do this.)

Please keep in mind the following:

1) Music purchased at Apple’s on-line music store are copy protected with a proprietary encryption system. The ARCHOS created. It will happily play MP3 format ﬁ les without problem.

2) When you create your Playlists with iTunes to your AV 500), your Macintosh them to the AV 500 Playlists directory. It would be best to use the AV 500 itself to make Playlists and then save these Playlists in your Playlists folder. (See section Creating a Playlist in chapter Music –Playlists )

3) When you drag and drop MP3 ﬁ les from your iTunes the ID3 tag information of the MP3 ﬁ le, and create a folder on the root of your AV 500 using the name of the Artist as the folder name. Then it will take the Album name ID3 tag, and create a subfolder with that album as its name. Finally, it will take the MP3 song itself and place it into that album subfolder. Thus, although it is a clean structure of artists and albums, i-Tunes® does not follow the AV 500 convention of placing the music into the Music folder ﬁ rst.

™

device will not be able to play this purchased music or ﬁ les in ACC format which you might have

, ARCHOS™ has developed a special i-Tunes® plug-in. You will ﬁ nd it in the folder

Attention

will save these Playlists to the root directory of your AV 500. It will not save

(you can only create Playlists from songs that have been copied

computer and your AV 500 is to use the Macintosh

. However, for Macintosh® users who do want to

™

website. In this folder you will ﬁ nd a plug-in

library to your AV 500, the i-Tunes® program will look at

PHOTO – Viewing Photos

The AV 500 series support the viewing of JPEG (.jpg) and Bitmap (.bmp) image formats. Progressive

the Photo directory.

15.1 Viewing Photos

JPEG images are not supported. The AV 500 will resize the image to ﬁ t on the built-in screen or on a television screen if you choose the television output. When you are in the Photo mode, it means that only ﬁ les of type JPEG or BMP will be visible in the directory. Other ﬁ le types will not be visible. The three images on the right are thumbnail sized pictures of the highlighted ﬁ le (center) and the picture just before and just after the highlighted ﬁ le. Select the Photo icon, then click Enter o in order to go to

When you click Enter o on a highlighted image ﬁ le, the AV 500 will display the image in full screen mode. Displayed as a full screen image, you can rotate it, magnify it, or set it as the AV 500 screen background with the Save as Wallpaper function in the File Management action icon.

1 x 1 image 2 x 2 images 3 x 3 images (Zoom out 1x) (Zoom out 2x)

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15.2 Viewing a slideshow

15.3 Transferring photos to your AV 500

Rotate picture 90° left View previous/next photo

Rotate picture 90° right

• Move up the action icon menu to select a picture option.

• Select the Zoom in/out action icon to change the number of photos in the carrousel view.

Magnifying Photos

Once the picture is displayed in full screen, selecting the Zoom in action icon will magnify the image up to two levels. Each successive click will magnify the picture one more level. You can use your direction buttons to move the picture around in order to see the desired magniﬁ ed area. The small + signs on the bottom left of the screen indicate the level of magniﬁ cation, either + or ++. Click on STOP/ESC to go back to an unmagniﬁ ed view.

15.2 Viewing a slideshow

By clicking on the action icon Play a Slideshow , the AV 500 will present each picture in the current folder for a set amount of time and then go on to the next picture. You can set the amount of time that each picture stays on the screen under the action icon Photo Browser Settings > Picture Pause . This parameter is the number of seconds each picture displays on the screen.

15.3 Transferring photos to your AV 500

The AV 500 is equipped with a USB host port. This port, along with the USB Host adapter cable will allow you to connect USB Mass Storage Class (MSC) devices to your AV 500 and transfer ﬁ les from that device to your AV

500. Many cameras produced today are MSC type devices. Thus you can often plug your camera directly into

the AV 500’s USB Host port and copy your photos with the ARCHOS™ browser. If you do not have an MSC type camera, you can use a USB card reader and plug this into AV 500’s USB host port (via the USB host adapter cable). Finally if neither of these solutions is available to you, you can always copy the photos to your computer and then copy them from your computer to the connected AV 500 (via USB 2).

3 methods to copy photos to your AV 500

1) Connect your Mass Storage Class camera to USB Host port (via USB host adapter cable).

2) Use a stand alone USB card reader with the USB host adapter cable.

3) Copy photos to your computer and then copy (or Sync with Windows Media

Method 1

Player 10) to the AV 500 (via USB 2).

Once you plug an MSC type device into the USB host port (via the host adapter cable), the browser’s left panel will show the contents of your external USB device, and the right panel will show the contents of your AV 500’s hard drive. Navigate to the panel which contains your photos (in this example /DCIM/113CANON ). Move to the right panel (action) and navigate to the folder you would like to save your photos to (you can create a new folder if you need to by selecting the corresponding action icon). See the screen images on the next page.

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1 16

BROWSER – Using the Browser

Photos from camera are shown on the left, and your AV 500 hard drive on the right. By using the Select right pane action icon, move to the right pane and choose the destination folder.

Now return to the left pane and choose the Copy all ﬁ les action icon. Your ﬁ les will be copied to your AV 500 into the folder in the right pane. You can now unplug the camera from the AV 500.

BROWSER – Using the Browser

The browser is used to navigate the ﬁ le system on the AV 500. The ﬁ le system is FAT32, the same type

The folders Music , Pictures , and Video are special folders in that the icons on the main screen lead to these folders and then places you directly in that folder. If these folders are deleted or renamed, you will be taken to the root level (highest level) of the directory hierarchy.

of ﬁ le system that is found on Windows includes folders and subfolders. Because you will be putting hundreds of ﬁ les on your AV 500, it is STRONGLY ADVISED that you keep a neat and orderly ﬁ le structure. Otherwise, you will be spending time searching for ﬁ les and not listening or watching them. ARCHOS™ recommends that you keep the factory created folders: Data, Music, Playlists, Video, and Pictures.

based computers. That is, it is a hierarchical system which

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16.1 Navigating the Directory Structure

16.2 File and Folder Operations

16.1 Navigating the Directory Structure

To navigate the directory structure you will use:

ENTER: Open the highlighted folder (directory) or Play the highlighted ﬁ le.

ESC/STOP x : Go back to the main menu.

Move the cursor up and down to the previous or next ﬁ le or folder.

RIGHT: Open the currently highlighted folder.

LEFT: Go back up one level in the folder hierarchy. Example: Go from folder AV500/Music/Wes Burden/ to AV500/Music.

16.2 File and Folder Operations

Depending on where you are in the folder system, you will have the option to manipulate ﬁ les and folders. From the main menu, click on Browser. Files that the AV 500 cannot play will be preceded by the unknown ﬁ le type icon.

Folder Operations File Operations

Info Show ﬁ le information such as song length, video length, photo size, number of kilobytes used of hard drive space,

Create Create a new folder inside the current folder.

Delete Delete the ﬁ le permanently from the AV 500. (Before it is deleted, the AV 500 will ask

Rename Change the name of the ﬁ le or folder to something new. You will be sent to the virtual keyboard (see section

Create Create a new folder in the current level of the directory. You will be sent to the virtual keyboard (see section

date ﬁ le was made, etc.

“ Delete ﬁ le: xxxxx ? ”. Use the action buttons to reply Yes or No. For folder, it will delete the entire contents of the folder. It will ask “ Delete folder: xxxxx and all ﬁ les therein? ” Use the action buttons to reply Yes or No.

Virtual Keyboard in the Browser chapter ) to enter the new ﬁ le or folder name.

Virtual Keyboard in the Browser chapter) to enter the new folder name.

Page 33

Copying and Moving Files and Folders

By using the unique ARCHOS structure to another (1000 ﬁ les per folder maximum). The double browser can be used in:

™

double browser system, you can copy or move ﬁ les from one location in the ﬁ le

Photo View The left panel is the connected USB device (ex: digital camera or hard drive) and the right panel the AV 500 hard

Music View The left browser is the AV 500 hard drive contents and right browser the music Playlist.

Browser View Two panels to browse two different parts of the AV 500 hard drive.

In the Browser mode, you can jump between the two panels using the Focus on the left/right panel action icon. Where the cursor is highlighting a ﬁ le or folder, that panel is the source for the copy. The destination folder will be the other panel. For example, we want to copy the ﬁ le Project info.doc from the AV 500/Data/Files from Work folder to the AV 500/Data/Completed projects folder. We must start from the main screen Browser mode.

drive contents.

1) Locate and highlight the ﬁ le to be copied. Using the action buttons, move to the right pane.

2) In the right pane, locate the destination folder. Then move back to the left pane.

3) Highlight the ﬁ le to be copied and select the Copy ﬁ le action icon.

4) The selected ﬁ le will now be copied into the destination folder.

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16.3 Using the Virtual Keyboard

1 17

Connecting/Disconnecting* the AV 500 to/from your PC

17.1 USB Connection Type (‘Hard Drive’ or ‘Windows Device’)

17.2 Connecting the AV 500

16.3 Using the Virtual Keyboard

It is recommended that you create folders and rename ﬁ les or folders from your computer when it is connected to the AV 500. The computer keyboard is much easier to use. However, at times when you are not near your computer and need to enter text directly with the AV 500 (ex: renaming a ﬁ le or creating a new folder). For this, the virtual keyboard screen will appear.

The new text that you are typing

Cursor

Press ENTER to enter the

highlighted key/letter.

Change keyboard between upper case and lower case

Backspace button

Clear the entered text

Conﬁ rmation to use the entered text.

Hold down on the LEFT or RIGHT buttons to move the cursor within the entry line.

Connecting/Disconnecting* the AV 500 to/from your PC

17.1 USB Connection Type (‘Hard Drive’ or ‘Windows Device’)

Your device comes conﬁ gured as a Windows are running Windows version of Windows will need to change the USB (Universal Serial Bus) Port setting on the AV 500. You will do this by going to the Settings action icon and then to System and USB Port and change it to ‘ Hard Drive ’.

XP (with Service Pack 1 minimum) and Windows Media

, not sure what version of Windows

Device and will be immediately recognized by your computer if you

XP you have, or if you are using a Macintosh

17.2 Connecting the AV 500

Connection order: See the sections below for your particular computer’s operating system.

1) Connect the power adapter to the AV 500.

2) With your computer running, plug the USB cable into your computer.

3) With the AV 500 off, plug in the other end of the USB cable to the AV 500 USB Device port.

4) Turn on the AV 500. (If your computer asks to install a new driver for the new hardware, then you must unplug it and change the USB Port to Hard Drive.)

Player 10. If you have another

, then you

* Note that when the AV 500 is connected to a computer, it will use more energy than usual. Your battery power will be consumed at a higher rate than normal. It is normal that the AV 500 will get hot. If the AV 500 looses power while connected to your computer you could damage your directory structure and/or loose data. Thus, you should always use the AC adapter when connected to your computer. Be careful to understand the disconnection procedure also since disconnecting incorrectly can lead to data loss or computer/AV 500 freeze up. The AV 500 is not compatible with Windows® NT, Windows® 95, or Windows

98. While connected to your computer, the AV 500 buttons are blocked and are no longer functional.

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17.3 Disconnecting the AV 500 from your Computer

Windows® XP

Please verify** that you have Windows

have Windows Media connecting it as a ‘ Windows Device ’. Connect it to your PC as enumerated above and you can then see the AV 500 in Windows Media Player® 10, you cannot use it as a Windows for Windows® ME & 2000 below.

** Right-click on ‘My Computer’ select ‘Properties’, and then look in the tab labeled ‘General’. It should say “Service Pack 1” or higher.

Windows® ME and 2000

Player 10 (WMP10) installed on your computer. This way, you can take advantage of

Explorer and WMP10. Without Windows

Attention: Before connecting the AV 500 to your computer with the USB cable, go to the setup action icon and then to System and USB Port and change it to ‘Hard Drive’.

When connected to your computer, the AV 500 will be recognized as an external Hard Drive and display automatically within a few seconds of being connected. You will see a new drive letter, such as E: in My Computer called AV 500. You can now use the hard drive called AV 500 like any other external hard drive. Simply access it using Windows® Explorer to drag and drop ﬁ les to and from the AV 500’s hard drive.

™

Macintosh

OS X

If you have OS X, you must update to version 10.2.4 or newer. You must also change the AV 500’s USB Port setting to ‘ Hard Drive ’. From the main menu, go to the Settings action icon and then to System and USB Port and change it to ‘ Hard Drive ’.

You will now simply plug the AV 500 into your Macintosh seconds, the AV 500 will be recognized as a mass storage device (Hard Drive) and mount on the desktop. You can now use the hard drive called AV 500 like any other external hard drive.

XP and it is updated it to at least, Service Pack 1 . You must also

recognized ‘Device’ and will have to follow the instructions

XP Service Pack 1 (a free update) or Windows

as enumerated above, and within a few

17.3 Disconnecting the AV 500 from your Computer

Windows Device Mode

Hard Drive Mode

WARNING: You must properly remove (unmount) your AV 500 from the computer before disconnecting the USB cable to avoid loss of data or freezing the computer and/or the AV 500.

Hard Drive Mode & Windows®

To safely disconnect the AV 500 hard drive, click on the system tray remove icon (green arrow as shown below) and follow the instructions. Wait until you get a message saying that you can safely unplug the device before disconnecting the USB cable.

1. The safe remove icon is in the system tray next to the clock.

If the AV 500 is connected to your computer as a Windows Device, verify that no data is being transferred between your AV 500 and your computer (the HDD light on your AV 500 is not ﬂ ickering). You can now safely unplug the USB cable from your AV 500 and/or computer.

If the AV 500 is connected to your computer as a hard drive, DO NOT SIMPLY PULL OUT THE USB

CABLE AT ANY TIME!

Windows

2. Click on the icon to eject (unmount) the AV 500 from the computer and select the ‘Safely remove’ message.

3. There will be a message indicating that it is now safe to disconnect

the AV 500. You can now safely unplug the USB cable from your AV 500 and/or computer.

XP Windows® 2000 & Windows® ME

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1 18

Connecting Devices to the USB Host Port

Hard Drive Mode & Macintosh

Drag the AV 500 hard drive icon towards the trash can, the trash can will become a big arrow as shown in the screen shot to the left. Drop the hard drive icon onto the arrow. The hard drive icon will disappear from the desktop. You can now safely unplug the USB cable from your AV 500 and/or computer.

Connecting Devices to the USB Host Port

Thanks to the USB Host port, you can connect USB Mass Storage Class (MSC) devices such as many digital cameras and external hard drives in order to transfer pictures or data to/from your AV 500. Check your manufacturer’s information to ﬁ nd out whether your device is an MSC device. Non Mass Storage Class devices such as printers, Ethernet adapters, mice, keyboards, etc. are not supported. To connect an MSC device, use the included short USB host adapter.

If your camera follows the Mass Storage Class (MSC) standard for USB connection, then your camera will show up in the ﬁ le browser as the folder /External USB . If you look in this folder you will see your photos or ﬁ les. See the chapter on the File Browser for instructions on how to copy ﬁ les.

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1 19

SETTINGS

19.1 Sound Settings

Parameter Description

19.2 Play Mode Settings

Parameter Description

SETTINGS

From the main screen, select the Settings action icon to reveal the menu items for various settings.

19.1 Sound Settings

If you would like to customize the sound quality, you can adjust the Bass, Treble, and other audio settings to suit your particular taste. Normally you will do this while listening to music so that you can

hear the changes you make. Simply click on the Audio Settings action icon while listening to music.

• Once in the Settings screen, move over to the Sound icon and click again on ENTER o. Use LEFT and RIGHT buttons to change a parameter’s value. You will hear these changes instantly.

• Use the UP and DOWN buttons to select different parameters.

• Click on STOP/ESC x when ﬁ nished. You will return to the Setup screen.

• Click on STOP/ESC x again and you will return to the music playing screen.

The Sound Parameters

Parameter Description

Volume 0 – 99

Bass 10 levels. Decreases or Increases the low frequencies.

Treble 10 levels. Decreases or Increases the high frequencies .

Balance 10 levels. Favors the right or left channel of the Stereo signal .

Bass Boost 10 levels. Increases the very low frequencies .

Reset button Re-adjusts all settings to their default values .

19.2 Play Mode Settings

If you would like the AV 500 to play through an entire folder of songs, play songs at random (shufﬂ e), or any of the other playing options, you can set these parameters in the PlayMode settings. Click on the Settings action icon from the main menu or while listening to music and then choose PlayMode .

Parameter Description

Playmode options

Folder Play all tracks in the current directory or current album.

All Play all tracks on the AV 500.

Single Play a single track then stop.

Queue While the current song is playing, select the Show ARCLibrary action button, ﬁ nd the next song you want to play,

Scan Each track in the directory is played for 10 - 90 seconds. This allows a quick sample of each song. If you want to

then click PLAY. This is your queued song. You can only queue one song at a time. See the Playlist section to prepare multiple songs to play. Once the current track is ﬁ nished playing, your queued track will be played. If you do not queue another track at this time, the AV 500 will play the next song in the directory.

play the whole song, click on the Play button during those ﬁ rst 10 - 90 seconds. The AV 500 will then revert to single directory mode and play the rest of the songs in the directory without scanning.

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19.3 Clock Settings

19.4 Display Settings

Setting Description

Repeat & Shufﬂ e options

Normal Plays your songs one after the other and then stops after the last song.

Repeat Continuously plays through the current set of songs (Artist, Album, folder, or Playlist).

Shufﬂ e Randomly play through the current set of songs (Artist, Album, folder, or Playlist) .

Intro duration From 10 to 90 seconds. This is the time for which each song will be played when selecting Scan for Playmode

settings.

19.3 Clock Settings

The AV 500 has an internal real time clock. The time of day is shown on the top right of the screen in either 24 hour or 12 hour display mode. To set it, select the Settings action icon then select Clock .

Choose parameter Choose value for highlighted parameter

When ﬁ nished setting the parameters, move down to the Set button, then click on the ENTER o button. The clock time and date are now set. Click on the STOP/ESC x button to go back to the main settings menu.

19.4 Display Settings

These settings regulate the interface language and the presentation of the screen.

Setting Description

Language The AV 500 can be set to English (default), French, German, Spanish, or Russian.

Action icon help Displays the explanation or name of the action icons when moving up and down through the menu. If set to On, the

TV Standard NTSC (USA), PAL (Europe) . In order to view images or videos on an external television, select one option to send

TV format 4:3 or 16:9 – the ratio at which images are displayed on your television set.

Video Output Internal LCD or External TV. To display via the built-in LCD screen or to view the display via an external television.

LCD Brightness 0, 1, 2 . The 3 brightness levels for the built-in LCD screen. Setting to a lower value will give you a longer battery

When accessing the Display settings while playing a video you have an additional display option:

Video OSD Time for which the video On Screen Display information will be shown when the video starts playing.

ﬁ rst click on the SELECT action button will show the names of the icons. The second click will select the icon.

the video signal compatible with your country’s television system. Countries other than European or American will use one of these two systems.

Holding the LCD/TV button for two seconds will also alternate between these two options. Be sure your television is selecting the correct external input.

autonomy.

Page 39

19.5 Appearance settings

Setting Description

19.6 Power Settings

Parameter Description

19.7 System Settings

19.5 Appearance settings

Setting Description

Wallpaper On, Off. When set to On, the selected picture (next item)

Picture name This option will display the names of the JPEG images in

Font Outline If your screen background is a dark color, it will be difﬁ cult to see the black text on the screen. Set Outlined font to

Color scheme Allows you to choose what color you would like to have for the status bar above and the screen buttons.

Cursor color Changes the color of the cursor and its background.

Previous settings Click this button to return to the settings last set.

19.6 Power Settings

These settings will help you to save battery power thus allowing a longer battery autonomy.

You can set the AV 500 to conserve power for both modes of operation (when it is powered from the battery, or when it is connected to the AC charger/adapter (DC-Power operation).

will be displayed as the AV 500 screen background.

the AV 500’s System folder that can be used for screen backgrounds (Wallpaper). You can add your own JPEG images to the System folder by dragging and dropping a JPEG ﬁ le from your computer. You can also set the wallpaper within the Photo mode.

On to have a more visible white outlined font.

Parameter Description

Power Off 1-9 minutes or Never. The number of minutes of user inactivity (no buttons pressed) before the AV 500 shuts off.

Backlight Off 10-90 seconds or Never. The time of user inactivity (no buttons pressed) before the AV 500 turns off the screen to

Hard disk 10-90 seconds. The number of seconds from the time of the last ﬁ le access before the AV 500 tells the internal

Standby 1-9 minutes or Never. The number of minutes of user inactivity (no buttons pressed) before the AV 500 goes into

A typical use of these settings is to set the power off, screen off, and hard disk to low values when used in battery mode. When the power adapter is plugged in, you do not need to conserve energy and thus keeping the Power on and the Backlight on makes using the AV 500 more agreeable. Increasing the hard disk value beyond the default may actually discharge the battery even when the Charger/adapter is plugged in. Note also that your unit will run hotter when the backlight and hard drive are on for long periods of time.

19.7 System Settings

The System settings allow you control over the low level parameters of the AV 500.

During the playback of music or video ﬁ les, this setting takes effect only after the ﬁ les are ﬁ nished playing.

conserve power. During the playback of video ﬁ les, this setting only takes effect once the ﬁ le is ﬁ nished playing.

hard drive to stop spinning. The longer this time is set, the more often the hard drive is turning and the quicker the response time when accessing ﬁ les. However, as it is set longer, it will quickly consume your battery. Caution: This setting should only be changed by experienced users.

Standby mode. When powered by the AC charger/adapter (or connected to a powered TV docking pod), the AV 500 will not completely shut off. It will go into Standby mode. This way, it can wake up to make a scheduled video recording.

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Parameter Description

19.8 TV control

2 20

Updating the AV 500 Firmware Operating System (OS)

Parameter Description

ARCLibrary Off: From the Music icon, you will just browse music ﬁ les in the folder Music.

On: (Only in USB Port mode ‘Hard drive’) Browse music via its tag characteristics but the ARCLibrary must be

Automatic: ARCLibrary is automatically updated when the USB cable is disconnected from your device.

Update ARCLibrary This button lets you update the ARCLibrary if you have set the parameter above to ON.

USB Port Windows Device (default), Hard drive .

Windows Device When set to , your AV 500 will use the MTP (Media Transport Protocol) whenever it is connected to a Windows XP

Hard drive When set to Hard Drive , your AV 500 will act as an external hard drive (mass storage device) when connected to a

Firmware Version Displays the current version of the OS (Operating System) and DRM (Digital Rights Management) system.

Update Firmware Used to update the AV 500 to a new version of the Operating System. See the chapter

Product Key Each AV 500 device has a unique product key number.

Hard Disk Displays the amount of free and used space on the AV 500’s hard drive. Reported number of megabytes is binary

19.8 TV control

See the chapter VIDEO – Setting the Infrared Emitter Code for a complete explanation of when and how to use this setting.

updated manually.

(SP1 or higher) operating system with Windows Media® Player 10 installed. It will be seen as the AV 500 ‘Device’ in Windows® Explorer. WARNING: This will not work for earlier Windows® operating systems or MacIntosh® computers.

computer. Use this mode for all non-Windows® XP operating systems.

Updating the AV 500 Firmware Operating System.

based counting (1kb=1024 bytes). Thus each reported MB represents approximately 1.05 megabytes (decimal). Formatting also takes up space.

Updating the AV 500 Firmware Operating System (OS)

ARCHOS™ periodically updates the Operating System (OS) and makes it available for free download on the ARCHOS™ website (www.archos.com). Updates to the Operating System include new features, feature improvements, and bug ﬁ xes. You should check to make sure that you are running the most recent version of the OS. To check what version you have, click on the Settings action icon and then go to System . You will ﬁ nd the most recent version of the OS and its version number at the ARCHOS™ website (www.archos.com) under the download section.

Read the History.txt File

You will also ﬁ nd next to the ﬁ rmware download, a text ﬁ le which details the list of changes from the previous version of the OS.

Download the Update_AV 500.AOS ﬁ le

When you click on the link to download the new OS ﬁ le (the ﬁ le name is Update_AV500.AOS), your browser may warn you that the contents of the download may harm your computer. This is because the Windows a .AOS ﬁ le is. Be assured that ARCHOS™ has made every effort to ensure that the ﬁ le does not contain viruses. Click on the option Save to download this ﬁ le to a convenient place, such as My Documents , in order to later copy this ﬁ le to your AV 500. If your AV 500 is connected to your PC, you can even save it directly to the AV 500.

system does not know what

Copy to the AV 500

When updating your Operating System, you must keep the AC charger/adapter plugged into the AV 500 so that it will not shut down due to low batteries while you are performing the update. Connect your AV 500 to your computer (refer to the relevant chapter if you are unsure about this), and then copy the Update_AV500.AOS ﬁ le to the AV 500.

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2 21

TV docking pod Description*

‘Hard Drive’ or ‘Windows Device’?

If your AV 500 is seen as a hard drive, then you simply need to drag the Update_AV500.AOS ﬁ le onto this icon, and Windows placed inside any folder within your AV 500. Once this ﬁ le is copied, safely disconnect (refer to the chapter on Connecting/Disconnecting) the AV 500 from the computer.

will place the ﬁ le into the top most directory (root) of the AV 500. It should not be

If your AV 500 is seen as a Windows Explorer and drop the Update_AV500.AOS into the Data folder (not the Media folder). If there is already an older version of the Update_AV500.AOS ﬁ le on your AV 500, Windows® will ask if you want to overwrite the current ﬁ le. Click on Yes. Disconnect the AV 500 from your computer.

Activate the Update

Ensure that your AV 500 is still powered through the AC charger/adapter.

Next, go to the System parameters from the Settings action icon and then move down

to Update Firmware and click on it. The AV 500 will search for the .AOS ﬁ le. Follow the on-screen instructions. When completed, the AV 500 will restart and you can go back to this screen to verify that you have updated the ﬁ rmware to the new version.

Device, then you will have to open the AV 500 Device in Windows

TV docking pod Description*

By installing the TV docking pod, you have an easy way to connect and disconnect your AV 500 to or from your home entertainment system. Simply connect the pod’s multi-connect plug to the AV 500 as needed. If you have scheduled television recordings to make, then connect the AV 500 to the pod and let it make the recording while you are away. If you want to make TV recordings from a place other than where your pod is connected, then you can purchase the “Audio-Video Travel kit” to bring along with your ARCHOS™ device and record from any other audio/video source.

a AV input jack – use either of the AV cables

b AV ouput jack – use either of the AV cables

c S-Video in – input (you can use a standard s-video cable (not included) for your video input)

d Adapter connection – connect the included power adapter here

e Infrared Emitter jack – plug in the included infrared emitter if you want the AV 500 to control a VCR, cable box,

or sat. receiver.

* Concerns users with TV docking pod only.

Page 42

21.1 Remote Control Description

sound

Stop

ecute buttons

(p )

2 22

Connecting the TV docking pod to your Television System*

21.1 Remote Control Description

Switch between Built-in & External Video

Switch between Built-in

This group of buttons acts as the

avigation acceleration, and the Pla

navigation acceleration, and the Play &

Action icon select and ex

Action icon select and execute buttons

ame as on screen help button

Same as on screen help button

(opens the Info folder)

External Video

buttons.

Stop buttons.

Standby / Wake Up*

Numeric entry

Go up or down a channel if

Go up or down a channel if you have the

infrared emitter connected to

infrared emitter connected to your VCR,

able box, or satellite receiver.

cable box, or satellite receiver.

Increase / Decrease Volume

Mute

Mute sound

ou have th

our VC

Connecting the TV docking pod to your Television System*

The AV 500 connected to the TV docking pod.

* Concerns users with TV docking pod only.

Page 43

22.1 Connect & Test Method

22.2 Connection (1): Powering the TV docking pod

22.3 Connection (2): Breaking your regular TV Connection

22.4 Connection (3): Put the TV docking pod between your TV and Tuner

22.5 Connection (4): Connect the AV 500 to the TV docking pod

22.1 Connect & Test Method

Even if connecting audio-visual equipment is not your strong suit, by following our instructions and applying our Connect & Test method, you will be able to verify that your connections are correct. Refer to the color connection diagrams in the back of this manual while reading through each section below.

22.2 Connection (1): Powering the TV docking pod

Plug the included adapter/charger into the jack labeled DC-in on the TV docking pod. Your pod must always be powered, even if you do not have your AV500 connected to it. If not powered, your regular tuner’s output (VCR, cablebox, satellite receiver) will not be seen on your television.

22.3 Connection (2): Breaking your regular TV Connection

The TV docking pod is a pass-through device. That is, if you do nothing more than connect it to your VCR, Cable box, or Satellite receiver and your television, it will pass the audio and video signals through to your TV and you will notice no difference in how your television system operates. Start by disconnecting your television from its usual source (vcr, cable box, or satellite receiver).

22.4 Connection (3): Put the TV docking pod between your TV and Tuner

We will now put the TV docking pod between these two devices you just separated. Take one of the AV cables (they are identical, don’t worry), and plug it into the AV Out jack of the TV docking pod, and plug the other end of this cable into your television (European users may need to use the included IN labeled scart adapter). Take the second AV cable and plug it into the AV In jack of the TV docking pod. The other end of this cable must now go to the video and audio output of your tuner (VCR, cable box, satellite receiver) that was previously connected to your television (European users may need to use the included OUT labeled scart adapter). Power the TV docking pod with the included ARCHOS™ adapter/charger.

TEST IT: Verify that you made the correct connections.

• Turn on your television

• Turn on your video device (vcr, cable box, or satellite receiver)

• You should be able to use your television system as you normally do. The TV docking pod is merely passing through the video and audio to your television.

• Europe: If you don’t see the video, check to make sure you used the correct SCART IN and OUT adapters.

22.5 Connection (4): Connect the AV 500 to the TV docking pod

Connect your AV 500 to the pod as shown. The AV 500 can be on or off when you connect it. If it is off, the act of connecting it to the docking pod will turn it on.

TEST IT: Test now to verify that it works as desired.

• Turn on the AV 500 and your television.

• Hold down on the TV/LCD button for 2 seconds (button located on top of the AV 500).

• The screen on your AV should go black.

• You should see the AV 500 screen now displaying to your television.

• If not, switch your television to auxiliary input (often called L1 or L2 just below channel 1)

• Hold the TV/LCD button again to return to viewing on your AV 500.

Page 44

22.6 Connection (5): the S-Video In

22.7 Connection (6): the Infrared Emitter

22.6 Connection (5): the S-Video In

If you would like to get a higher quality video recording, and your video recorder, cable box or other video device has an S-video output, you can connect a standard S-video cable from it to your TV docking pod. This will carry only the video signal to the pod and your AV 500, not the audio. The video pass thru feature is not supported for S-Video input.

DO NOT PLUG IN BOTH THE S-VIDEO CONNECTOR AND THE STANDARD YELLOW AV IN CONNECTOR AT THE SAME TIME.

22.7 Connection (6): the Infrared Emitter

This is an optional connection. You will need to use this if you would like to change TV channels with the ARCHOS™ remote control or if want to be able to make scheduled recordings. This emitter, once stuck on to your cable box, satellite receiver, or video cassette recorder, will be able to turn that device on and off and select channels while you are away. The emitter acts like the remote control for that device.

Infrared (IR) Emitter

Which device to control?

You will afﬁ x the IR Emitter to the device you normally change your TV channels with. Do you change TV channels with your video cassette recorder remote control, your cable box remote control, or your satellite receiver remote control? Which ever one of these devices changes the channel that you view, then it is on this device that you will afﬁ x the IR Emitter.

Locating the Infrared Receptor on your VCR or Cable box

First, you must locate the infrared detector on the device. This is the small dark window (looks black or deep red actually) which you point your remote control at to change the channels. We will use a video cassette recorder (vcr) as an example, but the following is true also for a cable box or satellite receiver.

Look in your device’s user manual to see if it shows you where the infrared detector window is. If you ﬁ nd it, then jump to the next step “Connecting it to the TV docking pod”.

One way to locate the infrared receptor on your VCR is to cover up various parts of the face of your VCR with your hand while changing the channels and notice at what point your VCR’s remote control stops working. By covering up various parts of the face, you will stop the infrared beam from reaching the infrared receptor. Keep changing the channels with your remote control, moving your hand over various areas until you have found where the infrared receptor is.

Connecting it to the TV docking pod

Plug the connector end of the Infrared Emitter to the far right jack on the back of the TV docking pod. This emitter will act as your remote control for your scheduled recordings.

Sticking it onto your device and Setting the IR Emitter code

Now that you know where the infrared receptor is, you need to set the correct infrared emitter code on your AV 500 and then afﬁ x the IR emitter to your device. Every VCR, cable box, and satellite receiver has a different infrared code to tell it to turn on and off and how to change channels. With the IR emitter in one hand, move it over the infrared receptor on your cable box, VCR, or satellite receiver and then set the infrared code as explained in the chapter VIDEO – Setting the Infrared Emitter Code . Once you get the AV 500 to start controlling your device by infrared signals (there are test buttons for this – see the TV Control setting for help), you can then peel off the white ring protecting the adhesive, and stick the IR emitter to your device. If your regular remote control for this device is sensitive to distances, you could afﬁ x the Infrared Emitter slightly to the left or right of the device’s receptor so as not to impede the functioning of the regular remote control.

Page 45

2 23

Replacing the battery

23.1 “Thin” version

22.2 Standard version

Replacing the battery

Your AV 500 has a removable battery. You may want to purchase a second battery for cases when you know that you will be unable to recharge your AV 500 before the supplied battery runs out. Refer to the chapter Settings – Power Settings for information about getting the most use from the battery.

Before removing the battery, disconnect the charger/adapter and switch off the device.

23.1 “Thin” version

On the “Thin” version of the AV 500, the battery is located on the left half at the back of the device. To take out the battery, slide the button on the bottom of the AV 500 towards the right, then slide the battery towards the top and lift it out. To replace the battery, lower it straight into the compartment. Be sure to leave a gap between the bottom edge of the AV 500 and the battery (1). Slide the battery towards the bottom of the AV 500. This action should anchor the battery in the compartment (2).

Caution: If the battery is incorrectly replaced or short-circuited, this could result in damage to the product and/or serious injuries to the user. Replace only with same or equivalent type of battery.

22.2 Standard version

There are two batteries available for for the standard versions of the AV 500. They are located on the back of the device and are exchanged in the same way. To take out the battery, move the sliding button on the left hand side of the device downwards. You can now lift the battery from the left edge. To replace a battery, hold it with the 2 plastic notches towards the right and slide it into the battery compartment (1). Then, lower the battery into its compartment (2). Finally, remember to move the slider latch towards the top of the AV 500 in order to secure the battery inside its compartment (3).

Page 46

2 24

Technical Support

In case you should encounter any technical difﬁ culties using your product, we suggest you go through these steps in order to resolve any issues as efﬁ ciently as possible:

1) Please read carefully through the appropriate sections of this manual. Some subject areas may be treated in two different chapters depending on how the device is being used.

2) Look at the Troubleshooting section at the back of this manual. In this section, we have included answers to some commonly asked questions.

3) Look at our Support section on the website (www.archos.com). Here, you will ﬁ nd Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for our different products, and there is a chance that somebody else has already asked your question.

4) If these steps did not help you resolve your technical difﬁ culty, you can always contact us either via email or by calling the helpline. Telephone support will be provided in the language of the countries listed below. For other countries, please use e-mail technical support.

• For warranty and services purposes, keep your sales receipt for proof of purchase.

• If technical support (Telephone or E-mail) determines that your product needs to be returned, please contact the place of purchase to have your product repaired or replaced (depending on problem type). Customers who purchased directly from the ARCHOS

™

website should ﬁ ll out the RMA return request form on the website.

DO NOT USE phone or e-mail support for marketing and sales questions. These numbers are to aid those who have technical difﬁ culties / malfunctions.

Telephone Support

Canada 949-609-1400 Nederland 020-50 40 510

Danmark 35 25 65 67 Norge 22 57 77 71

Deutschland 069-6698-4714 Schweitz/Suisse 442 004 111

España 09-1745-6224 Suomi 09 2311 3434

France 01 70 20 00 30 Svenska 08 579 290 80

Ireland 01-601-5700 UK 0207-949-0115

Italia 02-4827-1143 USA 877-300-879 (toll free)

Email Support

[email protected]

English (United States and Canada customers)

[email protected]

English or French (Europe and the rest of the planet)

[email protected]

German (Germany)

Page 47

2 25

Troubleshooting

25.1 USB Connection issues

WWW.ARCHOS.COM

Worldwide Ofﬁ ces

United States & Canada Europe & Asia

ARCHOS

3, Goodyear - Unit A

Irvine, CA 92618 USA

Phone: 1 949-609-1483

Fax: 1 949-609-1414

United Kingdom Germany

ARCHOS

PO Box 1420

Southampton

SO15 1WF

United Kingdom

™

Technology

™

(UK) Limited

ARCHOS

12, rue Ampère

91430 Igny

France

Phone: +33 (0) 169 33 169 0

Fax: +33 (0) 169 33 169 9

ARCHOS

Business Park Vierwinden

Konrad-Zuse-Str. 22

41516 Grevenbroich

Germany

™

S.A.

™

Deutschland GmbH

Phone: +44 (0) 1264 366022

Fax: +44 (0) 1264 366626

Troubleshooting

25.1 USB Connection issues

Problem: I cannot get my AV 500 to be recognized by the computer or it asks for a driver.

Solutions:

• If you are running an operating system other than Windows Player 10 or higher, the USB Port setting should be set to ‘Hard Drive’. Go to Settings > System > USB Port and set it to ‘ Hard Drive ’. Only Windows® XP (Service Pack 1 or higher) with Windows Media will allow for the USB Port ‘ Windows Device ’ setting.

• Shut off and reboot the computer and the AV 500 and then try connecting again in the preferred order mentioned in the chapter Connecting/Disconnecting the AV 500 to/from your PC .

• If using a USB hub, try connecting without using the hub (some hubs are not powered and may not work with the AV 500).

• If using a USB port in the front of your computer, try a USB port in the back. Front USB ports are often from non-powered hubs.

• Do not connect to a USB port repeated through a keyboard.

• If using a laptop computer and a docking station, try connecting without the docking station.

• Macintosh

• (Hard Drive mode) If the Files Allocation Table (FAT) gets corrupted, the AV 500 may not show up in Windows XP for over one minute, and then it comes up as local drive . Use DOS Utility ChkDsk as shown below.

• (Hard Drive Mode) Windows Right click on My Computer and select Manage . Then select Storage , then Disk Management . Within this window you may see the hard drive and be able to assign a drive letter by right-clicking on the hard drive, and selecting the option Change drive letter and paths …

users must update to OS 10.2.4 or higher.

Tel: + 49 (0) 21 82 – 570 41-0

Fax: + 49 (0) 2182/57041-70

XP (Service Pack 1 minimum) with Windows Media

Player 10 or higher

XP may recognize the AV 500 hard drive but yet not assign a drive letter to it.

Page 48

25.2 Charging and Power issues

25.3 AV 500 locks up (freezes operation) or Stops

25.4 File issues, corrupted data, formatting, and partitioning

Problem: (Hard Drive mode) What do I do if I try to disconnect via the green arrow but keep getting “The device ‘Generic Volume’ cannot be stopped now. Try stopping the device again later.”

Answer: Shut off any program that might be accessing data on the AV 500, including Windows does not work, shut down all programs, wait 20 seconds, then try the green arrow one or two times again. If this does not work, you can shut off your AV 500 with the Stop/Esc button and then unplug it.

25.2 Charging and Power issues

You do not need to fully discharge the batteries before recharging them.

Problem: A full battery charge does not last as long as the speciﬁ cations suggest.

Answer: The speciﬁ cations are under the condition that the screen backlight goes off after 30 seconds (for

music) and the user does not access the machine, it just sits and plays. If you get signiﬁ cantly less time from a full charge, call our technical support hot-line.

25.3 AV 500 locks up (freezes operation) or Stops

Problem: The AV 500 locks-up. None of the buttons work.

Solution: If the ‘ Lock buttons ’ is set, none of the buttons respond. Hold down the unlock action button for three

seconds to turn off the ‘ Lock buttons ’ function. A freeze up could also be caused by electrostatic phenomena. That is, static electricity has temporarily knocked out the AV 500. Hold down on the STOP/OFF button for 15 seconds and the AV 500 will shut off. Restart it normally now.

25.4 File issues, corrupted data, formatting, and partitioning

Problem: I want to clean up my AV 500’s hard drive, but Windows cleaning tools.

Answer: This is because Windows is set to Windows Device in Setup > System ). Do not change back to hard drive and run a defragmenter program. This will give unexpected results.

sees your AV 500 as a Windows Device and not a hard drive (USB Port

will not let me use the standard hard drive

Explorer. If this

Problem: On the AV 500, I ﬁ nd new ﬁ le names and folder names that I never created and/or they have strange gibberish names.

Answer: (Hard drive mode) Most likely, the AV 500’s ﬁ le allocation table (FAT) has been corrupted. This could have been due to the AV 500 shutting down (due to low battery power) while reading or writing to your computer via the USB connection. To ﬁ x a corrupted FAT problem, you should use the Error Checking utility or the Check Disk utility explained at the end of this section. Attention: Windows and Macintosh often write extra ﬁ les to the hard drive such as ﬁ nder.def or System volume info . These are normal and will not harm the AV 500.

Problem: Can I defragment the AV 500’s hard drive?

Answer: (Windows Device Mode) The AV 500 maintains an optimized ﬁ le system and does not need to be

defragmented. Defragmenting will cause unexpected problems.

Problem: I want to reformat the AV 500’s hard drive.

Answer: You can do this, but it will erase ALL of the data on your AV 500. Sometimes this may be necessary

if your FAT (File Allocation Table) becomes so corrupted that nothing seems to ﬁ x your ﬁ le problems. First, as explained below, you should run ScanDisk or the DOS chkdsk (Check Disk) program to try to ﬁ x your problem. If this doesn’t ﬁ x your problem and you are sure you must reformat the AV 500 hard drive, then go to the screen Settings > System and press and hold the DOWN action button for three seconds. A button “Format HD” will appear. Use this button to format the AV 500’s hard drive. Remember, doing this will erase all the data on the AV 500’s hard drive!!!

Windows

• Quit all running applications.

• Properly connect the AV 500 to your computer as explained in the chapter Connecting/disconnecting the AV 500 to/from your PC .

• Make sure external AC adapter is powering the AV 500.

• Right click on the AV 500 hard drive in Windows

• Select the Tools option and run the Error checking program.

• Make sure you check the box to automatically ﬁ x errors .

ME Running Scan-Disk (Error Checking) – HARD DRIVE mode only

Explorer and select Properties.

Page 49

2 26

Technical Speciﬁ cations

ARCHOS

™

VIDEO AV 500 series

• Be patient, this may take a while.

Windows

If you still have problems with the ﬁ le system on your AV 500 you can try to ﬁ x it using the DOS utility, check disk (chkdsk). Do the following;

• Make sure external AC adapter is powering the AV 500.

• Quit all running applications.

• Properly connect the AV 500 to your computer as explained in chapter Connecting/disconnecting the AV 500 to/from your PC .

• Wait patiently (up to 5 minutes) for Windows XP to show the local drive as mounted.

• Open a DOS window. Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt.

• At the prompt, type chkdsk e: /f . Use e: or f: or whatever drive letter is representing your AV 500. The /f argument tells the program to automatically ﬁ x errors.

• Be patient, this may take a while.

• When ﬁ nished, exit the DOS Window and properly disconnect the AV 500 from your computer.

XP & 2000 Running Check Disk Utility (ChkDsk) – HARD DRIVE mode only

Technical Speciﬁ cations

ARCHOS

Storage Capacity See packaging for internal hard drive size

Display 4” LCD 480x272 pixels, 262 000 colors and TV output

Video recording MPEG-4 SP and stereo (ADPCM) sound, optimized resolution for TV.

Video playback MPEG-4 SP with B-Frames

Audio recording From an analog source in stereo sound for WAV (PCM & ADPCM) format.

Audio Playback Stereo MP3 decoding @ 30-320 kb/s CBR & VBR, WMA (including protected WMA ﬁ les), WAV (PCM

Photo viewer JPEG (not progressive jpegs) and BMP formats

AV Connections TV docking pod with video pass through, AV in & out cables (SCART In & Out for European version) and IR emitter

Television output Video output in PAL (EU) or NTSC (US) standard

Computer Interface High Speed USB 2.0 (compatible USB 1.1), PC and Mac

USB Host port compatible Mass Storage Device

Playback Autonomy* Up to 14/41 hours for music

(standard/extra size) Up to 5/14 hours for video on the built-in LCD.

Scalability Free Operating System updates downloadable from ARCHOS

Power source Rechargable Lithium-Ion battery

External: AC charger/adapter. Use ONLY the speciﬁ ed Archos adapter/charger supplied with this product.

™

VIDEO AV 500 series

720x576 @ 25 f/s (PAL), AVI ﬁ le format. WMV93 (including protected ﬁ les) up to 352x288 @ 30 f/s, and 800 KBit/s.

& ADPCM), PlaysForSure download and subscription.

jack. Earphones / Audio/Video line out.

with stereo sound. Near DVD quality up to 720x480 @ 30 f/s (NTSC),

™

website

Page 50

2 27

Legal

Physical Dimensions Approx.: 7.6 x 12.4 x 1.8/2.4/3.2cm - 3” x 4.9” x 0.7”/0.9”/1.2”

Temperature Range 5 °C to 35 °C running ; -20 °C to 45 °C storage

Minimum Requirements Computer conﬁ guration:

PC with Windows® ME, or 2000, and USB 2.0 port.

Macintosh® G3 with MAC OS v10.2.4 or higher, Macintosh® G3 and USB 2.0 port.

For Playsforsure™ content:

PC with Windows® XP SP1 or higher operating system, Windows Media® Player 10 or higher, and USB 2.0 port.

*Depending on usage (stop/start/writing)

(1) External video output disabled for Macrovision®-protected contents.

(2) DivX: has not been certiﬁ ed by DivX, Inc., may not read all DivX® 4.0& 5.0 ﬁ les; does not read Divx® 3.11 & 6.0 ﬁ les. MPEG-4: ISO standard by Moving Picture Experts Group ; AVI: audio/video ﬁ le container by Microsoft. MPEG-4 SP with B-frames AVI up to 704x480@30f/s NTSC or 720x576@25f/s PAL.

(3) Microsoft WMV9 SP up to 352x288@30f/s and 800 KBit/s ; supports WM DRM.

(4) Only cameras compatible with Mass Storage Class USB.

All brands and product names are registered trademarks and the property of their respective owners. Speciﬁ cations are subject to change without notice. Errors or omissions excepted. Images and illustrations may not always match contents. Copyright® 2005. ARCHOS. All rights reserved.

100

Legal

Warranty and Limited Liability

This product is sold with a limited warranty and speciﬁ c remedies are available to the original purchaser in the event the product fails to conform to the limited warranty. Manufacturer’s liability may be further limited in accordance with its sales contract.

In general, the manufacturer shall not be responsible for product damages caused by natural disasters, ﬁ re, static discharge, misuse, abuse, neglect, improper handling or installation, unauthorized repair, alteration or accident. In no event shall the manufacturer be liable for loss of data stored on disk media.

MANUFACTURER SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES. EVEN IF INFORMED OF THE POSSIBILITY THEREOF IN ADVANCE.

ARCHOS™ licensor(s) makes no warranties, express or implied, including, without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantability and ﬁ tness for a particular purpose, regarding the licensed materials. ARCHOS’s licensor(s) does not warrant, guarantee or make any representations regarding the use or the results of the use of the licensed materials in terms of its correctness, accuracy, reliability, correctness or otherwise. The entire risk as to the results and performance of the licensed materials is assumed by you. The exclusion of implied warranties is not permitted by some jurisdictions. The above exclusion may not apply to you.

In no event will ARCHOS’s licensor(s), and their directors, ofﬁ cers, employees or agents (collectively ARCHOS’ licensor) be liable to you for any consequential, incidental or indirect damages (including damages for loss of business proﬁ ts, business interruption, loss of business information, and the like) arising out of the use of inability to use the licensed materials even if ARCHOS’ licensor has been advised of the possibility of such damages. Because some jurisdiction do not allow the exclusion or limitation of liability for consequential or incidental damages, the above limitations may not apply to you.

Please see your sales contract for a complete statement of warranty rights, remedies and limitation of liability.

Furthermore, warranty does not apply to:

1. Damages or problems resulting from misuse, abuse, accident, alteration or incorrect electrical current or voltage.

2. Any product tampered-with or damaged warranty seal or serial number label.

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3. Any product without a warranty or serial number label.

4. Batteries and any consumable items delivered with or in the equipment.

Warnings and Safety Instructions

CAUTION

To prevent risks of electric shock, this unit must only be opened by qualiﬁ ed service personnel.

Power off and disconnect the power supply cable before opening the unit.

WARNING

To prevent ﬁ re or shock hazard, do not expose the unit to rain or moisture.

Use of this product is for personal use only. Copying CDs or loading music, video, or picture ﬁ les for sale or other business purposes is or may be a violation of copyright law. Copyrighted materials, works of art, and/or presentations may require authorization to be fully or partially recorded. Please be aware of all such applicable laws concerning the recording and use of such for your country and jurisdiction.

FCC Compliance Statement

FCC Compliance

This equipment has been tested and found to comply with limits for a Class B digital device, pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference in a residential installation. This equipment generates, uses and can radiate radio frequency energy and, if not installed and used in accordance with instructions, may cause harmful interference to radio communications. However, there is no guarantee that interference will not occur in a particular installation. If this equipment does cause harmful interference to radio or television reception, which can be determined by turning the equipment off and on, the user is encouraged to try to correct the interference by one or more of the following measures:

• Reorient or relocate the receiving antenna.

• Increase the separation between the equipment and receiver.

• Connect the equipment into an outlet on a circuit different from that to which the receiver is connected.

• Consult the dealer or an experienced radio/TV technician for help.

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CAUTION : Modiﬁ cations not authorized by the manufacturer may void users authority to operate this device.

FCC Part 15 – Operation is subject to the following two conditions:

1. This device may not cause harmful interference;

2. This device must accept any interference received including interference that may cause undesired operation.

Electrostatic Discharge

Note: During electrostatic discharge, the product may be malfunctioning. Reset to return normal operation. The AV 500 reset is actuated by pressing and holding the STOP/ESC button for 15 seconds. The unit will power off. Restart normally.

Avoiding Hearing Damage

This product respects the current regulations for limiting the output volume of consumer audio devices to a safe level. By listening to your device with headphones or earbuds at high volumes, you run the risk of permanent damage to your ears. Even if you get used to listening at high volumes and it seems normal to you, you still risk the possibility of damaging your hearing. Reduce the volume of your device to a reasonable level to avoid permanent hearing damage. If you hear ringing in your ears, reduce the volume or shut off your device. This device has been tested with the ARCHOS volume levels higher or lower than the ARCHOS™ delivered earphones.

™

supplied earphones. Other manufactures earphones may produces

This document may not, in whole or part, be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated or reduced to any electronic medium or machine-readable form without prior consent, in writing, from ARCHOS. All brands and products names are registered trademarks and the property of their respective owners. Speciﬁ cations are subject to change without notiﬁ cation. Errors and omissions accepted. Images and illustrations may not always match contents. Copyright

Disclaimer of warranty: to the extent allowed by applicable law, representations and warranties of noninfringement of copyrights or other intellectual property rights resulting from the use of the product under conditions other than as here above speciﬁ ed, are hereby excluded.

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Index

LCD Pixel Policy

The LCD screen on your ARCHOS quality viewing experience. Nevertheless, your LCD screen may have slight imperfections. This is not particular to the ARCHOS™ screen, but to all devices which have LCD screens regardless of the original manufacturer of the LCD. Each product vendor guarantees that his screen will contain no more than a certain number of defective pixels. Each screen pixel contains three dot elements (Red, Blue, and Green). One or all of the dots in a given pixel may be stuck on or stuck off. A single dot stuck off is the least noticeable. All three dots of a pixel stuck on is the most noticeable. ARCHOS (regardless if these pixels have one or more defective dots). This means that during the period of guarantee for your country or jurisdiction, if the screen on your product has three or more defective pixels, ARCHOS™ will repair or replace your AV 500 product at its cost. Thus, two or less defective pixels is not grounds for replacement or repair of the product.

Environmental Considerations

Protection of the environment is an important concern to ARCHOS actions, ARCHOS entire cycle of its products; from fabrication to consumer usage, to ﬁ nal disposal.

Batteries : If your product contains a detachable battery pack, you should only dispose of it in a designated collection point for used batteries.

The Product : The crossed-out garbage can symbol on your product signiﬁ es that it falls into the category of electric/electronic equipment. Products of this type contain substances that are potentially dangerous to the environment and to human health. Therefore, you should not dispose of the ARCHOS electronic device in a regular trash. As such, the current European directives ask that this device be collected:

- At places of distribution in the case of a purchase of a similar electronic product.

- At locally created disposal areas (waste disposal centers, sorted trash system, etc.)

By doing this, you are actively participating in the reuse and recycling of disposed electronic and electric equipment that could have potential effects on the environment and human health.

™

has consciously included a set of methods that favor a respect for the environment into the

™

AV 500 unit has been manufactured to rigorous standards to provide a high

™

guarantees that its AV 500 screen will have no more than 2 defective pixel

™

. In order to put this concern into tangible

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Index

Please note: This index refers to both the abridged USER GUIDE and the complete PDF user manual (this document). References to this PDF user manual are marked *.

Activating panel

MUSIC – Creating a Playlist 12.2*

BROWSER – Using the Browser 16* 8

ARCLibrary

MUSIC – Playing Music Files 10* 5

MUSIC – Browsing through your Music Library 10.3*

SETTINGS – System Settings 19.6* 11.2

ARCLibrary update

MUSIC – Browsing through your Music Library 10.3*

SETTINGS – System Settings 19.2*

Audio recording/editing

MUSIC – Recording Music – Audio Editing 13*,13.4*

Available disc space

SETTINGS – System Settings 19.6* 11.2

Background image (Wallpaper)

SETTINGS – Appearance Settings 19.4*

Battery autonomy and consumption

Connecting/Disconnecting the AV 500 to/from your PC 17* 9

SETTINGS – Power Settings 19.5*

Battery replacement 23*

Bookmarks

VIDEO – Playing Video Files – Set a bookmark 3.1*

MUSIC – Setting a Bookmark 10.5*

Buttons not working

MUSIC – Button Control 10.1* 5.1

Card readers

PHOTO – Transferring photos to your AV 15.3* 7.2

Codecs

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VIDEO – Installing the PC Software – MPEG-4 codec (compression/decompression) 9.1*

VIDEO – Installing the PC Software – MP3 Sound Codec 9.1*

Compression

VIDEO – Playing Video Files from the Internet 4*

VIDEO – Creating MPEG-4 Video Files with your Computer 9*

MUSIC – Putting Music onto your AV 500 11*

Connecting 2 USB devices

Connect Devices to the USB Host Port 18* 10

Date and time

SETTINGS – Clock Settings 19.3* 11.1

Default location

VIDEO – Where is the Recording Saved? 5.4*

MUSIC – Where is the Recording Saved? 13.3*

Delete Playlist

MUSIC – Playing a Playlist 12.1*

BROWSER – Using the Browser 16*

Delete section from video/audio ﬁ le

VIDEO – Editing Video Files 8*

MUSIC – Audio Editing 13.4*

Delete song from Playlist

MUSIC – Saving a Playlist 12.3*

Deleting ﬁ les

BROWSER – File and Folder Operations 16.2*

Deleting schedules recordings

VIDEO – Automated Yahoo!® TV Recording Scheduler 6*

Display

SETTINGS – Display settings 19.4*

Equalizer

SETTINGS – Sound Settings – Sound parameters 19.1*

External speaker off/on

VIDEO – Video Playback Action Icons – Built-in speakers 3.1*

SETTINGS – Sound Settings – Sound parameters 19.1*

File system

VIDEO – Manually Setting the Scheduler – Notes about setting the Scheduler 5.6*

BROWSER – Using the Browser 16* 8

Files: Locating a ﬁ le

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106

VIDEO – Where is the Recording Saved? 5.4*

MUSIC – Browsing through your Music Library 10.3*

MUSIC – Where is the Recording Saved? 13.3*

BROWSER - Navigating the directorey structure 16.1* 8.1

Files: Moving or copying ﬁ les

MUSIC – Transferring CD collection to the AV 11.3*

MUSIC – Using iTunes™ with your AV 500 14*

PHOTO – Transferring photos to your AV 500 15.3* 7.2

BROWSER – Using the Browser 16*

Connect Devices to the USB Host Port 18*

Files: Music deleted from your device

Synchronizing Music from Windows Media® Player to the AV 500 11.1* 6.1

Find a particular song (Scan)

MUSIC – Play Screen Icons 10.2*

SETTINGS – Play Mode Settings 19.2*

Foreign character sets

INTRO – First time usage – Foreign character sets 2.5*

Frame rates for video ﬁ les

VIDEO – Non Protected Internet Video Content 4.1*

Free disc space

SETTINGS – System Settings 19.6* 11.2

I–Frame

VIDEO – Editing Video Files 8*

Infrared emitter/receiver

VIDEO – Setting the Infrared Emitter Code 7*

Connecting the TV docking pod to your Television System – Connection 6: the infrared emitter 22.7*

Lock

MUSIC – Button Control 10.1* 5.1

MPEG-4 Translator

VIDEO – Creating MPEG-4 Video Files with your Computer 9*

Music Browser

MUSIC – Playing Music Files 10* 5

MUSIC – Browsing through your Music Library 10.3*

Music deleted/missing from your device

MUSIC – Synchronizing Music from Windows Media® Player (WMP) to the AV 500 11.1* 6.1

Music ﬁ les sorted by categories

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MUSIC – Playing Music Files 10* 5

MUSIC – Browsing through your Music Library 10.3*

Music lists (Playlists)

MUSIC – Playing Music Files 10*

MUSIC – Playlists 12*

New music not showing in the ARCLibrary

MUSIC – Browsing through your Music Library 10.3*

SETTINGS – System Settings 19.6*

New Playlist does not display

SETTINGS – System Settings 19.6*

NTSC

SETTINGS – Display Settings 19.4*

Operating system

SETTINGS – System Settings 19.6* 11.2

Updating the AV 500 Firmware/OS 20* 12

Operating system Version

SETTINGS – System Settings 19.6* 11.2

PAL

SETTINGS – Display Settings 19.4*

Play songs randomly (Shufﬂ e)

MUSIC – Play Screen Icons 10.2*

MUSIC – Saving a Playlist 12.3*

SETTINGS – Play Mode Settings 19.2*

Playing only certain songs (Playlists)

MUSIC – Playing Music Files 10*

MUSIC – Playlists 12*

Playing songs in a speciﬁ c order

MUSIC – Playing Music Files 10*

MUSIC – Playlists 12*

Playlists

MUSIC – Playing Music Files 10*

MUSIC – Playlists 12*

PlaysForSure

MUSIC – Putting Music onto your AV 500 11* 6

Programmed recordings

VIDEO – Manually Setting the Scheduler 5.6*

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VIDEO – Automated Yahoo!® TV Recording Scheduler 6*

VIDEO – Setting the Infrared Emitter Code 7*

Protected ﬁ les

VIDEO – Playing Video Files from the Internet 4*

VIDEO – Copy Protection 5.4*

MUSIC – Comparison of Windows Media Player 10 to Windows Media Player 9 11.2* 6.2

MUSIC – Using iTunes™ with your AV 500 14*

Recording from a Vinyl or audio tape

MUSIC – Recording Procedure – Incremental Recording 13.2*

Recordings result in several ﬁ les

VIDEO – Manually Setting the Scheduler – Notes about setting the Scheduler 5.6*

Remote control

Removing ﬁ les

BROWSER – Using the Browser 16*

Renaming ﬁ les or folders

BROWSER – Using the Browser 16*

Repeat a song

SETTINGS – Play Mode Settings 19.2*

Restarting your device

INTRO – Hardware Reset 2.7*

Ripping a CD

MUSIC – Transferring your CD collection to AV 11.3*

Screen format

VIDEO – Playing video ﬁ les :Set Screen format 3.1*

Show songs added to device

SETTINGS – System Settings 19.2*

Shufﬂ e

MUSIC – Play Screen Icons 10.2*

MUSIC – Saving a Playlist 12.3*

SETTINGS – Play Mode Settings 19.2*

Slideshow

PHOTO – Viewing photos – Viewing Slideshow 15.2*

Slow motion

VIDEO – Playing video ﬁ les : Slow motion 3.1*

Sound

VIDEO – Creating MPEG-4 Video Files with your Computer 9*

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21.1*

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109

MUSIC – Playing Music Files 10*

MUSIC – Playing Through your Stereo System 10.4*

MUSIC – Recording Procedure 13.2*

SETTINGS – Sound Settings – Sound parameters 19.1*

Speakers

VIDEO – Playing video ﬁ les: Built-in speakers 3.1*

MUSIC – Playing music ﬁ les – Playing through your Stereo System 10.4*