Archos 5 Internet Tablet: It Has Android, We Have Details

Welcome to the interwebz – a place where one little bit of whispered information is soon reposted across the universe! When someone over at ArchosFans Forum found pictures/details of the Archos 5 Internet Tablet that was on sale at BHphotovideo.com, they asked, “Are these Androids?” They are… and then the whole internet peeked over his shoulder:

As you can see there are 4 different versions of the Archos Android Tablet and the difference is in the amount memory of memory and type of drive (Solid State Drive or HDD):

It seems that B&H has since taken the pricing information down which is usually a sign that yes… this is real, they made a boo boo and are trying to cover it up. But the damage has been done and now the September 15th Archos event is much less mysterious. The FCC gave us some hints but these pricing details are telling… and kind of expensive. Oh yeah – we’ve got some pictures too!

There is also an optional dock accesory for the device that bears the name “DVR Station” for the cost of $129.95:

The admin of ArchosFans speculated on what the DVR station could be/do and why it was $30 more expensive than past models:

The new DVR Station might have a brain, that would explain the $30 extra compared to the MSRP of the current Gen6 DVR Station version.

By brain in DVR Station (and I am speculating here!) I would mean:

– It could record TV by itself like a Tivo,
– It could come with only 8GB SSD built-in but could use extra storage by any SD cards, USB sticks or USB hard drives of its own.
– It could be used by itself on a HDTV, no Archos Internet Media Tablet needed
– It could be the perfect Video-on-demand box to have to watch Youtube and any other Internet video podcast comfortably in your sofa with a cool new Bluetooth remote control.
– It could create a WiFi-N hotspot and automatically beam new downloaded shows when your Tablet is close to it, or could synchronize new downloads even faster when the Tablet is Docked. (Popup could display on the Tablet “Your DVR Station has downloaded 6 new shows. [Synchronize now over WiFi] or [Wait to synchronize till I am docked]”. The DVR Station should support BitTorrent downloading and p2p live video streaming protocols once Android Native applications are made to add those functionalities.
– It could stream the TV Portation Slingbox-like feature finally to your Tablet wherever you are in the world
– It could add its own Digital TV Tuner, for a starter basic DVB-T digital terrestrial tuner built-in but perhaps also compatible to be a Cable/Satellite digital TV tuner with possible slight modifications eventually with Echostar for example
– With the Archos Tablet in place, it could perhaps record one channel while you watch another.

This is obviously ALL subject to speculation but it looks like the real deal. The prices however are likely only ballpark numbers since different retailers will be dealing with different markups/markdowns/mark-whatevers. We only have a couple weeks until the September 15th event so we won’t have to wait long for the whole shabang.

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