Argosy Unveils 'Infinite Capacity' PVR

The PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 aren't going to be the only consumer electronics kit with removable hard drives, at least not if Taiwanese developer Argosy Research has anything to say in the matter. At Computex 2005 in Taipei this week, it showed off an hard disk-based media player that can spit out its HDD ready for connection to a PC.


The Argosy HV 670, with removable hard drive

The HV670 contains a DVD drive capable of reading pretty much every type of recordable and rewriteable DVD out there, as well as regular DVDs, CDs, Video CDs. The unit supports the DivX format as well as MPEG 1 and 2, plus JPEG for stills, and MP3 and WAV for digital audio.

Argosy Research removable HDD media player

Argosy has built in Dolby Digital and DTS, and the unit's numerous RCA composite, YUV component and S-video outputs can drive PAL and NTSC displays at 4:3 and 16:9 ratios. There are digital audio S/PDIF co-ax and optical output ports too.

Alongside the centrally-mounted DVD unit is the HDD bay. What pops out looks like a typical external PC hard drive - the only difference is the presence of a proprietary connector on the back that hooks into the HV670. There's a mains power jack and a printer-style USB 2.0 port next to it, ready for when you want to hook it up to your PC to copy over video, photo and music content.

The system doesn't just make it easier to get content onto the player without having to disconnect it from the TV and take it to where your PC is, but also it allows you to maintain multiple hard drives giving you effectively infinite storage capacity. Argosy is offering drives of 160, 250 and 400GB capacities.

Argosy was pitching the HD670 at vendors who will bring the product to market under their own brand and set their own prices.

Story source: theregister.co.uk.