In today's edition, The Wall Street Journal talks about the Archos AV320 Video and MP3 Jukebox Recorder, an MP4 video player with music and digital photo support. It says that the AV320 " in effect does to movies what Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod does to music", and states that the Archos has sold over 100,000 units worldwide in the last six months.

Archos actually makes a complete line of these devices, collectively called the AV300 Series. In addition to the AV320 which has a 20 gigabyte hard disk and stores up to 40 hours of near DVD quality video, they also make the AV340 with 40-gigabyte capacity, and the AV380 with 80-gigabyte capacity.

I don't think these devices are iPod-like in terms of their industrial design, but, they make up for that with a fairly unique feature set. Each AV300 device has a 3.8 inch color LCD display. They allow you to download video or audio from your PC or Macintosh via either USB 2.0 or Firewire. They accept a Digital Video Recorder add-on that allows you to record content directly from most televisions. Archos is a French company, so, compatibility with video standards other than NTSC is assured. The AV300s can also be used as an external hard drive or a storage medium for digital camera photos, in the same fashion as the iPod.

The Wall Street Journal's article talks about the fact that the full contents of DVDs can be transfered to AV300-series devices. Presumably this is done using the Digital Video Recorder add-on. Once the DVD content is on an Archos device, the content can be copied off to a PC or Macintosh. The article suggests that this makes these devices a small threat to the entertainment industry because such a procedure circumvents the Digital Rights Management features of commercially-produced DVDs. That's a fair point, although they go on to point out that doing this would be time consuming, and there are more direct methods that someone bent on piracy could use.

The AV300-series has had a small impact on the U.S. market so far. But, with an annual worldwide sales rate of at least 200,000 units, you, Operation Gadget reader, or one of your friends is likely to bring one home soon.