Michael Antonoff

Now that we never need to dismount from the barstool to drop quarters in the jukebox, it just seems wrong to call TouchTunes a mobile app. Pushing through a crowd to reach an illuminated cabinet required actual mobility, also called walking. But that was then. Today no one with a smartphone is budging. In the battle of the bulge, beer wins, waistline loses.

Palm-size jukeboxes that hold hundreds of hours of MP3 music on an embedded hard drive are no longer a novelty. Now Archos has taken the category to the next level by adding a 1 1/2-inch color LCD, the ability to store and play photo slideshows or highly compressed but full-motion video, and direct A/V output to a TV.

With time- and place-shifting now entitlements of our on-demand culture, it’s no surprise that cable companies have been countering cord-cutters by extending the viewing rights of subscribers to their phones and tablets.