The Best of Both Phone, and Tablet
Entered CNET Catalog: 12/08/2006
SKU: MX-760HD
Manufacturer: Mvix(USA), Inc
Product summary
The good: Excellent file format compatibility; DVI output to as high as 1080p; slot for internal hard drive; Ethernet and 802.11b/g wireless networking; two USB 2.0 ports; outputs full 5.1 DTS and Dolby soundtracks.
The bad: Hard drive enclosure is a very tight fit; user interface could be better; wireless performance is poor for video; no 802.11n; 480p, 720p, and 1080p modes have video-quality issues; image shifted to the left; no fast-forward/rewind on audio files; cannot play M3U, WPL, or ASX playlists; cannot save playlists; no HDMI; cannot handle files with DRM (including purchased iTunes and WMA-based subscription content); navigating large file libraries is cumbersome and unwieldy; no screensaver.
The bottom line: The Mvix MX-760 streaming media hard disk enclosure is absolutely jam-packed with features, but its varied assortment of quirks will probably limit its appeal to the enthusiast and DIY crowds.
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 02/09/2007
Setup
Next, you'll need to format the hard drive, and the manual has instructions for doing so. However, keep in mind that if you have a sizeable hard drive, this could takes a long time--hours rather than minutes. Still, we like the fact that the drive installation is left up to the user--you get a much better bang for your buck by buying a third-party drive, and you can always upgrade it to a larger capacity in the months and years ahead. On the other hand, the fact that Mvix went with the older IDE connection rather than the newer--and faster--Serial ATA format is a bit of a mystery.
Once you get that up and running, you'll probably want to configure it to connect to either your wired or wireless network. The directions in the manual look imposing for a wired network--we certainly didn't feel like installing network protocols from deep inside Windows XP's setup menus. Instead, we played dumb and just connected everything, and it worked without a hitch with our D-Link DI-624 router after setting the MX-760HD to look for the wired connection. Likewise, just following the onscreen prompts to log on to our Wi-Fi network worked fine as well. As far as home-networking chores go, it's pretty painless.
Before you set the Mvix MX-760HD in its permanent location, you'll also want to add files to the internal hard drive, if you're using one. This can be done only by using the USB connection to a computer. That's a significant annoyance that we ran into--we'd rather be able to transfer files to the hard drive using either the wired or wireless network connection, even if it proved slower. Mvix is promising a firmware upgrade to correct this, but like all promised firmware updates, we can't guarantee when or if it will actually happen.
Design
On the front of the player is a small LCD screen that can be used to navigate the player if the remote goes missing. Below that are a few status lights indicating which connections are active. Further down are some front-panel controls--including a navigation joystick--which do give you rudimentary control over the MX-760HD if the remote goes missing. However, the front-panel controls are pretty frustrating; when we pressed the joystick down once, it would randomly move the cursor down either one or two spaces. We were repeatedly skipping over the files we wanted and selecting the wrong ones when we got impatient. Just stick to the remote and you'll be fine.
The remote itself feels a little bit cheap, and the lack of button differentiation definitely makes it difficult to use by feel, but luckily it has none of the same issues the front-panel control has. If you're in a well-lit room, it works well enough but it's rough to navigate in the dark. We were frustrated by some button-placement issues, though. For instance, the Menu button is oft-used for DVDs, yet it's located very far from the main directional pad. As always, a nice universal remote will put this issue to rest.
Interface
When connected to a TV, you'll want to do your navigating via the onscreen interface using the remote. The interface itself is pretty utilitarian, but we've definitely seen worse. On the left hand, there's a navigation menu with five choices: movies, music, photo, mixed, and setup. Going into any of the media-specific categories will filter your digital files by type so that your video files won't show up when you're browsing your music files. Under mixed, all of your digital media files will show up, regardless of file type.
Making playlists is easy, although limited. If you're just looking to, say, put together a quick playlist for a party, you'll have no problem. Just highlight the song you want, click "add," and it will add it to your list. However, there's no ability to save playlists or the ability to change the order of songs once they're added. Not a problem if you're going to put it on random, but otherwise you'll need to select the files you want in order. There's also the Jukebox, which is basically a short-term playlist. Once the Jukebox mode is engaged, every time you select a file and press Enter, it will be added to the list of files that will be played. One major gripe we had with playing audio files is that fast-forward and rewind don't work.
Features
Digital video hounds will appreciate the long list of files that the Mvix MX-760HD supports. The high-def versions of the WMV, ASF, AVI, and MP4 formats each work fine. For standard-definition video, it supports DivX, Xvid, Mpeg, VCD, DVD (VOB, IFO, and ISO), WMV, ASF, TP, TS, and TRP files. We put it through our torture test of files, and it handled almost everything well, although we did notice it couldn't cope with any video file that used the increasingly popular H.264 (AVC) encoding format.
Audio file compatibility is solid as well. The MX-760HD can play MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG, WAV, and AC3 files. That's pretty extensive, but digital music buyers will notice that it doesn't support any type of DRM--that means tracks purchased on iTunes, Rhapsody, or Napster, for example, can't be played on the MX-760HD. The iTunes compatibility will have to wait for Apple TV, while Rhapsody fans should check out the excellent Sonos Digital Music System--although it can't handle video. Besides DRM'd files, there's a very noticeable omission of all types of playlist file formats. We made playlists using MSU, WPL, and ASX formats, and none of them worked. This is a significant drawback, so heavy playlist creators should probably steer clear. The only other file format we would have liked is FLAC, which offers lossless audio quality as well as a being a good way to back up your CDs. It also has the ability to play full DTS and Dolby soundtracks and output--via its digital audio outputs--full surround soundtracks.
There's also the ability to browse your photo collection. The MX-760HD supports BMP, JPEG, and PNG file formats. You can browse the files individually, or engage a slide show by pressing the play button. On slide shows, the interval between the images can be selected from between 3, 5, 10 and 20 seconds, and there's no problem playing music and displaying photos at the same time. But the MX-760HD cannot display progressive JPEGs, nor can it stream TIFF or GIF images.
On the audio front, both optical and coaxial digital audio outputs are present as well as a stereo analog output. Surround sound can be output via the digital audio outputs, and if you have an older receiver without digital audio inputs, the 760HD is capable of internally downconvertinging DTS and Dolby surround tracks for stereo output.
The MX-760HD is capable of being integrated with both wired and wireless networks, thanks to an Ethernet port and wireless 802.11b/g compatibility. It can handle both WEP and WPA encryption with the latest firmware, which is nice because you don't have to downgrade your wireless network's security just to stream media. For those craving more speed, a new model sporting 802.11n should released later this year.
In addition to networking connectivity, the 760HD's USB ports add an additional layer of flexibility to its design. Like most devices with a USB port, it can handle USB flash drives, but it can also go to the next level and connect to USB 2.0-compatible external hard drives or even a DVD player. Taken together, this means the MX-760HD could have a hard drive inside, be connected to both a DVD-player and an external hard drive via USB--and stream media off your PC. Wow. (We didn't test an external DVD player ourselves, but we've seen reports of this working on AVS Forum).
We did notice that the MX-760HD didn't have full aspect-ratio control. Many HDTVs, such as the Philips 42PF9831D, do not have aspect-ratio control when fed high-def sources, so it's nice to be able to control it at the source. This is not an issue for most high-quality video files, which are anamorphic, but nonanamorphic wide-screen files will look windowboxed--even if you use zoom mode on your TV. We did find a workaround to get it to fill the screen (see the Tips and Tricks section ), but it's not an ideal situation.
Performance
With network media players, performance is critical--nobody cares how many files formats a player supports if everything is in the wrong aspect ratio or its playback output is choppy.
Video performance over a wired Ethernet connection was pretty solid. We watched a wide range of video content--from 1080p high-def WMV files to DVD rips, and the vast majority of the time we experienced no networking hiccups. We can't say it was flawless--occasionally there would be a slight jerk in playback--but it was pretty darn good. If you're a cinephile that demands absolute perfection from your A/V gear, maybe it's not for you, but it happened so rarely--and it was so slight--we think most people would prefer the convenience.
Wireless performance was another story. We connected wirelessly to our D-Link DI-624 router and tried streaming a few HD WMV clips from a networked PC. Getting files to play off the PC was no problem, but the experience was marred by choppy playback. We weren't surprised--it's a stretch to expect an 802.11g connection to handle high-def video, especially in our crowded office Wi-Fi space. Next we tried to stream some ripped DVDs off the hard drive and got more of the same. This was more disappointing, since we had success streaming ripped DVD video content using the Acoustic Research Digital MediaBridge. However, an important caveat is that these devices were not tested in the same facilities and that difference could explain the difference in performance. Moving onto less bandwidth-intensive files, such as DivX movies and music--was much better, as we rarely experienced any hiccups.
Video quality from the Mvix MX-760HD was mostly good, but there are some important caveats. First off, in our tests we found that the output resolution that the 760HD is set to has a large effect on the video quality. For instance, we started our testing using the DVI output in 720p mode and ran it through Silicon Optix's HQV test suite. In 720p, the 760HD failed the vast majority of the HQV tests and performed like a cheap DVD player. Interestingly, however, playing actual DVD videos from the hard drive didn't look so bad in 720p--we looked at both King Kong and Pirates of the Caribbean and were mostly pleased. At first, we were confused by this behavior, but further investigation seemed to hint that there were issues with its ability to detect and properly handle video (rather than film) content. The MX-760HD seemed to process everything as film (24 frames per second) in 720p mode, which may be why it failed so many of the video-based tests (30fps) on HQV, and yet looked fine when we watched film-based DVD files.
The difficulties with video-based content could have been a dealbreaker, but luckily the same issues do not occur when the output resolution is set to 1080i. In 1080i, the HD760 handled HQV with much more finesse--it wasn't as good as the best upscaling DVD players that we've seen, but it was definitely no slouch. We moved on and tried both 1080p and 480p, but these resolutions were marred by the same problems as 720p. The bottom line is that it seems that no matter what resolution your TV is, you're probably better off leaving the MX-760HD in 1080i mode. Another nagging issue that we noticed is that the Mvix seemed to shift the entire picture slightly to the left, which often left a black bar on the right side of the screen. This means on wide-screen titles you'd actually lose some of the picture. It's annoying, but it doesn't make movies unwatchable.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24out of 24 user reviews
a good idea but arrogant tech support & cheap parts
Pros: A good Idea lots of Promiss and if it works a great unit
Cons: One word to start: Tech support - the most arrogant techies in the business..
build of cheap parts that will fail
Get the "Popcorn hour" media player instead it has great ratings and it works
for the same price range without the headache
Units are build of cheap parts had to replace several parts of my older player so i recommend if you fall in this companys trap that you know how to fix electronics replace cheap cooling fans and cheap connectors.
If you are dumb like me you buy a newer model from this Company and realize that it dosn't work they will mess you around and blame your computer and your audio and video files.
If there is a problem it will definitly be your fault, no joke i got one of these players for a friend same result and exactly the same problems.
this product line started out great but has lost all its charm long since.
Go with "Popcorn hour" media player instead it has great ratings and it works all for the same price
I just want you to be asured there is much better Options than wasting your money with this company
out of 24 user reviews
Don't Buy From Them
Pros: I liked the idea of it
Cons: Poor Customer Service, Parts of order missing from box (they would not recitfy). Their own rtech support could not get it to work/sync with my mac and then told me that you just might want to return it. Did not have a very user friendly menu system.
out of 24 user reviews
A company that knows customer Service
Pros: Extremely Responsive,
Great Support
Perfect Products
Cons: Let me go dig some.
out of 24 user reviews
Great unit if it does its job
Pros: Plays almost any kind of file on your tv or stereo awesome backup for your files. Works great and has a good interface and easy up dates. IF......If it works.
Cons: very rough on Hard drives, causeed by cheap plugs for the hdd connection.
If u have problems with your unit you are on your own. Customerservice isterrible.
The greatest Gadgets are worthless if the company doesen't stand behind their product
I believed in this company since they started.
But the players are very rough on hdd's since they don't seem to figure out that the power connection(the cheap power connector for the HDD) is the root of that problem.
And if you have a problem with it, their RMA department will mess you around until you just don't want to deal with it anymore. I send my unit In after i used it for two weeks. My brand new seagate hard drive had been burned and the unit stopped working. I paid for shipping again.
And received my unit back in a timely manner...but it wasn't working.
Theyr techi wanted me to try new wires and stuff. It took about ten email back and fourth before they believed me that it wasn't working Constantly insisting that they check them before they send them back.. So frustrating that i gave up on them until recently. When i send it and payd for sending it again with an RMA Number that they issued me a while ago they now tell me it is out of Warranty
Long story Short: If your unit breakes or just stopped working like in my case you will have to deal with a ton of attitude and frustration.
Once again a great product if you watch out for the power connect and pray it works fine. But if it doesn't your are screwed
my other 3 players work great only lost two harddrives in 4 years to them, caused again by the bad/cheap power connector.
The best surgeprotector is useless if this connection shorts out all the time.
I have been working with computers and peripherals since 1985 and have never encountered such incompetence and lack of customer care.
Specially for a multiple return Customer
out of 24 user reviews
Great idea, abysmal support. Others do it much better
Pros: you get an HDMI cable as a consolation
Cons: Unresponsive customer service, very poor quality. Refund guarantee includes the time they have it so if it does not work out of the box, get refunded immediately! Ship it back for repair and you loose all hope of a refund.
out of 24 user reviews
BeWarned dealing with MVIX - Pls Research Co background
Pros: None
Promises
Promises
Promises but no, never fixes
Cons: Wait
Wait
Wait
But no fix
Never
Never
Pls research, review what happend with 1st company, 2nd company and what may happen
out of 24 user reviews
No .264 support; hardware breakdown after 1 year.
Pros: Good form factor, quiet.
Cons: Needs more codec support, .264 especially. Ndas connectivity was spotty at best. While seeking on a large file - 1G+ - the device intermittently locked up. The worst part, 3 weeks after warranty expired, the hardware died and they didn't warranty.
out of 24 user reviews
Horrible...would NEVER consider an MVIX again.
Pros: The DVD playback was good.
Cons: Cost/Benefit. Noisy, slow and pathetic wireless networking.
It's slow, the packaging implies things that it just cannot deliver.
It's very expensive for what it can do, there are much less expensive solutions with more capabilities and more reliable.
The wireless network connectivity is very unreliable.
The only silver (tarnished as it is) is the DVD/ISO playback. Very nice job, too bad they didn't put more work in everything else about the device.
out of 24 user reviews
Doesn't even work.
Pros: The instructions are in english and korean.
Cons: So quirky it doesn't play vob files with the HD, wireless is horrible
"If people are buying them this much it's because of the price and the false promises, and then they sell it on ebay. Of course most of their sales are on ebay and they charge a 25% RESTOCKING fee if you return it. It can't even play files on the hard drive, let alone streaming from a networked drive! The GUI is horrible, it's a file explorer with a blue background. Luckily I bought it at local store for $255, and returned it the next day after spending five hours the first night trying to get it to play a video file over wireless, then it took 2-3 hours to transfer the DVD files via it's USB connection to the laptop. No FTP functionality at all. After waiting the 2-3 hours to transfer the files, I tried playing the movie, and guess what. Nothing. I tried for another 30 minutes to troubleshoot and didn't want to waste anymore time on this POS product, so I packaged it up and returned it. So they are making a lot of money for something that doesn't even work. Great job.
Since it's a product created in Korea, the US distributor has no control over any of its functions or firmware updates. From reading the online forums, they have been waiting for months, and the updates are few and far between with little or no tech support.
out of 24 user reviews
False advertising
Pros: HDD easy to install
Cons: Does not play AVI files at all. Butchers widescreen files on standard aspect display.
Also, when playing Divx or MPEG-2 files, the player will not properly "letterbox" a widescreen movie onto a standard aspect TV. Instead, it "stretches" the widescreen image to sort-of fit the screen. It's really quite bad. You can get good letterboxing by only one method: you must convert your file to a DVD ISO file. This is a lot of extra work, and takes away my reason for wanting this silly thing. If I knew it would be like this, I would have just bought a bigger hard drive to store my AVI files, and burned a bunch of DVDs. The whole point of this Mvix player was to play my MPEGs and AVIs as they are.
I won't be returning it, however, since Mvix USA assesses a 25% restocking fee on all returns. So, this company will make sure they get some money out of you whether you keep the product or not.
This device is not all bad, but it has serious limitations. In my opinion, this is only good for one purpose: DVD ISO files. For anything else, it is almost worthless. I am not a satisfied customer.
out of 24 user reviews
Best Purchase Ive made in a While
Pros: You name it. Immculately designed. Works flawlessly. Network Setup within minutes..etc. etc.
Cons: nothing much that I can think of... remote could use some help
out of 24 user reviews
Dejected/Disappointed/Filed with sorrow
Pros: None (Just Hype)
Cons: Nothing worked properly, setup was a pain,
out of 24 user reviews
this product will intigrate my home cinema and pc.
Pros: simple to set up
Cons: haven't found any yet
i have also been a keen photographer for 40 years.my wife bought me a computer 3/4 months ago,so now i'm scanning all my (1000s) of pics. onto the pc.all my movies & music onto h/drive so that i can send it all to my cinema set up.yippee.a dream i had 4 years ago has come true
i've done this @ 60 years of age so it must be easy
out of 24 user reviews
Disappointment
Pros: Plays many formats
Cons: Very Poor Support, Horrible Photo Quality
out of 24 user reviews
Almost perfect
Pros: Fast, reliable, easy to install
Cons: Wireless slow
I've long awaited for such a home media center, and was not easy to get it from the "far side of the world". But this is the player worth waited for.
We store all family pictures, home made videos about the kids and all my musics on this player. My family loves it, and my 2 years all daughter can easely select any cartoon to watch she likes ... (and it happens quite often
). The product is really nice and easy to handle, with the ndas feature it really turned to a media center. Its wireless part could be faster, but this is a speed I can live with Fantastic job,
thanks Mvix
out of 24 user reviews
The future of media hardware.
Pros: The best thing about the MX-760 is the firmware updates, whatever it doesnt do now it will after the next firmware update, now the drive is read-wirte over the wireless network!
Cons: user interface is lagging, wont play M4A, jutebox function dosent work with multiple files, HD doesnt stream wireless although it tries.
out of 24 user reviews
Good if you're reasonably tech saavy
Pros: Network storage, true 1080p HD output, really does function as a dvd jukebox
Cons: 802.11g too slow to be really useful, UI is klugey (it's definitely not a tivo)
out of 24 user reviews
Beats the Hell out of Apple TV
Pros: Plays almost any format you can throw at it and great customer support
Cons: could have a better system for attaching to LAN
out of 24 user reviews
Wow! a perfect device - Couldnt be happier
Pros: Large no. of format support, HDD customizable, Portable, NDAS
Cons: Just one color? White? Remote is from 60s
I regularly backup my DVDs... have over 500+ movies backed up on the internal Harddrive (750GB) of Mvix. Works flawlessly. The video playback of Hi-Def content is faultless. It has a true HD output 1920x1080P. Pretty much plays all my ripped DVD files, DVD ISOs, MP3 and WMVs. All my recorded TV Shows (MPEG) work brilliantly. I do not stream much content over wireless, but wired connection is quite stable.
THIS IS THE BEST PURCHASE YOU CAN MAKE AS A MOVIE FAN ! I am pretty happy with this little thing. We are taking it to on our trip to Italy next month.
out of 24 user reviews
Disappointing
Pros: Nice optics, good support, good manual, easy handling
Cons: Networking faulty, insufficient codec/fileformat support, no screensaver, inefficient GUI
RESUME:
The 760HD does not fulfill what probably most buyers are looking for. It has much room for improvement and will be a good device one day. Today though it is not ready yet and not worth the money.
MY GOALS:
My PC is in the office, my HD home theatre in the living room. My DVD shelf is getting overfilled. My private movies reside on a hard drive, so do my DVD backups. I wanted a device that can access a shared drive through a wireless network and play all common video and audio files in HD/5.1 quality. I wanted a comfortable GUI to do so.
EXPERIENCE IN A NUTSHELL
Networking did not work, important file formats/codes are not supported. The GUI is very uncomfortable.
WIRELESS NETWORKING
I use MAC security on my wireless router (Netgear WGR614 V6). After identifying the 760HD wireless MAC address I added it to the access list. Seemingly the 760HD retrieves an IP address but the wireless router does not show the device connected. When I switch MAC security off on the router, then the 760HD appears in the attached devices list. I cannot run my router without that security permanently. However, I left it like that for testing.
UNABLE TO ACCESS SHARED DRIVE
I have done all network configuration on my XP Pro SP2 computer as described. I installed IPX/SPX plus NETBEUI (Reminded me of the old Novell days. But who is using those protocols today anymore?), I granted access to the Guest account, I shared the drive and added 'Everyone' and 'Guest' to the permission list. All firewalls are off, the system is totally open but the 760HD does not see the shared drive. The shared drive is an external USB drive. I have also tried all combinations of the protocols (IPX/SPX only, NETBEUI only, both, etc) without success. Nearly nothing I did not try. I can only judge the network sharing capabilities of the 760HD as insufficient. A computer literate wouldn't even have gotten that far. I understand that the need to be OS independent but I suggested to Mvixusa to add Windows networking based on TCP/IP only to the 760HD features.
NO SUPPORT FOR MAJOR MEDIA FORMATS
After connecting my USB drive directly to the 760HD I experienced more disappointments. Most important for me was to get a device that can play large size HD video files. The most popular formats in that area are WMV and MKV. One WMV file I tested carries "Audio: Windows Media Audio 48000Hz 6ch 440Kbps [Raw Audio 0]" and "Video: WVC1 1280x688 23.98fps 5200Kbps [Raw Video 1]". 760HD produced a black screen, played no sound and could not be stopped nor switched off anymore. I had to pull the plug and reboot. The equally popular MKV container format (Matroska) is not even known to the 760HD. It could also not play the sound of an AVI file containing "Audio: Dolby AC3 48000Hz 5ch 448Kbps [01) [Audio #1]". Unbelievable that the 760HD can't handle M3U playlists.
PLAYING VOB FILES
Most of my DVD backups are copies from the originals, just containing the Audio_TS and Video_TS folders. Some of them the 760HD could not play. It just exited back to the file list. Some of the subsequent VOB files of a movie played, but with no sound.
UNCOMFORTABLE GUI
It is very unconvenient not to be able to play the Video_TS folder. Instead you have to select each of the seperate VOB files. Also in 16:9 mode only half of the screen is utilized for the menu. Wasted space on the left and right that could very well be used to avoid the scrolling through filenames (which is to slow too).If you have a list of MP3 file from one artist and you named them like [artist]-[album]-[year]-[nbr]-[title].mp3 you will spend ages until you find a certain title.
GOALS NOT MET
So all my goals were not met. I returned the device very disappointed and of course lost the shipping and restocking fee.
ONE MORE THING
Technically not so important but from a usability point of not understandable is the vertical design of the box. The 760HD is supposed to be placed right next or above your other home theatre devices. Does anyone know of a vertical DDV player or Receiver? The 760HD simply does not fit in the shelf vertically. If you place it horizontally you can't read the button labels and the display. Do you want it to look like an "alien" device standing upright on the floor next to your TV stand?
Hope this helps you making a better decision.
out of 24 user reviews
Disappointed but Hopeful
Pros: Sleak Design, Huge Media File Support, Nice collection of Connection Options
Cons: Network Feature Useless, Audio Jukebox Mode Terrible
From a hardware design perspective the device is outstanding. I was able to quickly install my media harddrive into the device and plug it into the TV within minutes. It booted up fairly quickly and I immediately went to start testing some media - that is where the disappointments began.
AUDIO PLAYBACK
I first went to play some music. The navigation system is clearly not advanced as newer handheld devices but my music library is structured nicely into hard drive folders so I didn't mind too much. Playing a single song or an entire album was easy to do. I started to wonder about queuing up music from various folders.
NOW PLAYING - JUKEBOX MODE???
I struggled to find some sort of "Add to Now Playing" capability to no avail. The user manual referenced a Jukebox mode and the remote had a "Jukebox" button that seemed to be what I was looking for but the device did not work as described. After contacting tech support I learned that their developers have no clue what a Jukebox actual is. My definition of a Jukebox is a device where you can queue up tracks on the fly. There definition of a Jukebox is a button that you have to press to get the PREV and NEXT buttons to work while listening to an ablum.
REMOTE CONTROL
Despite the remote control having dozens of buttons most specifically labelled with unambiguous behavior (e.g. PREV/NEXT/F FWD/F RWD/etc) - most of these buttons dont actually work while listening to music unless you put the device in "JUKEBOX" mode. This mode makes it impossible to actually navigate around the media files, it simply enables the PREV/NEXT buttons. Additionally the fast forward and rewind buttons still don't work in this mode for music files. I have the feeling this is because they try to have the small led and controls on the front of the device have most functionality exposed. This is a bad design choice because it renders a fully functionaly remote to only limited use.
VISUALATIONS/SCREEN SAVER
One would assume that while in this Jukebox mode (which makes it impossible to navigate around) they may consider some sort of visualization, cover art (if a jpg file were on the harddrive), or screen saver - but you would be wrong. It simply displays a small progress bar over the existing file listing maximizing burn-in potential for Plasma TV owners. The lack of even simple cover art is particularly confusing here given that you are able to navigate over to your pictures directories and display JPG files while the music is playing so the device is more than capable of showing a picture while playing music. Why can't their firmware developers just look for AlbumArt.jpg or something similar in the directory?
PLAYLIST ORDER
When playing an album there are two options for Sequential or Random. Early versions of the firmware on Random seemed to favor Track1 90% of the time and produced play orders like Track1, Track4, Track1, Track1, Track5, Track1, Track1, Track1, .... although it seems to have gotten slightly better with one of the firmware upgrades although, because the rest of the playlist functionality is so bad, I rarely actually use the device for listening to music.
VIDEO PLAYBACK
I next went to my video files and chose a DIVX video file as well as some DVD VOB files to test out playback. Things looked pretty promising on this front until I hit the fast forward button a few times... As I went to 2x and 4x fast foward things worked great - I hit 8x fast forward and the entire device locked up forcing me to reboot it. Early firmware upgrades focused on new closed caption formats and additional codecs which seemed like bad priorities given this major flaw. I have read the firmware upgrades. I have read in one of the firmware upgrades indicating they have just fixed this but I haven't tested yet.
NETWORK/WI-FI
Even despite my initial dislikes the reason I waited for this device was that I didn't want to have to have the device next to my computer or carry it back and forth to my computer to update my media files.
After accepting the few bugs in media playback I went into the wireless configuration options and set up a link to my LinkSys router. After a few minutes I was able to verify that the device was connected to the router and quickly tried to browse to the network harddrive from within Windows. It didn't work.
I then started to read the manual closer and was confused by the protocol/file sharing options that it was telling me to do. It finally dawned on me that all the instructions where for how to enable your PC to stream content to the MVIX device to play remotely. There was nothing about how to actually transfer media files on to the internal harddrive of the actual MVIX device. A terrible terrible feeling hit me at this point. My whole reason for waiting for this device and paying the extra hundreds of dollars was for the Wi-Fi connectivity. It had never even remotely crossed my mind that someone would create a network enabled harddrive device that wouldn't actually act as a network harddrive or FTP server.
I read the manual closely and examind the MVIXUSA website and noted that they never actually claimed to support maintaining media files over the network - you must use USB for this. When I contacted tech support they said that they hoped to get this into a firmware upgrade but it was not there now and they never claimed it was (and they didn't). But they clearly also downplayed the absense of such an obvious feature on their website.
There latest firmware upgrade appears to add additional Wi-Fi security options but does not address this shortcoming. This strange prioritization scheme was mirrored in the video issue above. They seem to place a much higher priority on adding to the list of protocols and codecs supported for the 10% over actually fixing or adding the features that 90% of their customers could benefit from.
SUMMARY
Despite all of the complaints above this is still a very nice piece of hardware with a lot of potential. Possibly the open source community will step in and really take advantage of this. The firmware clearly is geared more around watching video and seems to have tossed music and picture playback in without the proper thought. It would seem that if someone were actually focusing on the audio jukebox behavior it wouldn't take much time at all to create a nice interface with some basic cover art. I also fully expect that they will get some sort of network file update capability in the firmware soon otherwise this device simply will not sell as more people write reviews like this one.
There have been several upgrades to the firmware over the time since I originally wrote the review and finally after 6 months they have implemented network access to the internal harddrive that I hoped for in December. To use this it requires installation of a special NDAS software on your PC that mounts the device - the software works reasonably well and after a few days of working with it I have no major complaints. I would have preferred a native NetBios drive map to avoid the special installation of PC software but understand why they did what they did.
So one complaint addressed... but now that I am able to actually maintain my media library on the device remotely I find myself even more frustrated by audio playback shortcomings of this device originally listed in my review.
None of the items such as navigation, visualizations, playlists, remote control functionality etc have been addressed and I don't have any feeling that the firmware developers even care or have any intention of considering upgrading the audio playback experience.
It boggles my mind in the day of plasma TVs and burn-in that they haven't put some sort of visualization or screen saver mode in audio file playback mode. Ideally cover art pictures would be nice, but being able to specify a few image files to default in screen saver mode, or heck even a stupid bouncing MVIX logo with the name of the song on a black screen would be a huge step up to avoid burn-in.
So my net score of 4 may have bumped up to 4.5 but now with 6 full months to address the firmware I can't forgive all the other shortcomings and rate it higher. I still really wish they would release this one to the open source community and see what real progress would look like.
out of 24 user reviews
A good product that will get better.
Pros: Great video playback over component outputs. Can connect to external USB drives or network shares and play content directly from them. Source code is availble under the GNU public license recently.
Cons: No NDAS support (as yet). Remote is unresponsive a few times. DVI output which should be better than the component has issues. Hopefully firmware fixable.
The Mvix player seems to have been released with a firmware that was still in its infancy (V 0.2). At the time of the review by Cnet, the box lacks a few good features including WPA security and NDAS. Actually when the box was released, I don't think networking functionality was available as yet.
As I write this, WPA is now available through a firmware update as well as a promise for FTP server support for the player by the end of February. The player only has client side ability for networking. There is also the possibility that it will support MIMO pre-n draft wireless in later firmware releases.
The company also recently released the source code for the player under the GNU public license. This means it could become as good as the "Xbox media centre" type update but with the added benefit of playing High Def content. The current GUI is lacking but workable.
I have attached it to my Panasonic Th-50-ph9uk plasma and found the quality to be very good over the component outputs.It upscaled my DVDs (shared on my laptop) well over the wired connection. Pictures were mostly sharp and contrast ratio was very good.
I bought a DVI to HDMI cable to attach it to the same monitor only to be disappointed by the poor video output. I thought the HDMI card in my monitor may have been faulty. I have since plugged the player in to my Viewsonic 19 VX??? DVI monitor and it exhibited the same dark picture and pronounced artifacts.
I'm hoping that maybe the programmers, were testing it on the component connection and maybe DVI calibration was an oversight in the firmware. I expect the product to get more features, better stability and more popularity at the source code is tweaked by third party developers.
out of 24 user reviews
One of the better players out there...
Pros: There are tooo many thinks i like...just keep reading...
Cons: Would be nice to be able to transfer files wirelessly as well...
I felt that lot of the things on Cnet review were pretty INACCURATE… I have not hand any problems with the wireless. On the other hand, it has been better then expected…
I think that Cnet reviews are always overly biased to Apple products and that makes me doubt the accuracy of there reviews… + from what I know of Apple TV…it is very limited in the formats that you can play…just like ipods…
I think currently in the market this is the best product… and you can pretty much get any file format and play on this without going through the hassle of converting very thing…
(….
like Apple…)You can also attach an external drive or a USB (jump) drive... so you can quickly access the files from an external enclosure or something without having to transfer it to the Mvix internal drive...
A major plus when my friends come over with pics or movies on the flash drive...
out of 24 user reviews
Couldnt have been happier !
Pros: Excellent Video Playback Quality. Fantastic Customer Support
Cons: No HDMI support. Music playback need a tad bit more finesse
The unit comes complete with all cables, accessories etc. All I had to do was buy a HDD, pop it in and it was good to go. Manual is well written. Even my technically-challenged wife hasnt cribbed yet. There is something to be said about the excellent customer support of the folks behind this player. Contacted them 3 times and received responses within 12 hrs !!
Would be good to have this(SATA), this(HDMI) and that(FLAC)... but for now, I am very pleased with this beauty which stores over 450 movies for me. If only this could do some cooking ...
