- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 19 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"Disappointed but Hopeful"
Pros: Sleak Design, Huge Media File Support, Nice collection of Connection Options
Cons: Network Feature Useless, Audio Jukebox Mode Terrible
Summary: I had been eyeing the previous generation of MVIX boxes for quite some time. When I heard they were going to offer a network enabled version I decided to wait and then I ordered. Getting it so early I expected some glitches but even with those expectations I have been very disappointed.
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.Updated
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.
