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- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 22 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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3 out of 4 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"Disappointing"
Pros: Nice optics, good support, good manual, easy handling
Cons: Networking faulty, insufficient codec/fileformat support, no screensaver, inefficient GUI
Summary: I do not want to repeat, but I second all statements made by Guenther93 (Disappointed but Hopeful). In addition I would like to add the following:
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.
- 1 reply to this review
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I too was unable to get networking to work with Windows XP or Samba under Linux. I added IPX protocol under WXP as suggested in the manual, did not try NETBEUI, but concluded getting it to work is not for the networking novice. So I was astounded that the CNET reviewer just plugged it in and it worked. Being able to use the internal HD as a networked drive would be nice, but isn't that big a deal to me. My main goal is to get video streaming from an always-on server, which at the moment for me are various computers and NAS's running various flavors of Linux (note: to push files onto the internal HD over the network a relatively cheap appliance like the Linksys NSLU2 over the USB interface should work, if the firmware upgrade never comes out and that's something you're determined to do). Also, playing and queing audio files is not that big a deal to me since my "Squeezebox" does all that and so much more just fine. I'm hoping I can get this turkey to do what I want eventually, and hopefully move the HTPC and its not insignificant noise to another room, but right now I have other priorities. I still enjoy DVD's, CD's and LP's, and this computer-based stuff is still very much in the realm of experiment for me.
