Hdx Bd1 Media Player

Transcript

2010 HDX BD1 media player “a progression of the award winning HDX 1000” The HDX BD-1 has been anticipated for quite some time now. It is seen as a progression from the award winning HDX 1000. With HDX being a mature contender in the media player market, have they used their experience and maturity to pull off another award winner? Or is the black guise of the player hiding an immature heart? Advocate86 www.mpcclub.com Mpcclub.blogspot.com 3/4/2010 Contact MPC: Press: [email protected] Legal: [email protected] Owner: [email protected] Reviewer: [email protected] Introduction HDX have finally brought to the market their anticipated new HDX BD-1 Full 1080p media player. It is seen as the natural progression from the HDX 1000 but with a bit more brawn and the capability of playing Blu-ray discs from an external USB/ESATA Blu-ray player. HDX the brand is manufactured by HD Digitech and marketed by its subsidiary HD Digital Technology. The brand has had two previous models the HDX900 and 1000. HDX broke the mould back in 2008 by adopting a complete aluminium chassis and have continued the trend ever since. The current player BD-1 is certainly a refinement on the HDX 900 and is a reduction in size over the HDX 1000. Both of the previous models used the NMT firmware from Syabas based on Sigma SDK but HDX have now opted to develop their own firmware and user interface (UI), they call it the HDX Voir. We put the BD-1 through our usual set of tests and also check out its BD playback capabilities. backlit remote, which is a bonus for those dark home cinema rooms. The design of the HDX has come of age. The Front Fascia The BD-1 is based on the Sigma SMP8642 chip running at 667MHz. It has a 1GB internal flash drive on board for BD functions, and claims to be Gigabit compliant. In fact, Sigma does not support gigabit drivers and with that comes the experimental stage which all players are struggling with. They appear to get it to work but fail in general. The BD-1 arrived in a black outer carton which is reminiscent of the HDX 1000 packaging. Nothing on the packaging describes what the player is capable of and moves away from the usual media player multiple logo, full colour packaging which we usually find from the Far East. “Minimalist”, not a button in sight. The fascia is how it is supposed to be What can be said about the front fascia? “Minimalist” - not a button in sight. The fascia is how it is supposed to be, no need for a VFD or an abundance of logos describing what the player is capable of doing, just black brushed aluminium with the HDX logo on the left and a 30mm oblong IR window to the right. The IR window glows red when the player is in standby mode and a cool blue when running. Nice design and nice execution The Rear Panel The rear panel is well laid out and the only port missing that I believe HDX should have included is a USB SLAVE port which would have aided in copying files to an internal HDD. The HDX BD-1 Player The player chassis is aluminium and its sleek exterior has a brushed aluminium texture and is a slick matt black. Its dimensions are smaller than the HDX 1000 and measure Width x Depth x Height: 170mm x160mm x 50mm. The unit weighs 1kg and feels of a solid construction. Gone is the look and feel of a Tandy/RadioShack player, this player now deserves to be nestled amongst your media giants like Sony or Panasonic home entertainment systems. Certainly from initial impressions it looks like HD Digitech have put some thought and effort into the design of the player from its chassis, side sliding internal HDD bay cover, to its well designed colour coordinated a file, folder or BD-rom disc so the HDMI cable should suffice. The HDMI cable appears to be of a decent standard. In the box are the following:  HDX BD-1 Player  Power adapter  Power lead  HDMI cable  Remote control  Manual Contents of the packaging appear a bit sparse but what else is really needed? The player is after all targeted at Blu-Ray playback whether that is from As can be seen from the image, all of the usual suspects are there, from left to right:          DC Power 10/100/1000 Ethernet 2 x USB HOST ESATA HDMI 1.3 Composite AV Component Video Digital Coaxial Digital SPDIF All the ports are well spaced out and I had no issues connecting any of the I/O cables in the ports when the backplane was fully populated. The Internal HDD side panel As mentioned earlier I believe HDX have taken some time out to design the side panel for the internal HDD loading bay. Not a screw in sight, you simply just push the panel to the right, load the SATA 3.5“drive into its bay, attach the cables and slide back the door. things may become a bit toastie after an hour of running. The construction of the player is to a high standard and HDX’s minimalist approach works extremely well. The side loading HDD drive bay has been well designed and engineered and allows you to be up and running with an internal HDD within minutes. Two thumbs up for HDX they have designed a winner from a hardware perspective. Test Setup. The test setup is as follows: HDX BD-1 plugged into my Onkyo 906 receiver via HDMI. From here it is outputted to: 1.Full 1080p Projector and 2.Pioneer 508D Panel. Media is fed via my Gigabit LAN connected to a Windows 2003 fileserver and a Promise NS4600 NAS and a Raidsonic NAS3221-b. Sound outputted via HDMI from the Onkyo receiver into a 7.1 Q-Acoustics 2000 speakers setup. Power on and Graphical User Interface The boot time for the BD-1 was approximately thirty two seconds which is reasonable. Once booted, you are presented with the HDX Voir menu and the initial UI is a set of six horizontal icons. BD-rom and DVD selection Offering access to an external BD/DVD-rom player Internal HDD access From here you can browse any files that you may have stored on an internal HDD Network access Access NFS, Samba and UPnP shares on your LAN USB drive access Access files from an external USB HDD or stick. Player Settings Configure the player from five sub menus Internet Access on-line options, but currently only allows access to a web browser. First up is to configure the player and set a static IP address from the network submenu. The HDD is secured by three metal prongs that stick up from the base of the HDD shelf and hold the HDD quite firmly in place. The Player Conclusion I like the design of the BD-1 a lot. HDX have not try to overstate the player and by doing so have achieved a balance between design and functionality. The player is fanless so zero dB when operating except for the internal hard drive and I suspect that when an internal HDD is loaded As with the hardware design HDX have adopted a simple UI with the minimum of menus which are represented by icons. From Left to right the menus are as follows: On entering the Settings menu there are five submenus with icon and text descriptions. The icons run vertical down the left hand side of the window. Audio is the first sub-menu. Not much to choose from, simple and to the point. I chose to have HDMI bypass which basically allows my external receiver to do the decoding of the HD sound. Next up is the Video sub-menu. An item to note within this sub-menu is the “Play mode” options. General: allows normal folder style browsing of your media. Intelligent Play: Automatically detects any mpls files and allows intelligent playback of multiple .m2ts files within a single folder, as within the stream folder of a BDMV dump parent folder. Finally BD Navi: Allows navigation of BD-rom discs and BD dumps with proper menus. System is the next sub-menu From here you set the players default menu and subtitle language. You can also set how you want your photo albums displayed, either by single file, multiple or as a slide show. The amount of time each photo is displayed is also set from within this sub-menu. As can be seen from the screenshot there are not many options for slideshows or transition effects during the showing of your nearest and dearest photos. Maybe HDX are of the same opinion as me, why bore someone to death with your holiday snaps, when all your audience really want to do is watch the latest blockbuster. Network is the fourth sub-menu. Two choices in here, Dynamic or Static, I tend to always set a static IP address for my media players, essential when working with NFS. And finally a sub-menu that we will all know very well over the coming months and is essential to this player’s survival (more on this later). Firmware: This sub-menu will allow you to check the version of firmware that your player is currently running and also allow upgrading to the latest and greatest which HDX supply over the lifetime of this player. I upgraded to the latest firmware 9.2.1.4.9.0 which was an easy process and worked flawlessly. The UI and Setup Conclusion HDX appear to have opted for simplistic and minimal configuration settings. Advanced users will probably find this restrictive, but for novice users and family members who are not so adept with AV terminology it works. I am a little concerned however on the lack of certain configuration options that I would have expected to see. Audio: I would like to have seen a choice of Bitstream or PCM options for the Digital output, it is far too simplistic to have either internal decoding or bypass to the receiver which in effect is all that is offered. Network: Some form of Wireless option would have been nice. Also the choice of what network protocols you wish to have running, i.e. NFS, Samba or UPnP, and a way of setting a username and password for the protocols would be good. Additionally, how the hell do you set the FTP settings like username/password, ftp port etc? Another configuration item that is definitely missing is HDD format. How do you format a freshly installed virgin HDD? Yes, I know how to do it, but do you? First thing you would try is reading the manual but there is nothing in there, next line of thought would be the System setting menu of the Player, NOPE nothing in there either, see what I mean. After trawling the net I finally found how to do it on a forum. After installing your internal HDD you have to re-flash your player’s firmware which will in the process format and create three directories on your HDD, or you could format your new drive with NTFS before installing it into your media player, but you need to copy any files you want to the HDD after and before installing as once installed you won’t be able to write to a NTFS formatted HDD (read only). Please check out our video footage of the BD-1 menus and UI at the link below: http://www.youtube.com/user/mpcclub?feat ure=mhw4#p/a/u/0/1ufhocMVg0AVideo Playback First up in our tests was the BD dump of “The International”. This was being streamed from the network via NFS from my NAS Raidsonic 3221-b. Browning your network shares is done via the Network icon on the home screen. Upon entering the Network menu, you are presented with three sections: NFS, Samba and UPnP. Get all that? Sort it out HDX, a nice simple HDD format menu would be nice. As much as I love the minimalistic menus of the HDX Voir, I believe they should have an Advanced option within the Settings menu which would open the player for more experienced users. This is something that HDX can develop over time but certainly the HDD format option needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. To summarise, a nice simple user interface which works well for the novice user base especially for non AV aware users, but more experienced users will find it a little too simplistic for their needs. Choosing NFS takes you to another screen which lists the NFS servers found by the player. In my case there were two, which are both the NAS shares. Only a single thumb up for HDX on the UI but a positive thumb and could easily be two thumbs up with more work to the UI and a little more thought. Well onto the section that means the most, how does the HDX BD-1 perform playing the media that we love best, High Definition, and some standard def just for good measure. I selected the first NAS listed and it allowed me to browse the files presented by the NAS. I then tried to load the BD-ISO of The International. The player displayed a screen with the words ‘Loading Disc’ and that’s it. I tried to exit from the screen but the player was unresponsive, believing that it was loading the BD-ISO image I left the player for over 3 minutes. After three minutes I again tried to exit the screen but still no response. At this stage I rebooted the player. “this was not looking good for the HDX BD-1, streaming is a fundamental part of the basics for a media player.” I re-tried the process again from the same NAS but different BD-ISO, guess what? YEP, same issue. Not to be perturbed and always the optimist I tried a BDMV folder, an MKV and even a lowly SD AVI file . YEP, no joy. I then tried the other NAS my NS4600, unfortunately streaming from this NAS would not get as far as allowing me to browse its contents. Believing that there may be an issue with the player and NAS units, I setup a NFS server on my Windows 2003 file server, but still the same, so definitely a protocol or driver issue. With NFS failing, I then tried SAMBA. On entering the Samba selection screen from the Home screen I could only see two servers, my Windows 2003 files server and the NAS 3221-b. The NS4600 was not detected even though it was being displayed on the other two media players that I have dotted around my house. The feeling of dejavu was all too familiar when I tried to play anything from the shares, one MKV did manage to load but soon froze after only seconds of playback, this was not looking good for the HDX BD-1, streaming is a fundamental part of the basics for a media player. subtleties between texture and detail especially in close-ups of the human face against clothing. The MKV loaded instantly and using the time seek function I was soon surrounded by the sound of explosions and buildings crashing around my ears. HDX promote UPnP as one of the strengths of the BD-1, I was hoping that this protocol would be HDX’s saving grace. The player picked up both UPnP servers running on the LAN. The first is Twonky which runs on the Windows 2003 file server and the second is the NAS NS4600. I browsed the NAS UPnP server, and decided to test ‘The International’ which had failed during the NFS and Samba tests. The player was able to see the directory, but did not recognise the BD-ISO format. I tested a number of other BD-ISO movies but unfortunately at present the UPnP protocol does not recognise BD-ISO, this is a known issue of UPnP protocol which most media players if not all suffer from. Failing the last test I decided to run another test before I write of network streaming entirely. I browsed to the location of my BD dump for ‘Law Abiding Citizen’. I browsed to the STREAM directory and manually chose the .m2ts file to start the playback. To my surprise it played! The ‘Law Abiding Citizen’ movie is quite a visually stale looking movie, but it does have very good detail and exposes if a player can handle the ability to deal with fast action sequences without lag, stutter, blocking or jaggies. The movie also has some very good and detailed blacks throughout and the detail is astonishing. “The tonal variations was very good and the TrueHD lossless soundtrack a very good clarity.” I could see no issues at all with the detail and if anything the image was a sharp as if I was playing the BD-rom from my Sony Blu-ray player. The tonal variations were very good and the TrueHD lossless soundtrack had excellent clarity. I tried changing the subtitles during playback which worked ok; however there was no menu only a small description bar appeared in the top left hand corner of the screen, a list of available subtitles was not presented. I had to keep pressing the subtitle button to move to the next available subtitle. This was also the case for the embedded available soundtracks; the player was able to change between the embedded language and quality tracks that were available. Time seek, even the zoom feature did not work.  The player at this stage could not offer any BD functionality and only offered the basics that you would expect when playing an MKV or AVI file. Writing BD functionality out of the equation whilst streaming, I went on to test the player’s ability to play MKV’s 1080p and 720p. The movie of choice for this was the 1080p version of ‘2012’. The movie itself is a pile of pants (just my opinion Ed.) but it does have some excellent action sequences that invariably expose a player’s Right from the get-go I was impressed by the detail of the playback, as with L.A.C the player boasted its detail reproduction. The action scenes were almost fluid and without blocking, the blacks were detailed and deep in richness. But, and as I always say – ‘There is always a BUT’ – during the action sequences I did encounter slight stuttering. I believe the stuttering was down to network issues again and went onto later prove it by copying the MKV to an internal HDD and playing the same scene again. Next up I tested a standard definition AVI to ascertain what the upscaling abilities were of the player. As usual I delved into my compilation of Sci-Fi classics. If anything needs upscaling it’s certainly some of those classics. however, when you used the FFW and then pressed PLAY there would be a three second pause before the movie would play. I also tested Divx and WMV files they all played fine; a couple of the WMV files were 720p which the player had no issues in playing. I chose one of my favourites’ which is in glorious Technicolor. I did not bother to test DVD-ISO files which the player does not recognise at present due to the limitations of UPnP. Hopefully the issues around .ISO playback whether they are BD or DVD will be resolved once HDX sort out the NFS and Samba protocol problems. This is the main reason for the failing playback in my opinion and confirms, HDX BD-1 firmware is just not ready. Movie Playback Options Besides the cheesy acting, state of the art CGI and classic costume design, the AVI upscaled extremely well. The colours were vivid (but that could be down to the ‘Glorious Technicolor’) but there was definitely a marked improvement on the picture quality. Wander if I can get myself one of those hats? The AVI files played flawlessly and I tried a few more which had an increased bitrate and FPS, I could see no blocking or stutters. I did notice I tested the subtitling options with a MKV file. The test that I ran was to ascetain whether the player could utlise external subs as well as embedded ones at the same time. The movie I tested this with was ‘Duplicity’. The MKV has embedded English subs and I dumped a portuguese .SRT file in the same directory. “long list of fixes before streaming using this player becomes viable.” Running the movie streamed via UPnP the .SRT file was not recognised only the embedded English sub. Now before you start writing in stating that UPnP does not support external subs, in some instances it does.  The fast forward worked well and the speed was smooth at 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x which is unusual as most players I have tested so far, once above 4X the picture skips forward rather than FFWD in a smooth action. RRW however did not work on any of the formats. The Zoom option within movies did not work which I believe may be an oversight by HDX in their haste to bring this player to the market. The GoTo function known as ‘Time Seek’ worked OK and offered Time and Chapter search. There was another method to FFW/RW or jump to a time and that was by pressing the right or left arrow key on the circular centre keypad of the remote. This would bring up a time bar which you could forward to a time stamp within the movie. I proceeded to test the subtitling option of the player. As described earlier the BD functionality was zero due to NFS and Samba not working properly and the limitations of UPnP when playing a BD dump. You were however able to choose between subtitles and soundtracks, the player just did not present a menu list for these options. Dropping the movie and file onto the internal HDD though allowed the player to recognise the .SRT file and I was able to choose between English, Portuguese (SRT) or none. Notch up another one for the fix list on what is becoming a long list of fixes before streaming using this player becomes viable. Subtitle options were also very limited, I could see no way of increasing the size, colour or position of of the subtitles. These days this has become the standard on most players. Testing via Internal HDD I decided to run all of the tests again but this time via the internal HDD that I had fitted. I intially attempted to utilise the players copying option. However due to the network issues with the player and the fact that it took over 40 minutes to copy a six gigabyte MKV from my NAS to the player, I decided not to. Instead extracted the HDD from the player and transferred the files via my USB SATA HDD dock. Once all the files were loaded and the drive placed back into the player I was good to go. Once Info was pressed I was also able to choose subtitles via a menu. I went back to the BD-ISO file that I had tried via streaming, ‘The International’. This time round the BD-ISO was recognised by the player and it played flawlessly with BD-Lite functionality. I also retried the 2012 MKV which showed some stuttering on one of the fast action scenes, this time round there were none, it all flowed smoothly. What a difference it made! What can be said about this player’s playback? It is a bit of a bitter/sweet fiasco. I say fiasco because it need not have been if HDX had not rushed the player to market without properly testing and developing the main ingredient ‘Streaming’. The Sweet Part: YES it plays fine if not impressively from the internal HDD. It was able to demonstrate BD-Lite functionality and the action scenes flowed effortlessly with impressive detail and richness of colours. Even in the very limited streaming that I was able to achieve the player showed that it has the beef to compete with the best on reproduction of picture and sound. The Bitter: But it needs to be able to do that using the network. A good majority of consumers these days have file stores external to where they are viewing their movie from. Be that on a NAS or a After switching back the play mode from Intelligent Play to BD Navi, I was able to start the BDMV dumps directly by simply pressing enter on the remote. After the movie started I could utilise BD Chaptering either by simply pressing ‘Next’ or by pressing the ‘Info’ button on the remote. Movie Playback Conclusion fileserver they need to be able to stream from them. At the minimum I would expect a player to have Samba or NFS functionality before being shipped to market, these two protocols are the main ones used by the consumer base. A lot of fileservers and some NAS devices don’t have UPnP functionality; it is not enough to state that it’s OK because our player works well with UPnP. Even the UPnP protocol was not executed well and had issues. It suffered from stuttering when being hard pressed in action scenes at a decent frame rate and had issues detecting external subtitles even though in internal HDD mode the player recognised them. What limited Samba support it offered was buggy at best and that’s when it could detect the Samba shares on the network. NFS was a non-starter and I cannot see why HDX even bothered mentioning it or applying it at this stage. Tut-tut HDX for displaying the naivety of a new comer even though you are an experienced manufacturer to the media player market. It is hard to believe that your previous player the HDX 1000 won several awards, one even from MPC’s own editor and that is saying something! Audio Music Playback Music playback has never been a strength of most media players on the market at present. They have always suffered from lack lustre interfaces or limited functionality. The HDX BD-1 is no exception in fact it suffers from both weaknesses. The interface for music playback is drab and needs to be redesigned and some life breathed into it. It is bland and uninspiring and does not utilise the power of the on-board processor at all. It is hard to understand how HDX have got the music interface so wrong after creating an inspiring Home screen Interface which is slick and interactive. Again I believe HDX has rushed this part of the UI. Music Playback Conclusion A total re-design needs to be done in this section. The bland uninspiring background has to go and the player needs to have more functionality. The user must be able to view the track list whilst playing a track without going back a screen. HDX go out and buy a pack of crayons and get creative with the player, I know you guys are capable of this and more. See what I mean? A different track can only be selected by pressing the ‘Next’ button on the remote. “HDX go out and buy a pack of crayons and get creative with the player, I know you guys are capable of this.” There is no option to list the tracks from the album or play list that you have loaded, besides stopping and returning to the previous screen. Only then can you see the tracks within the playlist or album. At this stage there is no album art allowed which is usual and only a handful of players have come to market having this functionality upfront. It is something that HDX have on their wish list, but they may also want to add a total re-design of the interface. I was able to play .mp3, .wma, .ogg and APE tracks which is good and should suffice most consumers. Photo Playback Photo playback is very basic and offers nothing to inspire you to show your favourite pictures using it. The Zoom facility is totally wrong and instead of allowing the user to zoom in on a particular part of a photo, it offers the complete reverse. The maximum Zoom is 100% but you can however zoom out…..YES you read it right ….zoom out of a photo in 10% increments. Why you would want to do this only HDX can explain. Go figure. For some unknown reason the 90% zoom does not work, but that’s neither here or there. HDX need to go back to the drawing board with this section and sort out the zoom function. They also need to develop the slideshow functionality to include some transition effects and allow music playback at the same time. The image detail was good however and the colours were outstanding. Load time on the images was near instantaneous even on some of the larger image files that I keep to test with. Any rotation? Next to the transition effects, we usually recommend adding some form of background music for slideshows as well if not there... Photo Playback Conclusion HDX have got the Zoom function totally wrong and need to redevelop this again. The Zoom facility is supposed to allow a person to zoom in on part of a picture from 100% up to 400% or so. Again I believe very little thought has gone into this area in HDX’s haste to bring the player to market and it’s a shame because it lets the player’s hardware down badly. Miscellaneous As mentioned at the start of this review the player is capable of playing back Blu-Ray and DVD discs from an external player. They can be attached by either ESATA or USB. Unfortunately I was unable to test this aspect of the player as the external Bluray player that I ordered to test with had not arrived at the time of writing. I will however update this review with my findings once the player arrives. So check back if this aspect interests you. HDX currently do have a wish list on the websites forum, I prefer to call it a fix list. Outstanding Features to be added： 1) BD-rom compatible list 2) Manual IP input for share drive, supporting SAMBA and NFS. With username and password field. 3) Hard drive installation wizard with support for BT transmission and Usenet Input 4) Localized language GUI and filename support 5) Auto framerate 6) Wireless support through USB Adapter (TPLink WN821N) 7) YAMJ or otther similar jukebox support 8) Internet Content delivery 9) Improve network streaming capability 10) Automatic frame rate detection When a consumer purchases a player in the price gap that the HDX BD-1 resides they expect to take it home, hook it up to their network, AV devices and play their favourite flick. Why should they have to go out and purchase an internal HDD or external USB HDD to be able to utilise the player? Why should they have to accept poor network performance from the only protocol that works out of the three listed? Why should they have to wait months for a firmware update to fix the issues that should have been working perfectly before the player was released to market? A few I would like to add are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. NFS fix Samba fix UPnP fix for network performance UPnP fix for recognising .ISO format UPnP external subtitle detection issue File copy fix, speed issues No zoom functionality while in movie playback 8. Revamp music player 9. Fix zoom option in photo playback 10. Fix RRW issue during movie playback I will stop at ten as I feel this is more than enough to get on with. The answer is as plain and simple, “They Shouldn’t!” Remote Control Conclusion The remote control is coloured coded with the player in black. As mentioned earlier the HDX BD-1 is a bitter/sweet affair and this saddens me as the player has so much potential. The beauty of the remote is that it is backlit which works really well in a darkened room. The backlit colour is a brilliant white and is uniform in its intensity across the entire remote. If you have owned a HDX previously you will be familiar with the feel of the remote. Ergonomically the remote feels good in the hand. All buttons are nicely spaced out and of a decent size. Thumbs up for HDX in adopting a backlit remote which more manufacturers should supply as a matter of course. It appears that HDX have fell into the old trap of rushing the player to market to compete with the competition without fully developing the core of the player, its firmware. In the current market place it is no longer acceptable to state that these issues can be sorted out in future firmware releases. A consumer expects a player to have the basics to be able to playback their media stored on external sources be that Network, USB or BD/DVD rom drives. I am sorely disappointed that HDX have released the player when it has so many issues with network streaming, it almost renders the player useless. Due to the amount of issues with the firmware in its current state and the sheer fact that you cannot comfortably stream using the player, I cannot recommend that the player with its current buggy and immature firmware is fit for purpose. Trust me when I say that it really saddens me when I have to recommend such advice and in this case it concerns me even more because I know how much better HDX can be. The guys at HDX are hardworking, even though some people believe otherwise. Their new player had so much potential to hit the market with a bang and win awards for the quality that it should have been. The hardware of the BD-1 is very good and hits all the right spots from design to the brawn of the player. It is the natural successor to the HDX 1000 from a hardware and design perspective, it shows flair and thought unlike the firmware. Don’t misunderstand me; I like the UI ‘HDX Voir’. It is slick and has so much potential to be amongst the best, but unfortunately it did not have time to mature and receive the fixes, testing and patience that it deserved. I don’t know the reasoning behind HDX’s decision to release the player so early. Maybe it was financial or the fear of the player becoming outdated. All I know is that it was the wrong decision which may lose HDX some of its consumer base. Manufacturers Details SOFTWARE SPECIFICATION http://www.hdx1080.com/ HDX need to resolve the issues quickly if they are to limit collateral damage. Word quickly spreads in this niche market and the last thing HDX want is a bad reputation especially with their new mobile player ‘BONE’ just around the corner. Chipset: Sigma Designs SMP8642, 667MHz CPU with floating point coprocessor. Connectivity: Bonjour, UPnP SSDP, UPnP AV Windows Media Connect Windows Media Player NSS Samba, NFS, UPNP Media Servers: TVersity, Twonkymedia BitTorrent P2P, Usenet downloader NAS Access : SMB, NFS, FTP I will revisit this player again in the near future to ascertain what progress has been made on the firmware. I will also be updating this review once I have carried out my tests using an external Blu-ray player. I have faith that HDX will resolve the issues in due course. Once the streaming issues are resolved we will have a class player on our hands. Let’s not forget the excellent playback of the media once the movie files were running from an internal HDD. This alone proves to me that the player is capable of great things and once HDX resolve the network problems it can only get better. If you can take that leap of faith and bare the wait then you might want to invest in the player. HDX know they have messed up and are working to remedy the issues. Advocate86 Price: €219 HARDWARE SPECIFICATION Memory: 512MBytes DDR2 DRAM 256MBytes NAND Flash 1GB internal flash drive (for BDLive or other content) Audio/Video Outputs: HDMI v1.3a Component Video Composite Video Stereo Analog Audio S/PDIF Optical and Coaxial Digital Audio Interface: Power button via remote with standby and reset button 2x USB 2.0 host at the back 1x SATA (one occupied by HDD tray) 1x eSATA (for external HDD or BD Rom Connectivity) 3.5" HDD tray Network: Gigabit Ready LAN adapter Power: 100~240V AC, 50~60 Hz, max 2.5A usual power consumption 10 W (no device connected) Maximum power consumption: 36 W Footprint: Width x Depth x Height : 170mm x160mm x 50mm (6.69" x 6.29" x 1.96") Weight: 1kg (2lbs 2oz) Video containers: MPEG1/2/4 Elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V) MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG, DAT, VOB) MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS) AVI, ASF, WMV Matroska (MKV) MOV (H.264), MP4 AVS Video Decoders: XVID SD/HD, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 MP@HL MPEG-4.2 ASP@L5, 720p, 1-point GMC MPEG-4.10 (H.264) : BP@L3, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] WMV9 : MP@HL SMPTE 421M (VC-1) : MP@HL, AP@L3 Audio Containers: AAC, M4A, MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA) WAV, WMA, FLAC, OGG, APE Audio Decoders: Dolby Digital, DTS, WMA, WMA Pro MPEG-1 Layer 1, 2, 3 MPEG-4 AAC-LC MPEG-4 HE-AAC MPEG-4 BSAC LPCM, FLAC, Vorbis Audio Pass-Through: DTS, DTS-HD HR, DTS-HD MA Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD Other Formats: ISO, IFO navigation, AVCHD navigation, Blu-ray** ready (requires addition of compatible external BD-ROM) Photo Formats: JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF Subtitle Formats: SRT, MicroDVD SUB, SSA, SUB/IDX