This little unit plays all the major video files and plays them well. With the bonus of being portable. One connection using HDMI and your good to go. Remote is very well desinged and the unit looks fantastic. I added a 320GB hard drive but also tested both the SD card and the USB for playing video. I tested every format that is listed except RMVB and all played with top quality full HD. (Did not have an RMVB file to test). None of the other players I've owned could do this. I've been building HTPC's for about 10 years and have experienced the progress of many portable media players. I have the Xbox and used it to stream video: Too much trouble. Owned the Avox JukeBox by Vantec: Very limited file formats and remote is terrible. I've owned the Dlink DSM 510: Great product but very finicky. Locked up a lot and no internal storage. Owned the Galaxy Metal Gear Tvisto Mini: Nice product but limited formats and took a mess of cables to connect.
Nothing beats a Home Theater PC for quality and usefulness but this Micca slim is kick ass for a portable player...
I would recommend for anyone needing a portable video player. In fact, if you don't need the full features or expense of an HTPC then this unit would make a good HTPC alternative. Micca Slim-HD 1080p Full-HD Portable Digital Media Player w/ 2.5-Inch HDD Drive Bay - Plays H.264/AVC, VC-1, MPEG1/2/4, DivX, Xvid, RMVB, MKV, AVI, MOV, MP3, MP4
The Micca Slim-HD is a good little portable media player. I purchased the device for a recent conference overseas - the intention was to connect it to a large HDTV screen through a HDMI cable and run it continuously for 4-days with a looping video from a 500Gb Western Digital internal disk-drive.
As time was running short, I decided to purchase 2 devices - one to use as a primary device and the other as a redundant fall-back should the first one fail. When the shipment arrived I noted that the design was a little flimsy. I would have liked to see a tougher enclosure particularly given that it is designed to be portable and can easily be knocked around. In any case, I inserted the internal drive and went to power it up as per the instructions. Unfortunately, the first device did not work so I was relieved that I had purchased the second as a redundancy. I contacted Micca support using the form on their website and in a relatively short period of time "Jack" emailed me and suggested that I buy a 3rd device and return the other through Amazon. I did that and within days the 3rd device had turned up only to find that the power supply did not work. I emailed Jack again and he sent me 2 new power supplies. While there were issues, I found the customer support to be very impressive. Jack even called me at one stage to talk through the issues.
As for the functionality - The device will play most popular video formats. I found that some perform better than others. Jack suggested using the MKV file format which I found performed the best out of the many formats I tried. Out of these I found a couple that did not work including the high-end Apple ProRes codec . For most users this won't be an issue unless you're planning to use a professional editing studio to produce your own video content.
The most annoying thing about the device is its speed. At this stage I've only used the internal drive which Jack tells me is the quickest out of all the interfaces but it's still very slow. Finding video on the device isn't convenient but it's not too painful. It's about 3-4 clicks to find a video. The slow responsiveness may also be due to the remote. I find myself clicking buttons several times before the device responds to a command. This is probably due to the limited angle on the remote (you must be directly in front of the device for the remote to work) and the slow responsiveness of the device. As an example, several times I've tried to fast forward through a video only to have the screen message tell me something different - the actual video is fast forwarding but the onscreen display is telling me it's rewinding. Also, I've also found that on occasion video files do not appear in the folders, so you have to re-copy the file to the device - so yes, there are bugs in the software.
I consider myself a demanding user of the device and expect a lot. Keeping this in mind and given that it's more intended for home use, I was impressed with the system - it does what it says it will do. The hi-resolution video looked impressive on the big screen and it performed will over the 4-days of continuous use. There are some limitations that are annoying but easily overcome. If you're looking to use this for a simple portable video player you won't be disappointed. I think the price point is a little high given that new devices are constantly entering the market with internet connectivity, more functionality and better interfaces, so I'd expect to see this drop some time soon.
All-in-all it's a good device which is well supported by Micca's customer service team. - Media Player - Multimedia Player - Hd Media Player - 1080p'
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