I chose this little box over the NBox and other comparable media players, mainly because it has a wider array of audio/video ports, and it pretty much splits the difference price-wise. I am using the HDMI port for my plasma screen, and the digital coaxial port for my receiver. I am beholden to Western Digital My Passport Essential USB drives, and I couldn't be happier with the results. The HD picture looks fantastic, and the booming 5.1 surround sound far exceeds what I could get out of my laptop. It browses reasonably fast through your files, folders, and sub-folders, and it offers continuous playback of your media. It played AVI, MPG, MP4, VOB, MKV, and pictures with no problems. The box is packed with composite cables and a short component video cable. It has two USB ports, and you can supposedly copy/paste/delete between the two, and apparently you can play a photo slideshow and music simultaneously, neither of which I have tried yet.
However, it does have it's shortcomings. Like most remotes, this one is a little user un-friendly, and doesn't seem to work when you're more than 10 feet away. The manual is scrawny and somewhat disorganized, so read it carefully. It wouldn't cooperate with one of my drives for some reason, and it also wouldn't play any of my Flash videos, not that I ever save them anyway. I put a movie on pause for a few minutes; when I resumed play the audio became out of sync, and I had to cue backwards to align it again. Still, the pros far outweigh the cons--I doubt I'll burn a DVD ever again.
Some tips: if you hook this up and turn it on and get no picture, repeatedly push the "TV Out" button on your remote first, the menu should soon come up in sharp full-color form. I recommend powering down the unit using the on/off switch on the back, rather than using the remote. It's supposed to go into "standby", but it seems to me that it still uses too much power for being inactive, and I'm more comfortable shutting the player down completely before I remove the USB cable. If your movie file is encoded with AC3 audio and you're using a hi-fi, set the digital out to "RAW" so your receiver can decode the Dolby Digital/DTS soundtrack, otherwise you'll just get 2-channel stereo.
All in all, a remarkably versatile little gadget that should round out any home theater, whether you're running out of storage space for your DVDs and CDs, or if you want a convenient way to move your PC experience to the living room. I just hope it's as durable as it performs. Micca MPLAY-HD 1080p Full-HD Digital Media Player For USB Drives and SD/SDHC/MS Flash
This thing has played every file type that I have thrown at it. It's small and can be easily concealed, but like the pervious reviews, the remote needs to be pointed directly at the device. Setup is a breeze, just configure to widescreen (16:9) and set the tv resolution to 480p,720p,1080p etc.
I received my new Mplay-HD yesterday and have been using it pretty extensively, throwing a large variety of videos at it and exploring all the features. I can say without reservation that this is currently the best low cost HD media player available.
I've been using digital media players for a few years now, starting with the earlier TVIX models in 2008, and I've owned other brands such as WD, Seagate, Asus, and most recently this Micca unit. The main draw for me to this unit is that it's one of first players to have the new Realtek 1055 chipset. This chipset was released in late 2010 and players using it started showing up in early 2011. The best thing about the 1055 is that it delivers the same video and audio decoding capabilities as the high end Realtek and Sigma Design chips, but they keep the cost down by not including network, SATA, USB3.0, and other features which users may or may not want. Essentially, if you want a well performing stand alone media player and you want it cheap, a player with the Realtek 1055 should be at the top of your list.
Back to the MPLAY-HD, it's small, about the size of a paperback novel, but thinner. It's also very light, all plastic case with probably just a single circuit board inside and a few screws. The front and back have a glossy panel while the rest of the player is matte black, so finger prints don't show up unless you were just eating fried chicken. The back panel has HDMI, component video, and AV jacks. I didn't see component video mentioned in the specs but it's there.
I tried a variety of different videos and music files, some more difficult to play than others, and this player handled them all. Most of the files were MKV, AVI, MP4, MOV, but I also tried a few ISOs of DVDs and BDs, some TS files, and some older WMV files. Sound track types included some of the more demanding formats like multi-channel AAC, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD, all played without issues. But I expected this since the Realtek 1055 is well known to be a great audio/video decoder chip. It's amazing how far this market has come, where a low cost player like this can handle just about everything out there, including stuff that even a low end PC can't even play correctly. So for video/audio compatibility and performance, the Mplay-HD gets a solid "A", "A+" if you consider the price.
As with other Realtek 1055 players, the Mplay-HD has a media indexing function. All the videos, music, and photos that the player finds on a drive you attach to it gets added to an index. The first time it does the indexing can take a short while, especially if you attach say a 2TB drive up to it full of media files. But after that everything is very quick. If you select say "movies" from the main screen, you are immediately shown a list of all movies, no delay at all. To find what you want to play, you bring up the search menu and start typing in the a part of the name of the file you are looking for. For example, if you want to continue watching your episodes of The Family Guy, just enter "fam" press search, and the player will show you all files that have "fam" in its file name, again with no delay at all. The indexing has more parameters for music, so in addition to searching by file name, you can list music by artist, album, and etc. I find this much more convenient than the old way of going through layers of folders, endless scrolling, and etc.
The only downside to this is that for those with well planned and well disguised layers of folders holding super special videos - guys you know who you are - the MPLAY-HD will find and index those and make them available for searching. And with the way those video titles play off of real movie titles... You've been warned. Lets move on.
But what if you *LIKE* going through layers of folders and doing endless scrolling to get to your movies? No problem, the Mplay-HD lets you do that with a file browser feature. It's there, but I haven't used it. According to the manual, it can be used to create play lists, but I find it easier to manage my playlists on the computer and save them in a m3u format, which the Mplay-HD understands and can play.
Setup and configuration is straight forward, since the Mplay-HD seems to auto detect what connection I am using. And if I set it to HDMI Auto, it'll even automatically determine the best resolution to use. It's completely pain free. There's quite a few configuration settings available for various things, and the manual does a good job of going through each setting, including recommendations for usage scenarios.
So there you have it, a great piece of modern consumer electronics using the latest technology and offered at a price that just a couple of years ago was unthinkable. I for one am thankful that the march of technology means that great products become cheaper as time goes on. For those looking for a digital media player that offers top notch playback performance and an attractive price, look no further than the Mplay-HD.
Or if you have looked further, look back and get the Mplay-HD. Either way. - 1080p - Media Player - High Definition - Portable Media Player'
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