This year Anime Expo was busier than ever. Lining each aisle were the usual items you expect to see at this genre of event: manga, videos, toys, swords, artists and gadgetry. One such gadget that caught my eye was attached to an HDTV and looked to be smaller than a deck of cards. Onscreen was a vibrant, crystal clear animated video apparently streaming from this box. I stopped dead in my tracks with a “well lookie here” to my partner in crime for covering AX, Andrew. After a short discussion the fine folks at Media Player USA were kind enough to give me a demo unit to bring home for review.
The MP-HDX 1080P weighs half as much as my smart phone with dimensions of about 3.5″ by 2″ by 0.75″. It uses either a USB 2 drive or inserted SD/MMC memory card for storing your videos and can output via CVBS or HDMI cables to your TV. It does require an external DC power source and all of the above, sans storage media, is included in the box. It is capable of decoding any number of video, audio, still image and subtitle formats commonly available; from the literature:
Video format/decoding: AVI, MKV, H.264, XVID, MPG, MPEG, VOB, DAT, MP4, TS, M2TS, AS, TP, M4V, MOV, WMV, RM, RMVB, FLV
Audio format/decoding: MP3, WMA, AAC, APE, FLAC, DTS, PCM, AC3
Subtitles: SMI, ASS, SSA, SRT, PGS
Picture: JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF
The system is controlled by a slim, optimized remote and a very intuitive on screen display. Admittedly, even without reading the instructions beyond how to safely hook up the hardware, everything was pretty easy to figure out. There were a few minor points that struck me as I was getting to know the MP-HDX and I want to get those out of the way first.
Cons
I usually make a point of going through settings before I use a device. When setting the video-out resolution to 1080P, I noticed that I had to re-set this parameter each time the device was turned off. I could not find a way to increase the text size of the subtitles. This was not a big problem for me, as I could read them just fine, but was noted that people with less than optimal eyesight could have issues. My over-sized novelty thumb drive blocked part of the reception area of the remote. This was totally my fault, but worth mentioning due to the IR receiver being next to the USB plug.
Pros
Everything else. No, seriously… this player starts up fast and handled every video format from my collection I could throw at it. There was no noticeable noise during its operation, nor did it heat up excessively in the hour I was running it. The video and audio quality was as expected and the device has an additional volume control available so you don’t have to swap remotes while watching.
Bottom Line
This product is worth buying. Doubly so when its currently sale priced at $69.99 (normal price $79.99). Like Media Player USA’s booth at Anime Expo, the device is not big and flashy. It is, though, far more than you would expect and definitely the best find of the show for me.