Gadgetell Review: Mvix MV-4000u DivX multimedia player

Product: Mvix MV-4000u DivX Multimedia Player
Price: $199
Rating: 8.5/10
Pros: Simple design, easy to use, plays a lot of media formats and includes plenty of output ports
Cons: No hard drive, does not include media encoding software and manual does not explain every feature.
Overall: A great starter multimedia player that doubles as an external storage device. Since you need to provide you own hard drive it is entirely scalable, giving use to your old and seemingly useless hard drive or you can go all out and buy the biggest thing you can afford. Although it already works with the most common files, firmware upgrades may also make it compatible with yet-to-be released media formats.

Multimedia players are quickly becoming more common household items. The issue for many people is that setting one up can be a bit intimidating, often requiring some technical expertise and and pricey equipment.

Mvix USA has released a hard drive based multimedia player that is not only easy to use but fairly affordable. If you can plug in a power and USB cable, drag and drop files on a computer and then plug a couple color-coded cables into your TV, you are ready to use the Mvix MV-4000u DivX Multimedia Player.

Design – Weighs 1 lb. 14.2 oz. without a hard drive installed (approx. 3 lb. 2 oz with hard drive) with a matte white faceplate. It has an all plastic case with shiny blue sides and measures 7.5 x 6 x 2.5 in.

The front panel includes four covered LEDs (Play, IDE, USB and Power), three silver buttons (Setup, Stop and Power), a silver direction pad (arrows in four directions and an OK button in the center) and the remote sensor.

To install a hard drive, one side panel slides off after unlocked it using a switch on the bottom of the case.

Case fits a standard 3.5 in. IDE hard drive with a short IDE ribbon cable (approx. 2.5 in. long with plastic pull loop) and 4-pin power cable.

Hard drive, once installed, is secured with two thumb screws – one tightened inside the case and one tightened externally through the back panel – and sits on 1/8 in. rubber pads. (Hard drives can be ordered along with the system from the MvixUSA web site).

A silver metal plate on the back includes the fan exhaust vents and houses all ports: S-Video, Optical, Coaxial, Component, USB 2.0, IR and power. The bottom of the system has a plastic Lock/Unlock slider switch for the removable side panel.

The unit ships with a remote, 2-part AC adapter, USB 2.0 cable, thin stand, RCA A/V cables, printed manual (mine was all in Korean) and installation disk which includes and English PDF manual and old system drivers.

The remote includes the usual video/audio playback buttons, number pad, directional arrows, and special system buttons (Setup, Playlist, Bookmark, Media and Rotation).

Features – Since it does not ship with a hard drive – unless ordered – you will need to install your own hard drive. The system basically doesn’t work without a formatted hard drive.

Once installed, the MV-4000u connects to a PC via USB 2.0 cable (provided). The system will come up as its own drive and media files and folders can be dragged and dropped into the hard drive.

The system can be connected to an output device such as home entertainment system but will need a monitor to use the system menu. Once connected, playback is menu driven where you browse to the media file and select it to play. You can play and control media wither through the remote or through the system’s front panel.

Media types, if not self organized in folders, can be sorted by pressing the Media link on the on-screen menu or on the remote. They will be auto sorted by the three media types – audio, video and image – in the current folder. You can also play back all media with the Play All feature, or add files to a Playlist.

Here’s a list of compatible formats (so far):

• Audio: AC3, MPEG-2, MPEG-3, DTS pass through, WMA and OGG, 3MU (playlists)
• Still Images: JPEG
• Video: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, AVI, DivX 3.11-5x, XviD, DVD (IFO, VOB) and VCD

Performance – A hard drive takes less than a minute to physically install with the only potential being the girth of your fingers as you try to twist in the internal screw. The system ships ready to use and, if using hard drive is already formatted, will work right away. Connecting to a PC is as fast as any other external hard drive.

The Mvix player does not need to be connected to a PC for media playback.

Playback for smaller files – audio, video or image – is fast. Larger files – more than 50 MB – will take slightly longer to load, with a loading countdown bar displaying the progress. A 700 MB movie took less than 30 seconds to load and start playing. Image and audio quality is as good as the encoding, so encode at the highest possible value for best performance. The player does not appear to cause any lag, out-of-sync performance or degrading of media quality.

Image slide shows are slow, with a fade-in/fade-out transition that cannot be controlled. On-screen image presentation can be set to 3 more more seconds per image.

It can take several minutes to display a long list of folders. If, for example, you are using a hard drive with a complete Windows operating system on it, don’t browse through the Windows folder or you’ll have to wait a while for all the folders to load. You also will not be shown a “Loading” indicator and cannot perform any actions or cancel the search, so the system will appear frozen even though it is not.

Folders can be added, deleted and renamed when connected to a PC but not when being used to play media. Media types do not need to be in specific folders.

Updating the firmware requires downloading the update from the Mvix site, creating a folder titled UPDATE on the media player, placing the update file in the folder, connecting it to a TV and going through the system setup process (takes 2-5 minutes). It can be backward upgraded, so be mindful of the firmware number.

It did well playing all media types. Besides many common modern formats, I tried older format files with the same extensions that did not play in the current Windows media player and they would not play on the Mvix player either. Image and video quality of crystal clear and audio sounds great.

Of the smaller features I liked on the remote control include the Rotate button for images (though it doesn’t maintain the orientation for later presentation), the Zoom feature to zoom in on images, Mute button, Bookmarking and Repeat feature that lets you tag a pair of moments in a video and repeatedly loop between them.

Overall – The MV-4000u is essentially a plug-and-play device that even a tech novice (assuming, of course, they can acquire media files) can use. As with most electronics, it is only as fast as the slowest pipe, which will be your hard drive’s, USB’s or PC’s fault and not the Mvix 4000u..

For some this may seem like a glorified external hard drive case, and could certainly be used as such, but it works well as an instant multimedia player. I was impressed at how easy it was to set up and begin playing media, especially when I got it going without the manual.

Since the system is so small – about the size of DVD boxed set of a single season of a TV series – and light, it is not a bother to transport the device between your entertainment system and TV, though you will need to wait for PC readiness and transfer times.

This is certainly not the highest-end multimedia player, but is more than enough for 90% of those who want to have a hard drive solution. (As for the other 10%, it doesn’t include HDMI or DVI ports or support wireless, so you’ll need to look elsewhere). Again, it is very easy to set up and requires very little instruction. My only complaint with system features is that they are not all explained in the Manual, so I don’t know if I am missing anything 9and I want to enjoy them all).

Also, having a long list of files or folders can slow down the performance so it seems to have frozen, so get used to organizing files into shorter segments with named folders (when connected to a PC).

You can also order a car adapter for the system, so this could easily transform into traveling multimedia player. Again, you’ll need some type of display, so plan on using it as a mass storage audio player.

Since you can quickly install any IDE hard drive and (re)format via USB, you can give purpose to those smaller format drives that’ve sitting in your closet for the past couple years. Also, the ability to upgrade the firmware means this may be usable for a long time, with updates that will allow it to play new, yet-to-be released formats.