Gadgetman: Mvix MX-780HD Media Player with NDAS
I have just recently reviewed the Mvix 780HD, a unit which sits under the ‘Media Player’ category, but actually offers quite a few more features than just playing video and audio.
The two differences this unit offers over others I have seen and reviewed are:
1)     NDAS support – This is a technology which allows the Mvix unit to be seen on your computer, over your LAN, as a shared drive, much like a SAN or NAS unit. However NDAS is a proprietary technology, patented by a company called Ximeta. I tested this and is works great. You do have to install a special piece of software on each PC that needs to access the unit, and you need registration keys (which are supplied by Mvix, and they even pay the license fees!), and then the unit needs to have its NDAS mode activated. This gives great flexibility in that you can have the Mvix unit connected to your TV, and copy files from your PC to it without having to use USB or move it around. So as you download stuff, you can make it available to watch/listen to.
2)     HD Support – The 780HD officially supports various HD encoded files, but during testing I did find that unless the file was encoded using one of the supported codecs, playback was very hit and miss. This is not Mvix’s problem, it is purely because there are just so many difference codes, even in the HD world. In order to ensure that you can watch your HD media, the unit includes an HDMI connection.
Otherwise this is a very good unit. The user interface was quite good (although I have never struck a unit that has a ‘fabulous’ interface, I think when a unit deals with so many different sources and types of media, such as local files, remote files, video files, music files, Internet radio etc, there is no easy way to present this), and the remote was OK, functional but nothing compared to what a Harmony One can do!
I like the fact you can also use the unit as an external USB drive, but with the NDAS support I personally wouldn’t use that too much, unless I had to copy files from a friend etc.
The official review of this unit appears in this months (March) edition of Tone magazine, make sure to give it a read!
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