Sumvision Cyclone Mkv Media Enclosure
Posted by Notcot on Jun 12, 2010 in Home Cinema & Video |
- Full HD 1080p
- HDMI Network Ready Player Enclosure
- Digital DTS
- MKV Ready
- Internet Services i.e BBC, Youtube, …
5 CommentsReply |
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Ive owned this machine for over a month and i must say its one of the best Media players ive got my hands on at this price range, better than the popcorn hour A-100 and the western digital Media player, the original and the live version
It has played every media file i have fed it, not once have i had to convert a file
It plays iso files with full menu and chapter support, Ideal if you want to Backup your DVD collection
The remote is well laid out and is well equipped for DVD use, you have chapter skip, audio options, subtitles, a return button to take you back to the menu screen.
Navigation through a video file is sublime, instead of just fast forward or rewindoptions (which goes to 32x speed) press the Go to button and you can choose the point you want to go to, type in 1:51, you will go 1 hours 51 minutes in to the movie
This Machine downgrades DTS to 2 channel stereo so you dont have to hook it up to your amplifer
You have the option of installing a harddrive but it isnt required
If you were willing to spend around the £150 mark, i would also recommend the popcorn hour A-200. It has more features, internet services, custom firmwares, slightly faster processer etc. but at a higher price tag thats what you would expect!
IF however your budget is under £100 and your a new adopter to the world of digital media then this player is quite literally a steal for what your paying.
highly recommended piece of hardware!
Rating: 5 / 5
This product is very good at playing most media files, including .iso dvd images and dvd folder structures (VIDEO_TS folders).
I have found that there are some .wmv and some .flv files that wont play for no obvious reason (they dont seem to be drm protected) but most .wmv and .flv do play. It does play ogg vorbis audio but not ogg theora video (so your free codec .ogg/.ogv videos will play sound only).
As delivered the enclosure has a very whiny fan that is just intolerable for a media player. Fortunately it is very simple to open the enclosure and unplug the fan which is not needed if you dont have a hard drive installed yet – it may be worth investing in a quiet 30mm*30mm*10mm fan for when you do install a HDD though.
As mentioned the case is very easy to open – but it is not obvious how to do so.
It looks as if you should unscrew the 4 tiny torx screws on either side of the case – you can do that but you’ll need a T7 or T6 precision torx screwdriver which you almost certainly don’t have. So don’t. Instead you should look at the back you should see three small screw holes one at each of the left and right sides and one between the component and composite video outputs with no screws in them (at least mine had no screws in as delivered – if yours does then take them out). Grab the front, grab the back and pull. The body should simply slide out of the case. The HDD cradle is immediately visible as is the fan. Short SATA power and data leads are already in place and should prove no trouble to attach to your HDD. The fan is easily disconnected by pulling the two-pin (and therefore always on – no temperature sensing fan management) connector loose – the wire is however poorly fed through the body and so if you replace the fan with a quieter model you will have to clip the wire to get the old one out, the fan itself is held in place with a single screw.
Picture quality is good with stutter free playback of x.264 .mkv files, right up to 1080p but you may need to fiddle with the settings as mine defaulted to standard definition PAL.
The internet connectivity functions are just pointless. Do not buy this if you plan on using it for bbc iplayer and youtube.
Youtube has apparently decided to start blocking this and many other media players, you will be able to search youtube and see the screen-shots but when you try to play the file you’ll get no joy. So the Youtube functionality touted on the box is not delivered, apparently because Youtube started blocking it in February.
The BBC internet service touted on the box is not BBC iPlayer as one may reasonably expect. It is the BBC news player – and that doesn’t work properly either. You’ll be able to read the text but the video won’t play and I find that on some occasions I get a JavaScript error message – it’s inferior to just pressing the red button on broadcast telly.
The various other English language internet features are a bit pointless as well – flikr and picassa just seem to be random.
If you speak or read Chinese (or possibly Japanese/Korean – I don’t) then the various foreign language feeds may be interesting to you. The Chinese youtube clone has some strange and possibly amusing clips (I find them amusing but they may be intended to be serious and I have no idea what the dialogue is saying).
So all in all this is a good media player with room for a good HDD. The only real let down is the whiny fan which you do need to unplug unless you watch films with the volume turned up to ASBO. The superfluous internet stuff doesn’t matter to me except possibly the torrent client – but I’ll be hacking transmission onto it anyway once my HDD arrives.
Rating: 4 / 5
Pros:
Supports SATA hard drives – I installed a 1.5TB Seagate disk – Seagate OEM 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Disk Drive (7200RPM, 32MB Cache)
Plays everything I have tried -avi, divx, vob, mod, mp3, jpg etc..
Can connect to your Picasa account and play a slideshow of your photos
Can stream from another device – laptop, NAS drive, PC etc – just don’t try larger high quality files over wifi, use a network cable if you can.
Can connect to another USB device to transfer media – USB Hard drive, USB key etc.
HDMI port, full HD video
Supports NTFS and FAT32
Search and play videos from YouTube
Cons:
The unit gets hot when it has been on for a while
No fan installed
Can take a few moments to recognise and list the HDD contents
When playing music, it doesn’t show the title of the currently playing track – after a while it goes to screensaver mode so that becomes irrelevant.
It connects to BBC News not the iPlayer
Shows random photos from Flickr, can’t log on to your own account or search by image type etc.
The negatives here are just picky observations, overall it is a very good unit with a wide variety of supported formats.
Rating: 4 / 5
Had this for a day now and I have installed a 1 TG Hd on it ITs play everything I have put on it even Nero Recode file play the interface could do with makeing nicer but what a Brill box
Rating: 5 / 5
Brilliant product, the Carlsberg of media players, find and use a compatable internal hard drive, Samsung F3 or WD green and it works very well indeed. Has no trouble accessing files via the USB port and plays good quality rips without effort. The menu is a bit PC biased but this may improve with newer firmware updates. but overall an excellent product which brings the TV and the PC closer together. I purchased from MHP who gave very quick delivery and excellent back up when discussing a small problem I had when setting up.
Rating: 4 / 5