By: Preston Yuen
August 20, 2010
For those of you who don't know me as well as you should, I am very much like our Editor-in-Chief "the chc", in that I have many electronics and other gadgets lying around the house. From the latest Core i7 personal computers, the usual iPod and iPhones, all the way to HDTVs with high performance personal surround sound systems -- I won't pretend that I am not a geek at heart! However, there are one or two things I am missing for my Toshiba Regza LX177 57" LCD HDTV. Although I have a Sony PlayStation 3 for gaming and Blu-ray entertainment, it does not necessarily have enough space to store all the audio and movie files for my personal leisure time -- not to mention the PlayStation 3 isn't a particularly brilliant network streaming device like the QNAP NMP-1000. Micca has come along in an attempt to address this problem at a more affordable price. While the MPLAY-HD digital media player does not stream videos over a network like the Patriot Box Office or aforementioned QNAP NMP-1000, it commands a price tag of only $60 at press time -- and it offers two USB 2.0 ports to which anyone can attach their external storage devices with media files and play them from pretty much any TV. All you really need now is one massive external hard drive (Which can be purchased from the money you have saved from buying a network enabled player) to store those illegally obtained... I mean, movies and audio that you have legitimately purchased from your local media shop and online stores, haha. Meanwhile, we fired one up to see how it works out in real life. Read on to see what we found!
Our Micca MPLAY-HD arrived at the same time as the Micca MPLAY from the company's offices in Fairfax, Virginia, USA to our location here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada via USPS Priority. They sent both digital media players to me for review, so I chose to get on the HD one first. Both of them came in a rather large brown corrugated cardboard box. Although the shipping seemed fine, my picky picky eyes picked up that the MPLAY-HD box appeared to be somewhat dented at the corner. A real issue? Not by a long shot. Everything else arrived in perfect condition with absolutely no complaints.
Micca's packaging designs are always plain and simple, yet very eye catching. The MPLAY-HD packaging box is no exception. The background of the box is plain white with the MPLAY-HD shown proudly on the right two-thirds of the box, while a appropriate media design logo is shown on the left side. Its company name is printed boldly at the top right corner, with the product name, "MPLAY-HD", stated right underneath it. As its name stresses, this is an HD-capable media player. The bottom of the box shows just that, as well as telling the consumer that it is full 1080p HD capable. Listed on the back of the box are supported video files, codecs, audio formats, photo formats, and the such. There are also other features and specifications that can be found on the manufacturer's site, which is obtained and listed below:
Specifications
Play Videos
- External Subtitles: SRT, SSA, ASS, SMI, SAMI, TXT, SUB, SUB+IDX, MKS (subtitle and video should have the same file name)
- Supports DVD/DVD ISO Playback and Menu operation
- Continuous play of all videos in a folder for multi-file movies or multi-episodes
- Fast forward, rewind, pause, previous video, next video, audio track switching, subtitle switching, continuous loop playback, and skip-to-time search operation
Play Music
- External lyrics display (lyrics and music should have the same file name)
- Album art display for music
- Fast forward, rewind, pause, previous song, next song, loop playback
View Photos
-Slide show Mode and Gallery View
-Zoom, pan, rotate
View Text Files
- File Types: TXT
- Different background styles, text font, and color
- Manual and automatic word wrap, flip
Play Flash
- Supports Flash 4/5/6/7/8/9
- Supports simple flash games
Features
- Universal media player, powerful enough to handle high bitrate 1080p Full-HD videos!
- Supports numerous audio formats including Dolby Digital, DTS, and DTS Downmix
- Play media files from external USB drives or SD/SDHC flash cards
- Convenient resume from last stop point and continuous multi-file playback
- Ultra low-power consumption of only 10 Watts
Other Features
- Dual USB 2.0 host ports support USB flash drives and portable hard disk drives
- Built-in card reader for SD/SDHC, MMC, and MS flash memory cards
- Compatible with FAT32, NTFS, and HFS+ file systems
- HDMI, Component/YPbPr, Composite/CVBS output
- Video Modes: NTSC, PAL, 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
- Coaxial and optical digital output for 5.1 surround sound output to home theater
Everything is packaged neatly into one simple little package. Out of the box, you will receive the following:
1x MPLAY-HD Media Player
1x Remote Control
1x AC Adapter
1x AV Cable
1x Component Video Cable (optional)
1x User's Manual
Ironically, this an HD media player, but an HDMI cable is not provided out of the box. However, HDMI cables are pretty cheap these days, especially when they're on sale and you know where to buy them.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware
3. A Closer Look - Software
4. Performance and Conclusion
