Page 3 - A Closer Look - Software
The boot time of UEBO's M400 is approximately 20 seconds, and runs on the same operating system as the UEBO M50 and M100. So if you want my colleagues' perspectives on UEBO's user interface, please feel free to read their reviews as well. The GUI is generally very consistent across the system; but being a home entertainment device, I have to say the user interface still reminds me of Linux to a certain extent. You know, the raw, technical, and not user friendly part of it. Okay, it is not as raw as some devices I have used in the past, but for something that looks so good on the outside, I was expecting a little more when I plugged it into my HDTV. Upon startup, the main screen lists seven menu options, and can be scrolled from side to side. A simple transition animation occurs when you move through the icon selection.
The main menu options should be fairly straightforward and self explanatory. The items are labeled Files Manager (Which should really be 'File Manager'), Movies, Music, Photo, Internet Media, Web Browser, and Setup. The specialized media menus such as Movies, Music, and Photos are indexed views of their respective categories, so if nothing exists in that particular section, then you cannot select that menu. Re-indexing your drive can be done by simply pressing the green button on your remote. Minimal lag is noticed besides an approximately one second delay in loading the home screen from its submenus, which is pretty good.
The background and system font is standard throughout the UEBO M400, as shown in our image above. You can change both if you like, but please do keep in mind the font size cannot be adjusted, so do make sure you are using something that is approximately the same as default, if that is something you are after. "Files Manager" provides access to all connected devices. This includes Network, UPnP, and NFS by default. If you add an internal hard disk or USB flash drive, it will show up here as well. One fundamental flaw of the UEBO M400 as a network media player is that I was unable to map any network drive that requires authentication. The Patriot Box Office worked. The QNAP NMP-1000 worked. But no matter what I tried, whether it is over wired or wireless, the M400 just refuses to connect with a "Logon Failed" message. I finally gave up, and just resorted to using UPnP instead. But honestly, a network media player that cannot map a network drive... not a good sign.
Update: The latest firmware rectified the network drive mapping problem.
For simplicity reasons, I installed a Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD into the UEBO M400, and loaded some media files into it for testing. Unlike Jeremy's M100, I can just format the drive through Windows over USB, and it will work flawlessly -- it is not necessary to do this through the setup menu on your TV. The Movies screen simply shows a matrix of all index movie files on the media player, but you can change it to List and Preview mode. In Preview mode, it will show a list of the available files, with a window on the left to let you have a glimpse at what is going on after it has been highlighted. As I have mentioned in my Patriot Box Office review, to improve performance and usability, it would be excellent if the interface displays a generated thumbnail of the video in the preview window immediately when the user hovers over the file instead. If the selection bracket stays over the video file for a couple more seconds, then it should start playing a series of random short clips from the video, rather than starting from the beginning every time. This would prove to be much more useful for the end user, since most TV shows will start with the theme song, and most movies will have opening credits at the beginning. The live preview is definitely a nice touch, but previewing from the start has very little value.
After a video has been selected for playing, it will begin playing immediately regardless of whether you have watched it before. However, a prompt will appear on screen while the clip is playing to ask if you want to continue where you have left off. That is a pretty good idea in my opinion. As far as controls are concerned, the only way to view the progress bar is when you hit the "GOTO" button, or left and right on the D-pad. If you fast forward or rewind, it will only show the speed at the top left corner. Subtitles are turned on by default, but you can turn it off by hitting "SUBT" on your remote, followed by the "OK" button on the D-pad.
Supported video formats include AVI, MPG, DAT, VOB, DIV, MOV, MKV, MPEG, TS, MTS, M2TS, RMVB, WMV, ISO, IFO, MP4, FLV, TP, and TRP. Supported video codecs include MPEG1, HD MPEG2 (up to MP@HL), HD MPEG4 SP/ASP (1080p), Xvid, H.264 BP@L3, MP@L4.1, HP@L4.1, WMV9/VC-1 AP@L3, RM/RMVB8/9/10 (up to 720@30P), and AVS HD (1920x1080).
The music playing is the same as the video selection menu in Preview mode. You will still get the same file list on the right, but the video preview window now displays album art and ID3 tag data of the song. Supported file formats include MP3, OGG, WMA, WAV, AAC, and FLAC. Unfortunately, you cannot sort songs by album, artist, or genre and whatnot; it just shows everything in one long list. In other words, if you have more than three songs like me, then it will be an organizational nightmare, haha. Also, I'd much prefer the file menu to show the song's ID3 title tag rather than the file name. A separate screen for playing music will also be appreciated -- the new screen should have a bigger album art display, more prominent ID3 tag listing, and maybe visualizations as well. As far as what we have right now, yes, I totally agree that it does the job just fine, but as a home entertainment device, I am sure users are looking for the overall experience too, and not just function.
Hitting the "Home" button on your remote control will pop up a menu at the bottom, as shown in our photo above. It is similar to the app switcher in Apple's iOS. This will allow you to quickly switch to other functions on your UEBO M400 without exiting what you are doing right now to go back to the main screen, and then scroll to your desired application.
Normally, I don't even bother going into the Pictures of digital media players, mainly because there is nothing interesting enough to talk about for it to have its own paragraph. However, the UEBO M400 does -- for more than one reason. For one thing, you can play music during a slideshow. Secondly, the UEBO M400 can actually show EXIF data if you hit "INFO" (Notably missing is aperture size though), as demonstrated in our image above. The slideshow timing and transition effect can also be modified by the end user, but if you prefer to show each picture one by one, manual scrolling works just as well. You can also hit the Zoom button on your remote to highlight individual parts of your photo. Common file formats such as JPG, BMP, GIF, TIF and PNG are supported by the M400. It is enough for most users, but if you shoot with a dSLR camera and you use RAW, then you will need to convert it to any of the above first before plugging in your SD card.
The above two screens are from the Internet Media and Web Browser menus, respectively. Everything is extremely straightforward in this section, so I am not going to go into too much detail for the interest of time. Basically, a matrix of thumbnail previews will be displayed on your television screen, as shown in our screenshots above. Just select the one you want, and you are good to go.
The feature I do want to talk about in particular is Internet Browser. I agree it is really cool to have an internet browser capable network media player, but there are some real flaws with it. Firstly, I'd like the tiles of the default bookmarks to be live, rather than random homemade-like snapshots. Secondly, you cannot change the default bookmarks at all. Basically, you are stuck with, from left to right and top to bottom, Google (With a Google China screenshot), Facebook (Of Jemima Kiss), Twitter (Of someone tweeting about fighting a cold), Elle (With an article titled "First Look: Marilyn Minter Retrospective"), Amazon (No idea how they got that screenshot), Wikipedia (The only one that looks normal and neutral), Engadget (Now featuring a Verizon Thunderbolt review), eBay (Anyone want some basketball jerseys?), and Yahoo! News (No idea what is going on). I don't even go to half of those websites on a regular basis, and there is absolutely no reason why I cannot customize any of them.
With regards to the browser itself, it is quite unintuitive to use with a remote control. Yes, text entry is cumbersome, but that is not the only problem. You don't get a mouse cursor to control at all, and I can't really figure out how to point and select links. I am sure there is a way, but after pressing every button on the remote, I still can't figure out how it works. You are probably better off with a USB keyboard as well -- which, from my experience, cannot keep up with your typing speed, unless you can only do one stroke per second. To add an extra nail to the coffin, web page rendering is quite slow. If you have such an urge to check a certain website all of a sudden, running upstairs to your main PC and back will probably take up less time.
Last on the list is the setup menu. You are initially greeted with five options, but they are merely shortcuts to the tabs in the subsequent screen, making the first one completely redundant and unnecessary. The usual stuff goes here, with nothing special in particular. The only thing I would like to mention is the UEBO M400 works flawlessly with my Wireless-N network, and that is about it.
Generally speaking, the UEBO M400 offers an average at best usage experience as far as the graphical user interface is concerned. It works well as a home entertainment device, but it still lacks the experience and refinement I am looking for. In my opinion, the industry benchmark is Windows Media Center, and of course, UEBO's Linux based operating system is far from that. I am not going to reiterate on the stuff that could have been fixed, simply because there are at least one or two issues in every section. Overall interface performance can also be optimized a bit more, as more demanding tasks will induce noticeable lag. The UEBO M400 also crashed and restarted on me without warning a number of times. All in all, I think UEBO should put a little more heart into the software aspect of this device, because they are just wasting beautiful hardware with it.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware
3. A Closer Look - Software
4. Performance and Conclusion
