HD media centre for your living room
I’ve been looking for something to put downstairs, that could play all my HD content to my widescreen TV. There isn’t a lot of choice out there, currently I have an Oppo DVD upscale player. It does the job but there is still something lacking feature wise, and it doesn’t handle my files very well. I wanted H.264 codec and MKV support, it doesn’t matter how hard I look the options are nonexistent for DVD players.
MKV support is getting more of a must for me, I have a lot of files in this format. The Matroska file format is considered by many as the best container for H.264 content, hence it’s popularity. Just so you know, H.264 is the codec used for video compression and has been adopted for HD because of the quality it retains afterwards, also keeping with the HD 1080p resolution of 1920×1080.
After trawling through the web, I have finally come up with something that will fit all my needs, plus more. Enter the TViX HD M-6500A by DVICO. It’s a diminutive black box of tricks, and when you read through the specs it’s hard not to be impressed. Not only will it support H.264 and MKV, but it also has an Ethernet port for networking, HDMI, support for FLAC (my music collection will love this), plus all the PVR options and connectivity you will ever need. I am particularly happy about the coaxial/optical out for sound, this will plug nicely into the amp for the sound system. Technically, you could also rip all your HD/Bluray movies into MKV and have them all centrally held on this, with the ability to expand the capacity if you hook up an external drive or just have it access a NAS across the network. This will save me from having to swap discs all the time.
A thing to note about the audio, a small footnote on their site says there will be no support for files with DRM. Something you may need to consider if you purchase a lot of music online. This thing will pretty much play any file format you throw at it; a true media jukebox at last. Now let’s talk about the price. A quick browse will show me that it’s around £300, give or take, that comes with a 320GB hard drive. Rather expensive piece of kit, but I suppose you get what you pay for and the quality Sigma chipset is partly due to this.
You could argue that a Windows or Linux media PC with a mini-ITX board would do the trick, but the footprint is still much larger than the TViX and the Sigma chip is specifically made for movie playback, which should beat a normal graphics card. I doubt the cost of a new PC build would make much difference either. To be honest, I have looked everywhere for something like this and the alternatives are not even in the same league. I think I will add this to my wants list after I do some overtime.
TViX HD M-6500A
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email Tags: DVICO, media jukebox, MKV playback, TVIX HD M-6500A
May 6th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I’m in the same boat than you, and I’m between this and the Dvico 7000A.
Have you got this one?? if so, has it made it for you?? how would you rate it?
I know the price tag is something of an issue, but as you said, you pay for what you get, and compared with other players, this seems to be the best out there.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Well, I looked at the Dvico 7000A as well and I recently decided on the M-6500A. The reason being is that the 7000A is cylindrical and it’s too awkward to place on the shelf with the other kit. So my decision is mainly for aesthetic reasons, as both will do the job very well. I haven’t ordered it yet but I need to soon, the lack of options with my current setup is driving me crazy and my media library is growing. I plan to post a full review once I get my hands on it