2009 Media Player Roundup

[shashu]

I was disappointed not to see a Mede8er reviewed with the rest. Top of the heap for the Realtek chip based players in my opinion.

 

[Guest]

I got VMP70 player during the Christmas and it works perfect. All movies I tried, in mkv, rmvb, avi, mp4, and mpg formats, looked smooth and the PQ are great. And I do get the audio using the HDMI without any issue. I would give this player a higher score since it supports more video formats than WDTV Live. I think the reviewer shouldn't put this model within this roundup if network connectivity is important. VMP80 is the player with the network connectivity. No, I don't work for Viewsonic and sorry about my English.

 

[raf23]

"While the O!Play comes with better file support, this is something that WD can easily address with a firmware update. "

yet WD hasn't and may in fact be unable to. I can play my DVD files natively with menus and chapter support on my O!Play and cannot on my Western Digital.

Aftrer using both for three weeks I kept the o!play and dumped the WD TV Live and for our other TV's will either get more O!Plays or the Pop A200 which is coming out in days.

As others have mentioned the WD TV Live has some network problems too, and I am no network n00b, and this is when I use them in same location and same files shares as the O!play. The WD objectively drops connection for no reason regularly enough to be annoying.

 

[Guest]

I picked up the Viewsonic VMP70 at Fry's for $69 and am pretty well pleased with it. I have not had any audio problems using the HDMI cable (I've played mp3,ogg,and flac files successfully). It's played everything I've thrown at it. The video playback (.mkv in my case) is excellent. Plus it has excellent subtitle controls (size and position)and support. The biggest (and really only) drawback to this unit is the lackluster GUI. It's interface is pretty basic which, which will turn off many users. But it is the cheapest unit out there, and I've had no playback issues whatsoever.