DViCO TViX HD M-5100SH - Digital AV player - HDD 500 GB

 

 

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I'm a lover of HD media, and used to go through the long and cumbersome task of running my Media Centre PC through my XBox 360 in order to play the 1080p (and sometimes 720p) media through my HD TV. Not only did it take up most of the resources of the PC by streaming the content, but it also meant that there had to be a certain degree of buffering if the connection was being made by WiFi rather than wired LAN.

Eventually, I went looking for a device which would cut out the middle man and I found the Tvix units. Some research later, and around 100 different pages from a forum embedded to memory, I decided to go for the 1TB version. Wow... what a machine!!

Not only did it look great right out of the box (it's cylindrical, with a black brushed alluminium finish... beautiful!) but it also played immediately with no setup required. I plugged the HDMI cable into the back, and plugged an SPDIF TOS cable from the back into my AV Amp and that was it. Full access to HD quality immediately. I didn't bother copying anything over to it for testing, I just plugged my WD Passport drive directly into the USB port on the back and started to stream from the external hard disk immediately.

One thing I noticed straight away... no audio sync problems or juddering frames like there was with the PC (even with 2 x 640mb Nvidia cards!), so the .ts format media played seamlessly. Sound quality was stunning and even the picture quality was better than expected - SO much better than I was achieving through the Media Centre PC running through the XBox 360.

I downloaded and installed various firmware upgrades until I was happy with my choice (the latest, 1.3.15 allows playback of VC1 content too) so now I have around 400Gb left on it and it's full of HD content in MKV and TS format as well as standard definition content in AVI, MPG, WMV etc.

I recently decided to play it through a 1280 x 720 resolution InFocus projector and was stunned by how much better it was at playing the HD content than a direct VGA or HDMI connection from my PC. The colours were more realistic, yet also more vibrant, and the blacks were much more solid and realistic. It has given my projector a whole new lease of life and I guarantee that I'll be using it more than ever now.

I really can't praise this machine enough - I'm already considering another one for upstairs although, to be honest, it's small and compact enough to move between rooms without too much hassle.

I hope this helps

The Tvix M-5100SHM is an amazing gadget. It plays almost any video file I throw at it including ISO, WMV, MOV, MP4 and MKV (with a firmware upgrade).
It plays video content upto 1080p through HDMI. Picture quality is amazing, the sound is even better!
It has optical out, USB 2.0 and an ethernet port.
It's easy to set up and takes no time at all transferring files from your PC via the USB port. You can connect an external hard drive to the tvix and it will instantly recognize it.
I recommend formatting the hard drive to NTFS hard drive if you're trnasferring files lager than 4GB.

The menu is bog standard but easy to navigate. You can delete files using the remote which is handy, so you won't need to connect it to your computer everytime you want to delete something.
You can also create your own backgrounds for each folder on the tvix which is a nice touch.

With the optional docking station you can record TV programs directly onto the Tvix Media Player.

Although expensive, this is definately worth the purchase, especially if you're not happy with the HD content you get with Sky or Virgin Media. I now watch all my favourite TV shows in full 1080p (without commercials too!) Plus, you are not contracted to a hefty monthly subscription either. This is definitely the best gadget I have bought this year.

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