Sony SMPU10 USB Media Player (Black)

This falls short of expectations for several reasons. Too bad, since I’ve always been a SONY fan. I received my unit last night (paid $59) and hooked it up to our main media center and attached an external 1 TB drive containing a large library of movies and video clips to test it out. For comparison, I have the WD TV HD Media on one HDTV, Mac Mini (OS X 10.6) setup on another running Boxee, and a quad-core PC running Windows 7 Windows Media Center and Boxee (PC) for comparison. Here are my observations:

1. Looks – not bad (typical SONY styling), small footprint, muted blue LED which isn’t too bright which is a common problem with a lot of new gadgets, a bit flimsy and light such that when you hook up either an HDMI or component cable the unit will lift off the surface because of cord bend (I had to make sure the cables were not twisted and even had to add a weight on top of the media player to keep it stable)

2. USB design – lousy, there’s only one USB port and it’s located on the front which looks terrible on my media center by having a cord or thumbdrive sticking straight out. This is where the WD TV HD wins out since it has 2 USB ports (one in the back and one on the side which hides your connections). You can attach any USB device up to both ports and access both at the same time.

3. Ugly menu interface – I was really disappointed that the software team for this unit did not make a more user-friendly and visually appealing menu. The menus are all in a bland VCR-menu font and if you have a folder with a lot of files, it only shows a few at a time and the scrolling is very slow. It would have been nicer if they had designed a faster scrolling intuitive menu like on the PSP rather than the current large font menus that aren’t even in HD resolution and have no ability to sort your files. Again, the WD TV HD stands out with a superior menu system that also includes generating thumbnail pictures. Truthfully, the SONY menu system reminds me of an old VCR or digital camera menu. My Mac Mini setup with Boxee is the nicest by far using wireless streaming from a HP Home MediaSmart server, but it’s more complicated to setup and obviously much more expensive.

4. Video formats – this is where the unit really falls short. I used a 1 TB WD Prestige external drive and loaded a library of various formats including DVD iso’s, DIVX, avi, mov, mp4, H.264, etc. I’m not a video tech expert, but suffice to say that > 95% of my video files were recognized and played perfectly on the WD TV HD player, while only ~ 50% of these files would play on the SONY media player and you frequently get an error or unrecognized file message. The SONY player is unable to read H.264 formatted video files while the WD TV HD has no problem.

***(5.) Netflix/Pandora streaming content – obviously this unit is not network-ready, but I thought it would be worth mentioning that using either a small-form Mac or PC with proper specs and HDMI output that you can run free apps like Boxee of just use the Windows Media Center (Windows 7 version is very stable and quite nice) to get internet HD streaming content in a nice packaged interface which is far better than all of the specialized media players. The other option is getting a network player like WD TV HD Live, Asus O’Play, or Roku. Another advantage of using a computer media center is that you can take advantage of a wireless network to avoid cable clutter and be able to run applications and games.

Conclusion – I’m moving this player to the bedroom flat screen and using the WD TV HD on our main media center. Disappointing since our our primary media center includes mostly SONY components. My overall impression is that this unit was rushed out too fast for the holiday season and deserved more refinement. Take a look at my review on the WD TV HD Media player for comparison.

*** Have been using this for a few days now and can confirm that H.264 files are incompatible with this player which is a major flaw considering this is the most common format for HD streaming and HD camcorders. On the other hand, no problem playing Divx formats. Unlike other media players, this one only plays in “near HD quality” (read specs) and does not play 1080p. ***

Update 2/2010 – this player is virtually useless since it handles only limited file formats and has been moved to the guest room. The standard video settings that I typically use for HandBrake conversions are not compatible with this player. The price has ranged on Amazon from ~ $30 – $60 and for those lucky to get it at $30, it’s not a bad deal recognizing that you may have to spend some time converting your video files. On the other hand, at the current price of $50 I’d still recommend spending just a bit more to get either the WD HD or Asus O’Play models which can be purchased at other sites ~ $70 and will handle virtually all file…

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