Avermedia: A Small, Inexpensive Media Player (With A Few Catches)
We’ve seen our fair share of media players- those handy boxes that help take your digital media collection and display it on a TV. We’ve seen full-featured ones that can absorb nearly anything you can throw at it, we’ve seen smaller ones that offer easy connections to specific hard drives, and ones that offer built-in wireless. Today’s device might not be a manufacturer that you recognize, but more and more, we’ve been seeing that these devices are pretty similar.
And the Avermedia AVerLife MCECINEMA is pretty nice at first glance. We usually don’t lead with prices, but for this one, it’s the stand-out feature. At $50 or less, that’s a lot more money in your pocket to spend on media. Unlike some others, it does include HDMI out, and also component and composite. And you can transfer your files to it using a portable hard drive (USB 2.0), or any of the most common memory cards (SD, SDHC, MMC, or MemoryStick). But there is a significant item missing here- any network connectivity. Since we store most of our data on network attached storage devices, this was an issue- but for those who don’t mind shuttling USB hard drives between the PC and their entertainment center, it won’t be a problem.
But the AVerLife offers a good range of format support, including MPEG 1, 2, 3, and 4, AVI, DivX and XviD, along with MOV, WAV, and helpfully even OGG. Picture formats include all of the usual suspects, except for the oft-missing RAW. The included remote control is minimal, but gets the job done. Which leaves only the software to discuss, really- and that’s where the thriftiness definitely shows. We found navigating through the menus pretty annoying, and larger libraries quite difficult to scroll through. We faced some playback pauses, especially when using larger files, and everything definitely felt sluggish. But if you can handle some flaws, and don’t have a console (all of which offer some level of media support), this is an easy way to get one of the lowest-cost media players that we’ve seen.
