TVisto Series 3.5'' Multimedia External Hard Drive Enclosure
by Metal Gear
|
Our Price: $99.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of TVisto Series 3.5'' Multimedia External Hard Drive Enclosure
Customer Review: Works Fine
Summary: 4 Stars
A little slow but works. [...]I updated the firmware but I have not noticed any important change.
If you have a lot of movies (copied or downloaded) and wanted in a single place to view it at a reasonable price... this is your choice.
Customer Review: Almost there but doesn't live up to advertised capability.
Summary: 3 Stars
The documentation is not necessarily clear, especially for someone who has never dealt with an unformatted externally connected USB Drive. In fact if you have never formatted a Hard Drive at all you may be left scratching your head. The directions no doubt make complete sense to an IT person but not the layman consumer. It makes reference to opening Computer Management and Disk Management. Say what??? It took some digging on the Internet but I realized my ignorance. The path is: Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management. It will ask you some other things along the way, like initializing the drive. Just click OK. You are left up to your own devices as far as actually formatting the drive with Disk Manager, I did not record my actual steps. I recommend you visit the Hard Drive manufacturer's website.
I initially got a `USB device not recognized' error. I'm using a 500GB Seagate Barracuda Ultra ATA IDE, 7200.1 model#: ST350063 0A. It was shipped with the jumper set to Cable Select. I removed the jumper completely, Bingo! now it worked. Again isn't this basic information that could be added to the manual. Duhhh! I was finally able to format the drive according to the steps above. It has a formatted capacity of 465.76GB. Follow the instructions to create the four main Folders/Directories and you're off. Just download your files to it.
Now for the actual results. It works as described, kind of. So far I am unable to play ACC (mp4) files. Very frustrating since it clearly says that it can. Also there is no VGA output cabability as advertised, so if you are thinking of using it in conjuction with a monitor forget it. I am going to give it a try for bit and them maybe consider the MviX.
Ok I've had some time with it now and I'm still not very impressed. The menu features could definitely use work. Very clumsy. As for the AAC capability they have now qualified it's capabilities in their literature. Basically it doesn't play mp4 audio.
Customer Review: Great for the road. Good in the home, although a little outdated.
Summary: 3 Stars
I used this as a primary media player on my home TV for about a year before I began building HTPCs. It worked well and I had very few complaints about it.
I was able to put up to a 500GB drive in mine and it played back most all of my DivX and XviD encoded movies. I'm not into music, but I know it will play most of the more common formats.
Setup is not overly difficult, but is a little tricky to make the settings stick (especially for audio). Menus are simple, yet effective, and there are some decent playback controls available while viewing videos.
There are plenty of output options available, with even more if purchased separately (component for HD, for example). S-Video, Composite, analog stereo, and optical S/PDIF are all standard. There is also USB and Firewire ports for transferring your media.
Updates for the device are probably long gone as newer models have far surpassed what this is capable of. However, if you want simple and inexpensive (as this one should be now), it's a good device to take on vacations or weekend trips since the common hookups will attach to most hotel TVs without a hitch. This makes it great if you have kids and want to bring all their favorite shows (if you encode them, like I do).
On the downside, the device is a little slow to respond to the remote at times. Not a big deal, but it is there. Also, it will only take specifically encoded files, meaning certain features of supported formats will make it incompatible with the TVISTO (GMC/QPEL in XviD, for example). I would have also liked AVC playback, but I realize this is an older device and AVC was not as popular when I bought this.
Customer Review: OK device
Summary: 3 Stars
The device is OK. I have it connected through the S-video for the video portion. This device is not compatible with all digital formats. Many in the higher quality video is not supported. (Very frustrating) There are others that work will all digital video formats. I'd look into them. Maybe a couple dollars more, but not significant.Customer Review: A littie disappointed
Summary: 3 Stars
Works as advertised, however, I have to manually reset with on/off switch every time I start up the unit. Also leads on supplied cable are too short to reach tv and sound system amplifier.