Macam Macam Ada

You can’t have your cake and eat it too, but than maybe you can!

I wish when i am stuck in the traffic jam (when i am not driving) or in a hotel room and I need to continue watching last week episode of Battlestar galactica (watching on notebooks doesn’t count), however being that we need to travel light or the car has only a dvd player, you just got to face the traffic listening to hit fm on the radio or recycle old movies in the hotel room. I am not going to bring my Dvico 6500A along with me everywhere i go, although its form factor is still small, its still a overgrown unit.

Well Dvico and Sarotech has released for sometime now, a small media tank player which is able to do what the big boys can. However none of them, were able to play FullHD mkv files till now, and that what this review is about, the new Sarotech DVP-260X players.

I have already used the old series of Sarotech DVP-260S, which was a major pain. Some of misgivings were hard to manage menu system, Long files names are truncated, Not able to fast forward or rewind and some files weren’t able to run. However apart from dvico mini C-2000U Lite, which I also have used before, there weren’t much solution out there for ultimate portability, so they were still a good buy.  Here hoping the new player comes out trumps on the old player.

First off the new player finishing and outlook is much nicer than the old players. Makes the player looks expensive.  The player does feel solidly build and heavier too.

Since the new player has added HD functionality, sarotech has decided to include a hdmi port on the side of the unit.

Theres also a port for coaxial out (although some modifcation on the wires are needed as the hole for it look like a headphone input), usb in and av out for normal composite cables.

Here are the cables and power adapters included with the package. Includes a very nice carry-on bag to place your player during travels.

The units only except 2.5″ hard drives. Don’t really know whether it accepts SSD drives as i don’t have one to test with.  Currently 2.5″ hard drives can reach to 500GB, so thats quite good capacity to fill some HD movies or series inside.  Its a SATA connection and not IDE.

Moving on after filling up the hard drives with some HD media, I went ahead to test the picture quality and how many files types it can run.  Will be testing with TS,TP,AVI,MKV formats also encodes like VC-1.

I was greeted with a glorious menu system when the machine came on.  WTF is he talking about u may ask. Why from my experience the older machine, this menu system totally took me by surprise. Sarotech has totally improve it by adding GUI menu system that looks impressive and easy to understand.

The file system was fast.  It looks like a normal computer directory after you enter into the file sytem.

You scroll using the remote or the button that are on the player itself to the various departments in the menu system.  Scrolling to the setup screen icon will bring up another screen to set many different things for the sarotech.  No.1 on the agenda today was to check whether it was set on hdmi and 1080p output . Checked….

The player is able to shoot out audio to a radio channel (4 channels in setup), this is usually the case if you setting up in a car and do not have a audio input, but added bonus for having this feature.

Talking about cars be very very careful when plugging in to the ciggerate light hole for power. Sarotech does have a car kit which is sold seperately that come with a power adapter for the car. I fully recommend this car kit if u ever need it as using a after market unit might actually blow the player.. unless you want to use a dc to ac adapater.

This sarotech is using the sigma design em8623 processor.  From my experience i find that the chip tends to dull the colours on screen, and the brightness or contrast are sometimes off.  However it does look impressive upon first viewing if you a first time viewer.  Using the DVP-260x I found the picture quality just as i expected.  Some of HD video also has some blockiness.

Here are some of the files i tested

Iron-man vc-1 (video bitrate untouch – running full speed on hdmi cable to the screen). Totally surprise in that the file actually was able to play… Took 30 seconds to start .. but it did start.. however there was a lot of stuttering…

The Dark Knight 1080P (bitrate at 11796 kbit/s) .. Able to start without problems ..however not able to fast forward or jump scene.. Totally crash the player… Did not see any stuttering though before crashing.

The bourne Ultimatum 1080P (bitrate at 9331 k/bits/s) .. start and play beautifully.. no stuttering

Madagascar 2 1080P (bitrate 6369 kbits/s) .. starts and play .. PQ totally out of this world..

The police 1080p (bitrate 16.5 mbps) .. starts and play .. but a lot of stuttering

I guess you starting to see a pattern here. The sigma chip and hdmi solution implanted by sarotech cannot keep up with bitrate video above 10000kbits/s.  So if you’re buying this player u have to keep a look out on the files you pumping into it.

This is not a major problem.  As a portability unit u don’t need such high bitrate files to enjoy viewing as I estimate that most of us who uses it will be using it in a car or hotel room which has crappy tv/lcd or tiny screens.. So a large bitrate file is totally overblown for sarotech usage.  Most I see will get 720P files to run in the machine.  Although future upgrades in firmware might improve some of this files handling.

Sound

For sound its able to play most of the sound standard found in most media files without problems running normal composite red and white wires. However a AVR, connected via digital co-axial, is needed if you need to play DTS sound files.

Some operational knick knacks:

When you first install the player to a HDMI LCD screen, sometimes theres no picture will appear so u need to used the remote control and press the TV-out button to change blindly all the settings for video until the picture comes out. This is quite normal for all Media tank players, however I  did come across a problem when and if the player crashes and you need to do a hard reset (like the dark knight file ). It took some pressing of the remote before a picture come out on my lcd.  Irratating as it might be, maybe i was doing something wrong.

After running a few of this HD files I went and touch the player. Its was hot to touch, very hot… Hmmm I not to sure about running it too long with HD movies.

The remote does what its needed. Goto command button is there. You able to skip to a special scene by punching in the minutes and seconds.

Just found another bug today, might be major to some, while playing files one by one i notice after a while the player will somehow pick the wrong media file to play. For example .. You have media files name : apple , orange, rambutan.. when choosing orange it somehows will play rambutan or apple instead. This could be a firmware flaw.  Only solution is to keep each individual files in a directory. Like apple file will be place inside apple folder and so on.

Conclusion:

Although its has some bugs here and there I am going to recommend this player if you constantly need to be moving around and need media files to watch.  The picture quality is quite good to boot and its small and light what else do you want to ask for.  Putting all four season of BEN10 cartoons in the player and running them in the car or the hotel room is a blessing in disquise.  Don’t underestimate what this small players can do to calm down even the biggest tantrums or bored lover in the room.  But only problem i can see its the heat coming out from this machines.  Will it last…….

Likes:

Great menu system

HDMI connection

Fast menu system

Slick looking machine

Dislike

Heat

No HDMI cables included

Some problems with some media files (might improve with further firmware upgrades)

More Pics of the player:-

Some pics i took while running the Sarotech player… (click for bigger pictures.. small pictures tends to make picture sharper and colourful)

Like to thank aZbro for loaning this unit for the review…..