Hisense MP800H (Blue) Review

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(More customer reviews)First, some context: I already have multiple media players in my house: specifically, a bunch of used, original XBoxes (NOT 360's) modded with XBMC.They work great, except for not playing HD files in general and certain WMV files in particular.They also don't fast-forward or rewind on streaming content, which makes it tough to watch e.g. Netflix stuff when you're hard of hearing and sometimes need to rewind to hear what people said.

So, I bought this box mainly intending to use it to play those problematic files and to deal with streaming content, as a supplement to my existing machines.For that reason, I'm not very demanding in what I expected from this unit, so you may want to take my review with a grain of salt if you are going to be using this as your only media player.Conversely, if you just want a cheap way to play files off your PC or a USB stick, and aren't used to the slick user interface of XBMC, you should probably ignore my technical quibbles and just buy it already; it's very similar to the O!Play (albeit lacking in eSATA support), but it costs a good bit less.

Okay, now for the good bits.The unit worked fine out of the box, easily browsing my home network and finding my wife's PC and mine, as well as seeing the PlayOn running on another PC.It also easily browsed any USB flash sticks I hooked up to it.(Didn't try any hard drives, since I'm mainly using it as a networked player.)

Setting it up took all of five minutes -- plug cables, turn on, go through the minimal setup menu -- most of which was already configured perfectly.My wife loved the video preview feature, that starts playing a movie as soon as you highlight it, so you can see what it is even if you don't recognize the file name.I liked the fact that (unlike XBMC and many other players) it allows you to see music, image, and video files all in the same directory at the same time.And it easily plays the HD and WMV9 files that I couldn't play on my on my other machines.It even saves where you left off in a given video, and lets you pick up from there the next time you play, just like XBMC.

In short, the basic functionality works quite well and is easy to set up, and it's hard to beat the price (unless you go and do what I did for my other machines and buy used XBoxes and fit them with XBMC).It also has some cool features you don't get in XBMC, like the video preview, and the ability to play videos at 1.5x and 2x speed, while the sound still plays.(Very nice.)It also can fast-forward video streams from PlayOn (at least, it did with MyMedia files via PlayOn), but can't rewind them.

Okay, now the bad bits.Many files that my other machines play with no problems (mostly WMV2/WMV8 files) simply show up as "Invalid File" on this unit.So, I can't just ditch my other media players and use this instead.Out of the box, there was no ability to skip to a particular time point in a movie, although a firmware upgrade partially fixed that (more on the upgrade later).The image viewing is incredibly annoying, as it is essentially *always* in slideshow mode (unless you hit Pause, which makes a big green pause symbol appear and *stay there* covering part of the picture!), and the default display time was literally just 2 seconds long.

The remote control is also confusing, with many buttons having lots of different functions, while other buttons have just one (mostly-useless) function.For example, the "menu" button throws you entirely out of wherever you're browsing, all the way back to square one.So heaven help you if you've just browsed 8 or 9 levels deep into your network...you'll have to do it all over again.

With the software version it came with, it doesn't even have a way to save your network login info across power-downs, so you've got to reenter your credentials every time, even to access shares as a guest.(At least, as I experienced it with my network; your mileage may vary.)Adding further insult to injury, its network browse wouldn't find our home NAS (a DNS-323), which is where most of the files we wanted to play are stored (and which XBMC finds with ease).I literally had to hack the unit in order to fix this issue (more on that later as well).

In short, I found the unit out of the box to be very irritating, especially in comparison to the ease with which XBMC performs the same functions, and the few nice touches (preview, audio-during-fast-forward) didn't really make up for the shortcomings.(Also, playback of some files had a bit of interlace artifacting -- I can't be 100% certain this was the unit and not the TV or the files themselves, since they were hi-def files I couldn't play on XBMC for comparison.)

Browsing the AVS Forums, I found reports that there were firmware upgrades which would save network logins, and maybe fix some of the other issues as well, so I downloaded the 046_en firmware upgrade and installed it.This was ridiculously easy, though you do need a RAR extraction tool since that's the format the firmware downloads in.You just pop the firmware image on a USB stick, plug it in, and then pick the right menu option.A few minutes later, you've got an updated version that will store your network logins as shortcuts, and the ability to skip to a specified time point in a movie...at least for some (but not all) video formats.

The upgrade also makes it so that pushing the setup button doesn't lose your place; if you press setup (even while watching a video), you can make setting changes and then push setup again to get back to your video or browsing location.There also were some improvements in subtitle handling, though I didn't mess with that very much.

The upgrade does not, however, fix the issue with WMV2/WMV8 (and a small number of AVI) files not playing.Nor does it address the fact that you can't fast forward, rewind, or seek within sound files.Most of my MP3 files come from training CDs or other spoken-word audio, lasting 30 minutes or more in duration, but which I rarely listen to in one sitting.So, the inability to control playback (or even save where you left off in one) is annoying.

Other quirks: no DVD menus on IFO/VOB files (I didn't try an .iso, but I'd guess it doesn't work there either), some JPEG images cause a message about "DCT matrix" or something like that to pop up, and then the image is really blocky and blurry.(Images in general don't seem to look very good, it looks like it might be rescaling them rather than properly resampling them.)

The upgrade also didn't fix my NAS not showing in the network browser, and the new shortcuts feature still forces you to manually select which shares you want to use every time you start up the machine -- you still can't create a shortcut to a specific directory on a computer in your network.

So, I had to consult various AVS Forum discussions (and ASUS forum discussions about the O!Play) to learn from others who had hacked the device to have better network shortcuts.As it turns out, the MP800H is a Linux-based device very similar to the O!Play, and you can telnet into it to get full access to the device's internal configuration.After a bit of study, I was able to get the network shortcut workaround to work (including making shortcuts to the NAS device that the MP800H wouldn't find on its own).

Unfortunately, the published way of hacking in these shortcuts requires you to have a USB flash stick or hard drive attached, as it works by making your network shortcuts show up as if they're attached USB devices.Since my files are all on the network, I found it really unsatisfactory to have to keep a USB device plugged in, so I spent a few hours of tinkering on my own to figure out how the player software could tell that a USB device was attached, and eventually found a way to fool it.So now, I have a box that can browse to whatever network shortcuts I want from the moment it powers up, without having a USB cord hanging off the side of it.(This may have been more trouble than it was worth, however, since it involved creating a shell script on the machine that, among other things, forces the network to initialize early, and simulates a USB stick being attached.)

In summary, though, it's not too bad for the price I paid.It seems to have some potential for further interesting hacking (tech tip: you can use busybox-mipsel 1.16.1 on it), and maybe eventually there will be firmware upgrades that fix the gaps and quirks.It isn't really a substitute for a full-blown HTPC, or even for an original XBox running XBMC, but it does play some HD and other stuff that the XBox+XBMC combination won't.Which, after all, was really all I wanted it for in the first place.Now that I've hacked it to have some decent shortcuts, it looks like it'll be reasonable for that purpose.

(Oh...one last note in case you're wondering: this box is *not* a NAS replacement.That is, if you hook up a hard drive to it, don't expect that you'll be able to get to that hard drive via your network.I saw some forum discussions about people hacking it to add that functionality, but I don't know what's involved and didn't try it myself.So, if you want to put things on an attached drive, you'll have to connect it to something else, unless the things in question are on another USB device, in which case you can use the MP800H's file management tool to copy or move files between two attached USB devices.)

(Also, a side note to the copyright holders of Linux and busybox: the manufacturers of this device are currently infringing your copyright by shipping without the source code (or any offer to provide it), and with copyright notices removed; e.g. the installed version of busybox doesn't display its copyright and license.)

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Product Description:
Watch the films and TV programmes you download from the internet directly on your TV in HD. For:Supports Full 1080p HDMI playback Small size means it wont take up too much room Massive range of files means your well catered forAgainst:Design not to everyones taste Remote takes a little time to masterWhat our customers say:" Awesome for this price..: Audio and video performance just perfect, bye bye DVD hello mkv on my NAS ! Only niggle from me the UI is ok but not awesome like the playback, thumbnails of cover art would be appreciated. However at this price I'm not docking any marks for this. Anonymous 1 May 2010 "" Awesome wee unit: This is a great system, as the commenter below says, I've never seen anything close at this price. Plays x264 MKVs at 1080p through hdmi without breaking a sweat. Anonymous 3 Febuary 2010 " See all Hisense 1080p HD TV Media Player reviews Features: hdmi Connectivity 1 x hdmi PortResolution 1920x1080p Video codec- MPEG1,MPEG-2 up to 1080p, MPEG-4 (720P/1080i/1080p), Xvid,H.264 up to 1080p,WMV9/VC-1 up to 1080p, RealNetworks(RM/RMVB)8/9/10 up to 1920*720(720P), Flash VideoWeight 315g Simply plug in your USB drive and your TV into the Hisense player and you're off. Alternatively, you can plug it into your wired home network and stream films directly from your PC or a NAS box. The Hisense media player has an HDMI connector for connecting to your TV (like the connector on the back of your PS3), giving you HD quality film playback on your HD ready TV.The box also includes a remote control. - Supports Full HD: 1080p- Maximum Stream Rate: 800Mbps- All Video Format: Real Audio RM/RMVB, WMV9(VC-1), MkV (H.264), FLV, 3GP - True HD- DLNA - UPnP / Network Neighbourhood- Support both FAT / NTFC formatted USB Storage Device