At the moment, a wide range of media players from different manufacturers is available. But nevertheless, new players appear on the market - for example, not so long ago products of the iNeXT company appeared in Ukraine, the first model of which, HD1, will now be considered.
Design
The player is quite large, but this is not surprising - it has the ability to install an internal HDD of 3.5 ″ form factor. This can be done without disassembling the case, but still not in a very convenient way: a rather tight cover snaps off on the side wall, which hides a compartment with a plastic tray for installing a hard drive. When installing a disc, the tray must be strongly bent - it is difficult to break it, but still this method of installation is surprising.
Appearance iNeXT HD1 very attractive: plastic matte side edges, strict lines, the upper part is made of anodized aluminum and has a barely noticeable horizontal texture. The product is equipped with a large information display with a pleasant color of symbols (in the settings it is possible to turn off the display). True, the manufacturer clearly went too far with the number of logos informing about supported technologies on the top panel of the device, but this weakness can be forgiven. This model differs from other media players in the mass of control keys on the front panel - there are 7 of them in total, and if necessary, you can control the player without a remote control. But, the designations on them are very faintly noticeable, and therefore, first you will need to remember the location of the menu call and other buttons so that you can press them blindly.
On the right side face there is a card reader, 2 USB 2.0 ports for connecting external drives to a media player. There is also one USB 3.0 - used to connect the device itself to a personal computer. Apparently, this option of filling the built-in storage has already completely supplanted the eSATA port, which never really caught on. It should be noted that the product does not have more USB ports - neither in the back nor in the front, which must be taken into account when choosing an installation site; external drives are connected only from the side, which may not be very convenient.
On the rear panel, we see a large number of connectors: 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet port, composite, component video outputs, HDMI 1.4, digital optical and coaxial, as well as analog (stereo) audio outputs.
Insofar as iNeXT HD1 supports the possibility of installing a hard drive, there is a need to use an active cooling system - the noise from a working cooler is not strong, but you can hear it in a quiet room at close range.
The remote control is medium in size, has a strict shape with chopped edges. The location of the control buttons is very convenient, there are more than enough buttons for additional functions.
In work
The media player is loaded quite quickly, in half a minute. The menu in the device is simple and responsive, its items are arranged in a long horizontal line: file manager, audio, photo, video, etc.
In addition to the native shell, which is based on Linux, iNeXT HD1 also has an "additional" one - Android 2.2.1. When it is activated, the turn-on time slightly increases - a little less than a minute takes from starting the device to full loading. The operating system is presented here in a noticeably "stripped down" version - it is launched from the main menu by selecting the appropriate item and after that a simplified desktop with a small number of preinstalled applications (browser, calculator, media center and file manager) appears on the display. Also, the device does not have access to the Android Market (it uses the Android App Center instead). But it works pretty fast even when expanded to 1080p, which is undoubtedly a plus.The iNeXT HD1 supports the ability to connect a keyboard and mouse, with the help of which it becomes much more convenient to control the Android shell (at the same time, they will occupy both USB ports, which will no longer allow you to connect an external drive). Also, the keyboard and mouse can be used in the web browser, which is located in the main menu, and most likely it is the same as in the Android shell.
You can use additional functionality in the Applications menu. Here are located a dozen different online services, not only standard Picasa, Flickr, YouTube comrades, but also closer to the domestic user - KartinkaTV, GlavTV, UA Online. It should also be noted that iNeXT HD1 supports self-downloading torrents thanks to the preinstalled Transmission client.
The video starts quite quickly - from 2 to 6 seconds, depending on the specific file. Stopping the video and exiting the menu takes a little more than two seconds, which is also quite good. Blu-ray images (from an ISO file or as a folder) are also launched quite quickly - 3-8 seconds. The iNeXT HD1 supports the BD-Lite menu, the option is activated from the main menu (in the standard mode it is disabled). Unfortunately, there is no BD-Live support, films containing such a menu start as a regular video, and the media player's own menu is used to switch tracks and subtitles. The main merit of iNeXT HD1 is the support for playing Blu-ray 3D images - it should be noted that no player with chips from Sigma Designs has such functionality yet, since they will only get BD3D support in the SMP8910 chip (at the moment all models can only play 3D rips side-by-side).
In the test for performance, the iNeXT HD1 showed excellent results - from the USB hard drive, the slowdowns began in the region of 90-100 Mbit / s, when playing from the internal HDD, the device coped even with a very high bitrate of 130 Mbit / s. Over the local network at a speed of 100 megabits, video files with a bitrate of up to 40 Mb / s were played without delays; when copying files, the speed was 6.1 MB / s.
When testing for compatibility, the product, as expected, coped with the playback of audio tracks of all popular formats, including DTS MA and Dolby TrueHD, perfectly played DVD in an ISO file and the VIDEO_TS folder, and also played 1080p 60 fps AVCHD video from a digital camcorder without any delays. and subtitles in SRT, SSA and SUB / IDX formats were displayed correctly.
It should be noted that the media player is constantly supported by the manufacturer - so, although the basic firmware was a little raw, after several updates the most unpleasant bugs were fixed, and no noticeable flaws were revealed during testing.
Outcomes
iNeXT HD1 is a very interesting media player at an affordable price, rich in functionality and high performance. For fans of watching movies in 3D, this is quite a suitable product, thanks to the support of Blu-ray 3D technology, which makes it practically the first candidate for purchase. It is unlikely that someone will be interested in the second shell based on Android, most likely here it is only "for show", but still it will not be superfluous. The disadvantages include the lack of a Wi-Fi module, which has recently been quite common in many media players. Of course, you can consider the older model iNeXT HD1 W (the price is different - about $ 20), but the Wi-Fi receiver is presented as a USB module that occupies a separate USB port, which may not always be convenient.
Liked
+ Rich functionality
+ High performance
+ Support for Blu-ray 3D technology
+ Reasonable price
Did not like
- No BD-Live menu support
- No built-in Wi-Fi module
