Mvix ULTIO MX-800HD Media Center Review

Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn give your digital media the full home theater experience with the ULTIO MX-800HD Media Center which supports HD video codec, streams video from your PC and download straight from its built-in torrent client, all for only $170.

What You Need To Know

• The Media Center is a hybrid between a home theater PC and a network attached storage.
• Basically, it's a media storage hard drive for your home entertainment system.
• Users can network between the ULTIO and your computer via a router or wireless connection (with an adapter) to watch videos on your TV that would normally live on your desktop.
• It supports a variety of video codecs, like mpegs, MOVs, AVI and even DIV-X.
• Set up is as easy as plugging the ULTIO into your TV with the HDMI cable, and then connecting it to your computer with an Ethernet cord.
• This means you don't have to burn your files to discs.
• The navigation isn't too bad, even if it doesn't look very user-friendly.
• Once you get into the system, the interface leaves a little to be desired: it's pretty bland and very similar to navigating an FTP server.
• You navigate with a remote, which is slow if you're typing in log-in info or renaming files.
• File management is pretty easy: you can copy, paste, delete and transfer files between the Mvix's hard drive and your computer.
• It also supports universal plug and play for things like Play On.
• There is a built-in Bit-torrent client, which works so-so when streaming content.
• You can only access the client through your PC, which takes away from the computer free experience.
• You can stream video from Hulu, Netflix and YouTube directly through Play On but it's $40 for the program.
• The video quality is good: the ULTIO can playback in full 1080p so it allows you to take full advantage of your TV over your computer monitor.
• However, if you're watching podcasts for the Internet, then not so much.

Price

• $170.00: This would be a good purchase if you're looking to watch video files or stream video to your television. However, if you already have a 360, PlayStation 3 or Blu-ray player, then you might want to reconsider.

Rating

• 3 Seals of Approval out of 5. (How do we rate gadgets?)

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