Customer Reviews

AVerMedia MCECINEMA Averlife Cinema Media Player

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bottom Line: Good for pictures anywhere or video files on a small screen. (To be fair, for the price this isn't all that bad. I bought it for a bit less than "the price" on sale so I feel even better.)

The unit is small, about the size of a paperback book. I liked that it came with both a component cable (necessary because the player-side connection is non-standard) and an HDMI connector. The player display and menus have a polished look, unlike some low cost media players still available.

Image display is nice. There are a number of built in, nicely done, transitions, and you can configure it to use one all the time or select randomly.

Video display is where this thing falls apart. To test it I rendered the same short movie clip at three different MPEG-2 resolutions. VCD - 480x480, PC - 640x480, and HD - 1920x1080. The VCD played fine but was fuzzy on my large screen. The PC version was sharper but noticeable slower. (The accompanying audio changed key... actually, several keys.) The HD version wouldn't play at all. (There was a pop-up message saying it was an unrecognized format.)

Pros: Small; NTFS for USB hard drives (meh); Remote; Wide range of outputs (will go from my HDTV to CRT in kids room to LCD in mini van).

Cons: No internal storage (meh); No exFAT (Biggie: no support for <4GB files, most 720p files are ~6GB); No support for x264 MKV (vast majority of rip'd movies); No network.

I didn't even get to play one movie since it wouldn't play a x264 MKV's. The menu did come up. I reformatted my flash drive to NTFS (not a good idea) and it did recognize it.

Returning it.

Doesn't support .M4V format, so not useful for me. Love my WD-TV, guess there's a reason this was 1/2 the price. Picture looks good with photos and the limited content I had it supports. So, a 2 for me.

The manual or description nowhere says that this player can play HD video files. It do has HDMI output, and can output a 720p picture, but it is only for player menu and image display. Video playback is purely SD (1024x576 is not a HD, it's just native 16:9 SD).

I've tried various video formats, here's the results:

DIVX AVI (DIVX3-4-5-6) - All ok.

ISO MPEG2 (720x576) - ok.

SVCD (544x576, 480x576) - partially ok, while playback is smooth and in sync with audio, image gets distorted at regular intervals of time (approx once per 2 seconds).

RealMedia - I had some old, QCIF resolution files, thrown them in, plays them OK. Have no idea, how it will handle larger resolution files.

Quicktime (.mov), both small resolution files, and higher resolution ones (640x480x30fps) were played nicely.

While this unit plays standalone .vob files finely, it does not supports DVD menu, navigation or chapters.

The only one drawback I've noticed is oversaturated colors at HDMI output (haven't tried other ones). I have to reduce saturation on my TV from 50 to 30, when using this player, to make colors look normal.

Another con - in movies with AC3 audio, audio level is too low, and have to crank up it to max.

Another con #2 - while this device recognises flash drives and hard drives easilly, it does not recognises external DVD-ROM.

Overall, this is nice product, and for $20 price tag, this will be the quite reasonable purchase.

UPDATE: Found a serious flaw with this device. Contacted avermedia support, but no answer for 2 weeks so far.

When playing .VOB files, which have audio track with LPCM audio in it (most musical videos and concert recordings have LPCM audio), video and audio playback speed increases, hissing and chopping sound is heard, and video and audio came out of sync.

First I must say that I was a bit shocked when I came to write this review that the price for this device has doubled. I bought it for $29.99 around Thanksgiving.

PLAYER: This little gadget works like a dream. I only download AVI(Xvid/Divx/AC3/MP3) files and this media player plays them flawlessly on my 24" flat screen. The audio is good, some files do play a bit lower than others and you have to turn up the volume but it was not the player, it depends on the file. It is compact and light and quickly reads my flash drives and my 1TB Vantec External Hard Drive. On top of the unit are buttons for selecting files etc. except for a power button but if you keep reading you will find out how you can get around that. This player does not play HD files but that is no deal breaker for me because I don't download them (file size too big takes up more space).

REMOTE: I was thinking when I bought this player that I had to be extremely careful with the remote because if it became broken or stopped working I would not be able to turn on this player and use it-but I found out a way by accident. I usually keep my player plugged in and one day I was moving it to another location so I had to unplug the player and when I plugged it back in, the unit automatically came on, I tried it a few more times to make sure it was not a one-off thing but it comes on every time, so that was a relief.

The remote is a bit small but easy to use. You can rewind, pause, fast forward etc but the only thing I wish it could do is fast forward in frames.

The range is okay, my tv room is 12 feet long but you usually have to aim more directly at player for good control.

As for other functions like displaying text/files I can't speak on them because I have no intention of using them, I use my computer for that but I have used the photo function to show a friend some pictures, they displayed okay but the resolution was not as great as on the computer but that was expected because they are two different devices and one screen is much larger that the other.

Before buying this player I did extensive research to find the player that was right for me- my advice before buying a media player bear in mind the type of files you will be using and if the player is compatible with them.

Hope this helps.

It worth what i paid, it could be better, but its great, i used all the time at home, it is a easy way to watch TV

This is a great accessory for the TV, reproduce the most popular video formats and subtitles. Easy to connect and excellent quality. You can use a flash drive to reproduce the videos.

This is really a very nice product.

Initially I was not getting the output at all and thought that it would not work or was faulty. It was not, when the product is connected to output the settings are at default and thus would not able able to reproduce the output. Once I figured that out, this small box works great. I use this to connect my 3M pocket projector and match movies etc from my 2TB HDD.

This is great, some of the formates are not supported by this product. My 3M projector does play that directly from its internal memory.

This does not stream live videos. This definitely is good product for those who just want to connect the HDD and watch movies or pictures etc without any laptop or computer.

I like the media player and its nice features. The free HDMI cable is nice also. The only thing the player really lacks is it doesn't play MP4's other than that its a nice player especially for the money.

I got this as an Amazon Gold Box Special on the spur of the moment in April 2011. I'm calling it very good and I work with MPG2 and AVI files all the time, usually on my Sony recent HDTV. But, I have an 5 year old small Sony HDTV and I us the YPrPg cable (provided). This thing does just about everything you could want including music and photos, generating it's own music for slide shows if you have a \Music directory on it. It even plays oddball music formats. Full disclosure: virtually all of my video files are less than 2.5GB. It did fail to play some HD MPG2 files of Rick Steves from one source saying "FORMAT NOT SUPPORTED". Everything else so far plays. Overall I like it a lot, and the price is right. It has many formatting options and several of them work in HD on my old Sony set. If I send one of these to my dad he can watch videos I send him on cards, which is nice.