Customer Reviews

Brite-View CinemaCube networkable media player and BitTorrent downloader! (model # BV-5003)

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

 

 

the good:
1. can play back most popular video files.
2. works good with external usb harddrive.

the bad:
1. 9 out of 10 .mkv fiels can not be play.
2. serious lag when comes to HD real(rm/rmvb) video files.
3. take way too long to search the usb external hard drive for video file. make it worse, it do the same search over & over again whenever you change to diffrent folder even it is still in the same hard drive.
4. the worst part: 9 out 10 bt seeds from those popular bt site like mininova/isohunt... etc never start downloading, always "waiting" & 0% (all these seeds works lighting fast on the computer with same network) while only the bt files from the manufcture's website did works fine:-).

other thought: bought this media player for it's BT prt but very disppointed. other than the network fuction, there's no diffrent with the one i had before which is cheaper & much easy to use. what a waste of money!

First of all for the price this is a very decent product (those complain about build quality should take price into factor). The idea to combine BT, local media playback and networked file access is unique and not seen by other product in the class. All other network-enabled devices don't have native network apps except file access on remote computers.

I decided to give this unit a try because of the local BT app that frees up the computer. Everything worked out of the box except that the unit only contains drivers to the one wireless adapter they sell separately (costing $29.99). It is straightforward to setup, media playback quality was satisfactory.

However I did have problem upgrade their firmware (I learned the lesson of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"). This is where the great customer support came to play. I got very fast email replies explaining the situation and offer for an exchange. I decided to go to a local office to pick up the new unit (they offer free shipping/return labels if you are not close by to their office), everything was as smooth as I hoped. Obviously the company takes all customers really seriously. I'm guessing the company is still small that's why only email support is offered.

I take one star off for something that can still be improved, hopefully they will create better products in the future:
1) Firmware upgrade is not robust enough, it crashed my original unit.
2) Like another reviewer said, the initial setup needs to be on composite output, not HDMI output. This is not obvious, a better way would be to have an external switch.
3) The UI is bland, a media-center like UI would make this unit much sexier.
4) Wish it can have a way to work with more USB/wireless adapters.
5) also as someone else mentioned, some .mkv files don't play.

Initially I couldn't get it working with the shared folders on the network. I have three different computers with shared folders but BV-5003 coudn't find them.

It turned out to be sensitive to the subnet mask setting. I got it working with subnet mask 255.255.255.0, it doesn't work with 255.255.0.0.

With share access working, I would give it 4 stars. It would be nice to have editable RSS feeds and http downloads to be completely happy.

Ive had the media player for a few months now and I could not be happier. It is awesome in fact I like it so much I plan to buy two more for my house and do away with dvd player all together.

Well, the player delivers as it is advertised that supports RM format and H264 format that IO-mega or Western Digital did not, but the processor seems slow for it kinda skippy when playing H264 1024 resolution files. Delivered great playback quality on DivX/Xvid/RM formats. What turns me off was the UI design.

Come on, people buying this product is seeking playback from their external HDDs, and know what they need to do. So, the searching for Audio/Vedio file everytime you change directories is NOT nessesary!! A simple display of file is more appreciated!!!! If there is non-supported files, a simple "not supported message" or something else is better than sittting through minutes when the player "search" for files!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Any way, over all a great product for its' supporting of RM/h264/MKV formats, but I would rather do the recoding to Xvid AVI file than sit through the "for dummies" UI that "searches" files!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I got a great deal because of the [...] off coupon code they were giving away on their website: www.brite-view.com, which makes this unit [...] only - it's probably the best price for products of its kind.

I was considering WD TV too, but as soon as I found out the networking and torrent download features CinemaCube has (which WD TV lacks), I decided to give CinemaCube a try.

The playback function is awesome - well, it plays everything I fed so I am pretty happy with that. It supports RM, RMVB, MP2, AVI, H.264, VOB, MOV, MKV, DivX, Xvid, WMV video formats, MP3, Real Audio, FLAC, AAC, OGG, WAV audio formats and JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG image formats. I don't think WD TV plays RM or RMVB. (You might wonder why this is important - well the movie torrents on the internet are available in different formats, and it was annoying that I had do download an appropriate "codec" to decode them each. Now I don't have to any more.)

The torrent download worked wonders too. Now I don't have to leave my computer on all night because CinemaCube takes over the download part. brite-View provided detailed tutorial on the website too:[...]
Overall this thing is pretty amazing. I gave it 4 stars because the "HD" it supports is up to 720p. I'm just being greedy, because 1080p content is not that widely available anyway so it really is no biggie.

As has been mentioned in earlier comments, the email customer service is the best I had ever experienced. It seems to be an Oriental person working from their home. The issues that I have are one a limitation of the chip, and or Linux. I have a shared folder with well over a 1000+ mp3 songs in it. Reading this causes the OS/machine to crash, and restarts. It is fairly quick, but annoying. Downloading torrents is the second issue, the USB drive dismounts, and remounting for no apparent reason. I thought that I solved this, but it happened again. I will need to troubleshoot this further with their email support. The software, and or firmware appears to be buggy, causing this possibily. Judging from the other reviews, I may have a bad unit? The next generation unit should be much better if these issues are worked out, and new features are added.

I purchased this unit to use with my Mac formatted HFS+ hdd's and found to my dismay that, unlike the WD HD TV, it does not recognize any of my hdd's. While it appears to work for Windows systems, Mac users should stay away from this unit. I cannot give it a good rating because of this limitation.

This is a great product with very innovative concept. It plays all of my files on the attached USB drive without any hiccups, as advertised. It took me a while to set up the sharing folder on the network PC, but I strongly suspect it's because I'm using Windows Vista.

I wonder where all the one-star reviewers come from. True, the CinemaCube is not perfect - but can any other similar products beat the price? I think some frustration came from high expectations, but hey, from the price tag you should know the CinemaCube is an entry-level product. And since the CinemaCube can already play the 720p files, one would assume either the 1080p files can eventually be played through a firmware update, or by its next generation.

Also worth mentioning is brite-View's customer service - I was skeptical at first because there is only an email address available on their website. But man, were they fast to respond! Very impressive.

Overall I am very, very happy with the product. I can't speak for the others, but for someone who stores a ton of media on an external hard drive and is looking for a budget media player - this is your best bet.

A reviewer on YouTube said it best: this is like an Apple TV without format restrictions.

First off the people that gave this 5 stars probably work for the company that makes these. This is a very cheap unit. Both physically and electronically. Support for this item is NONEXISTENT! There is no one to call. You can only email them but it may take days to get a response. I cant speak for others but mine will not display 720p. I could not get the HDMI to work properly. I only got a blue screen with very faint images. I made a couple of attempts to contact them via email with no luck. I have found many video formats/codecs that this unit will not play that my WD media player plays flawlessly. There are no firmware updates for this item either. If you go to their site they show a firmware/software update. This is a pure deception. It is the same as what the unit comes with and serves no purpose but to make people think there is active support for this product. Please be aware, if you buy this product you are on your own! Oh and by the way, I tried to play some 720p .mkv files on this and they wouldn't play. I tried a 720p mp4 as well..no luck. I dont think this plays HD movies at all. Complete scam of a product. BEWARE!