Micca Slim-HD: 1080p In Your Pocket
by Vivek Gowri on November 23, 2010 1:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Micca
- Slim-HD
- Media Player
Micca Slim-HD - Conclusion
And so we arrive at the conclusion. As we said in the conclusion from the WD TV Live Plus, this class of SoC-based media players and streamers lag pretty far behind dedicated HTPCs in both versatility and picture quality. This continues to be true, but we’ll see if that changes when some of the really high end media boxes launch - the Netgear NTV 550, for example. But this portable media drive is quite far from that level.
Micca’s Slim-HD is an interesting proposition. The internal 2.5” drive sets it apart from the Live Plus and the GoFlex, which don’t have internal hard drives but do allow for USB drive connections (as does the Slim-HD, in addition to the internal HDD). The Live Hub is a bit better, but much more costly and does not have the USB host functionality. It’s nice to have your media stored locally, and Micca recognizes that.
Unfortunately, the flip side of this coin is that without a drive or any local media, the Slim-HD is almost useless, while the Live Plus and the GoFlex are both capable as Netflix and Youtube streaming devices. But here’s the most concerning part - both of those are available for less than $100 on the street (Buy.com has the Live Plus for $80), so the price difference is close to negligible. With those, you get a much more polished interface along with the internet streaming capabilities. I’d say that the video compatibility is pretty close - what you gain in absolute versatility with the Slim-HD, you basically give back with the choppiness of the admittedly uncommon high bitrate and frame rate x264 videos.
But really, it all comes down to portability. For the majority of people, I’d say go for one of the media streamers and add a portable USB hard drive. That way you get the HDMI connection and streaming capabilities, along with the portability of your local media (to play off a computer). However, the Micca Slim-HD does nicely fit the bill for people that would like to have a media drive that they can connect via HDMI on the go, which I suppose fulfills its raison d'être. Just don’t expect it to replace your full time HTPC or media streamer and you’ll be happy with it.
Update: Micca has informed us that it will be dropping the price of the Slim-HD to $59.95 on Cyber Monday through the end of the year as a holiday special. This is actually a pretty sweet deal, since it puts the HD only $10 over the price of the regular Slim and really brings price into the equation when compared to the WDTV and the Seagate GoFlex TV. It's a lot easier to recommend the Slim-HD at this reduced price, as it offers an attractive solution for portable 1080p media playback.
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abrar - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
i noticed that there is a Firmware download link on the Micca website, have you tested it ?and if so , have you noticed an appreciable difference ?!
jack@micca - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
I believe the test unit already has the latest firmware. We do release new firmware frequently, however, and hope to improve handling of less-than-popular encoding methods and parameters.Jack
blowfish - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
The look of the UI would be the least important aspect of any media player. I'm far more interested in media compatibility, so thanks for doing a throrough job on that. x264 support is high on my list of priorities. Personally, I have no interest in streaming media.The Slim-HD seems like a handy device to hook up to an hotel TV when you're traveling.
Rainman200 - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
Couldn't disagree more with you on that, the GUI is supremely important which is why Apple trounces many of their competitors.For far too long media players have had very poor GUI's designed by people with no UI experience or training at all. See the stock skin of the Realtek RTD1073 players.
Shouldn't have to be that way, we can have both.
jack@micca - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link
I agree with you that the GUI is important. And to that point, I would say that the Slim-HD's GUI while not pretty, is functional, simple, and responsive. Sure it doesn't have fancy transitions, a movie jukebox interface, or movie cover-art/info displays. But if you take a look at the modern digital media player with such fancy interfaces, they are either very expensive, and/or have a lot of bugs.I am not saying a nice interface is impossible, but industry as a whole is searching for an efficient way to present the massive video collections that users have in some coherent user friendly fashion.
For us, usability is still the main focus for now. Future firmware versions will add a bit of eye candy to the various pages. But we will control such changes so as not to impact usability.
Jack
WingNutZA - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
Does the player need external AC power when you hook it up to a PC as a storage device or can USB supply enough power when you only want to copy stuff to/from the unit?jack@micca - Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - link
No AC power is needed as this works as USB hard drive while drawing all the power it needs from the computer's USB port.Jack
mfeller2 - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
I checked the docs, and there is not the ability to copy files from an SD card to the hard drive. It should be a simple software change to add this functionality, and adds flexibility to let Micca address a different market. There are products for in-the-field backup for digital cameras. Plug in the media card to a portable hard drive, and media card contents are automatically copied to disk, to have a second copy in the case of media card failure. Smaller than a laptop when there are packing constraints (photo-journalism, nature photography). With newer digital cameras now supporting video, the ability to do this in-the-field backup, and then do playback from the Micca drive...it's a nice all-in-one package that does more than the dedicated photo-backup hardware, and cheaper to boot.Rainman200 - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
The sochip SC9800 is definitely Arm based as there is a Chinese forum that deals with it used by Ainol players and someone hacked Android onto one of the PMP'sIf the rumors are true the Boxchip F10 is supposedly the same although why the different names is a mystery.
Pooki - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - link
I'd like to pick up the micca slim hd and pair it with a boxee remote. Combined, that's about the price of an AppleTV. Would it work, you reckon?