Micca Slim-HD: 1080p In Your Pocket

Micca Slim-HD - Performance

The Slim-HD has it’s fair share of container and codec support, as listed in the table below. Most of the standard suspects are there, but some of the more interesting (or obscure) things like webm, m2v, and ISO are missing from the spec sheet.

But when we ran the Slim-HD through our Media Streaming Compatibility Test Suite, we hit some problems. First and foremost, higher framerate 1080p x264 got shafted, especially in the .mkv container. Tons of choppiness, to an unwatchable extent. Add DTS Master Audio, and you end up with a literal slideshow. Weirdly, the problem with DTS-MA also showed up in the 720p test clip. Even trying it two or three times didn’t work too well. The other problem is that while trying to play through those clips, the entire unit would basically go unresponsive to remote inputs (for example, trying to pause it or exit the video and go back to the menu). Let’s just say that the slower processor is coming back to bite the Slim-HD.

As we mentioned before, no ISO support, so the DVD and BD ISO files were goners. Some of the files simply wouldn’t open, even files in common formats supposedly supported by the Slim-HD (note the OGG file [012], the 1080p24 x264 mp4 [010], and a few others). And then some of the more obscure formats that don’t work. We do have to admit that these test streams are meant to put even high end media streamers under stress, and that most of the streams with which the Slim-HD has problems with are not very common. As long as you don't expect everything off the Internet to play, the Slim-HD keeps chugging along.

Overall, the Slim-HD scored 226 out of a possible 336 points, which is 67.25%. That’s pretty good compared to the WD TV Live Plus, which got just 200 (58%), but here’s the rub. The WD TV got really owned in our compatibility suite by the lack of WMV audio and the entire RMVB format. Other than that, it seems that the WD TV might do slightly better with highly compressed 1080p video, but it just doesn’t have the amount of compatibility that the Slim-HD does, and if you’re really into Windows Media or Real Player video formats, the Slim-HD is clearly the way to go.