detail information

As with most players powered by the SEM8634/35 chip from Sigma, the CFULLHDMA is capable of playing a wide variety of formats including the latest H.264 up to 1080p and VC-1. While it can handle all these formats in general, some will cause issues while others play fine and it is like that for all players. It is all a matter of updates so we‟ll stick in reporting about the options that count during playback of these files and “major” flaws or missing items we detect.

MUSIC PLAYBACK

Missing: FLAC! We start with the most severe missing item right away so that's out of the way? Further, since the CFULLHDMA has no display, we should not expect the ability to play music while the TV is OFF.

The music is listed by a list with few sorting options. Nothing out of the ordinary where long titles scroll from left to right and 10 items are shown on each list. Browsing over the network seems a bit slow.

You can FF and Rewind music (without sound output though) while the music is playing from a separate page. There is the ability to keep browsing the list during playback using the “back” button.

The ID Tag information is displayed on the same page as from where the song is currently playing. I can‟t see an info button that might offer more info and think of playing video later on. How am I going to see info on codec‟s used and such from the player?

A trick to enhance music experience is the “BGM” function. It‟s one of the buttons we did not recognize in the beginning. You can add music to the BGM section (background music) while browsing the list by pressing the button from the remote. This will bring up a window containing a lot of icons to select, from ADD to Remove and Play. This is a playlist create function.

When playing music from the BGM section, you can keep browsing the music list and the full player if you like. To stop the music you press “stop”. (Funny, during the start up of the player, I could only see 1 NAS in the network sources, returning home now, reveals the other NAS and PC‟s detected).

CONCLUSION MUSIC

Overall reasonable support for music thanks to the BGM functions. Without that I'd have probably flunked the music section for being slow in navigation and missing FLAC support in the cons list. Add the FF/RW to the mix and the Repeat functions (One, All, off) as pros along with the BGM functions and add counterweight on the balance for the limited ID Tag information, no sorting options and you‟ll have an ok music section. We didn‟t expect an iPod integrated.

MP3 tested OK, FLAC is missing, LC-AAC is not supported (in music section), WMA CBR played fine, but WMA with VBR requires a reboot as does WMA Pro that starts playing for a few seconds and then locks up completely. OGG is listed in the file list but, does not play at all, AC3 doesn‟t either and we can add DTS to the list of none playing files as well.

PICTURE PLAYBACK

The formats listed are JPG, GIF, BMP, Tif and PNG and it actually can load all of them. There is progressive zoom and you can press the “zoom” button multiple times to access different options. Included are progressive zoom, move picture in any 4 directions and rotate images. What I could not fathom is once using the zoom button, how do you to exit from the option?

Something that might taste sweet is the fact that you can set the player to “thumbnail browsing” for setup. This is especially fun for folders with images in them but then the limit of 6 thumbnails a page is bad.

This has one negative side effect when browsing the unit in picture mode as now everything is displayed in “thumbnail mode”. I feel it was better to limit this to folders actually containing images. That is not only ugly, but also impractical given the placement of the folder names and the length shown.

CONCLUSION PICTURES

We've seen some good efforts to come out a bit more original than others but not everything is a success. As far as I can see, there are no slideshow effects included and that‟s a shame. In fact, I don‟t remember if pressing play did play as slideshow at all (and Play/Enter/ OK are the same button).

Given the formats supported and the load times which are reasonable (don‟t expect high speed), we have an OK picture section here. Maybe could do with another zoom option like “Stretch to full screen”...

VIDEO PLAYBACK

This section is where the CFULLHDMA should distinguish itself from the rest as despite all players featuring music and image support, they remain mainly video players. I can‟t stress that enough during my reviews where people expect a combination of the most advanced video player with a PictBridge and iPod, all-in-one. I‟m waiting for the first to ask if an iPhone is integrated too… :)

Let me start off by saying there are issues with playing back video files as with any other player out there. Overall, our target is checking 1080p H.264 files, DVD ISO and VIDEO_TS along with the other popular formats like WMV, VC-1, DivX and XViD.

We look at the options these come with briefly and then move on to our conclusion.

DVD PLAYBACK

In general, the media adapters purpose is playback of internet formats but also the usual formats you‟ve already know for years.

Especially as a DVD JukeBox these players come in handy in families with kids. No more broken discs once backed up!

Tip: The problem with CFULLHDMA is that it does not have an internal hard drive where these backups can be stored so you must rely on external hard drives, network servers or your PC to feed the media up to the player. The player is therefore not really “portable” as you need to drag along some resource to hook up to the player (mini disks are however quite suitable.

For DVD playback (ISO and VIDEO_TS), the remote falls short as there are no separate buttons for subtitles, audio selection, bookmark and Title (only Menu). This leads to a combination of awkward handling for DVD files where most options are on the upper half of the remote, along with being mixed with other functions and that is never convenient.

Selecting subtitles during DVD playback is done by Channel up and audio selection by Channel down. Even though the labels are adjusted, it is worse than having the usual collection of direct buttons available.

Pressing the “Display” option, which should reveal information on the files being played, shows us a small bar at the bottom during DVD playback with the total time of the feature you are watching along with the elapsed time. Some sort of on display of the elapsed time, remaining time and total time would be better and as a small counter instead of a whole tray bar which conflicts with subtitles.

ZOOM functions are covered as with the images. You can shift the image in all directions or you can use progressive zoom. Also in the video section, we‟d like to see full Screen (stretch) etc… We would also recommend the icons of the options used disappear automatically after 3 seconds idle instead of using the zoom button first to go to “OK”, which disappears after a second or so. If you lave the zoom options, the player restores the video to the original position and size while it should keep the settings and offer an option to return to defaults when leaving the menu option to ZOOM.

In the options for Fast Forward we find it starts with 1.3X, followed by 2, 4, 8 and 16X. Rewind is covered at 2X, 4, 8 and 16. Notice that these do not work adequately on all files, but we found no issues with DVD.

Further, although there is an A-B button on the remote, it does not function. We add the missing feature of creating bookmarks (multiple preferred). Slow playback is however, available in ½, ¼, 1/8 and 1/16 speed but no frame by frame.

A few issues with switching between chapters are detected on DVD‟s but, no severe issues. I do wish the remote could be better though as it is the thing that falls short in this section along with several options missing which make DVD playback special like bookmarks and a search option maybe?

H.264 PLAYBACK

Briefly, overall decent playback found on H.264, but like any player, not perfect. In the first place we detected immediately the CFULLHDMA does not support external subtitles on MKV files, nor is there a “GoTo” function on the player. (I got tired of searching every button that could store another function beneath it). Those are two severe limitations already to begin with.

While playing MKV, using the ZOOM function, the player halted playback immediately when I pressed the up or down arrow key and returned to the menu. Pressing left and right however, used the actual zoom functions; kind of awkward. The player does however remember where you stopped playback and asks to resume from where you left off. (Only 1 bookmark is stored I believe.)

The “display” function that is described as “offering information on the file”, is quite an overstatement as it only shows the length; again in case of playing MKV files.

The A-B functions do display on TV when pressed but do not work here (only on DivX). Slow playback options do, so that‟s nice to have already. Shifting the screen works fine as well, but again, exit the ZOOM options and the image is restored to original size!

In general we are satisfied with the performance of the playback, but not so about the features. The zoom options; external subtitles not loaded; lack of info on files and a few more; are just not up to par with the needs for a HD media player. Additional problems could be adding options such as GoTo and Time-Search. Where on the remote would these be fitted so that they could possibly be convenient?

GENERAL OTHER

Other playback is pretty much ok. Some files lock up the player (nothing unusual with some files). External subtitles are displayed fine and the usual options apply. We do miss once more any GoTo options and ability to read info about the files we are playing using the “Display”.

Network streaming

Conclusion