AverMedia AVerLife Cinema (Canada)

Comment:
I got this for a friend who wanted to watch 480p videos on a CRT television (via composite connection), and it is perfectly suitable for that purpose. However, there are some major caveats to watch out for. -The device's output can be set to 720p, which could be useful for browsing photos or reading text files, but it WILL NOT play videos which have a higher than DVD resolution. The one exception is RM/RMVB files, but this is not a popular/common format so I can't consider this very useful.-Quality of display, playback, and video upscaling are all quite good.-Extensive support of subtitle formats is claimed. This would normally make the whole experience for me as I watch a lot of non-English media. However, there are no options for sizes, colours/transparency, or placement, you can only turn them on or off. The subtitle file must have the same name as the video file, which is usually the case - but I don't believe this is stated in the manual. I tried playing a movie with SRT subs: they worked, and I would rate them (visually) as superb. They were terribly out of sync, but I believe this was the fault of the subtitle file... I could not confirm this as I do not have much SD content.-There is NO support for Matroska (.MKV) containers, and NO support for h.264 encoding. Ironically, this makes being able to use fancy ASS+SSA subtitles rather moot, as 95% of files that include them (i.e. fansubbed animé) use one or both of these formats.-The menus are very sparse, but this generally wasn't an issue. The GUI is well laid out, and so is the remote control. On the other hand, many basic features that would be found in even the lowest-end DVD players are missing, such as resuming playback or even bookmarking a point in a file. Other than pressing Pause, if you view the menu or anything other than the video you were watching, you have to start at the beginning.-Errors. If you think Windows' blue-screen errors are vague, you will not like where this is going: If [i]either[/i] the video or audio track is not recognized, the file will not play. If the video has [i]no[/i] audio track, the file will not play. If the video and audio formats [i]are[/i] recognized but the player doesn't like them, the file will not play. In all of these cases, you instead get a generic error message which does not specify the problem. The only way to try and resolve the issue is to view the file's Info box, which shows the video and audio codecs present. However, if they are an unsupported configuration of a normally valid codec, this Info window will appear identical to that of a file that does work. An example is video with a 5.1 channel AAC audio track. AAC is playable and recognized, but the file simply won't load.-The device can set the output volume. This is a nice touch as it means once you turn on your tv and insert  your media, you only need one remote. Audio over HDMI is supported, and there were no issues playing back an AVI with a 5.1 Dolby AC3 soundtrack. I could not find any AVI files with DTS soundtracks which were also if a low enough resolution that it would play, so this could not be tested.-Cables to connect via HDMI and Component are included. This is good, but the product's design could be better. The component cable attaches to the media player with a 3.5" four-segment mini-plug, and if they allowed that to be switched to a Composite/Audio L/Audio R configuration, all output scenarios would have been covered with the included pack-ins. Additionally this would prevent having to mess around with having four wires plugged into this lightweight enclosure.-Video output: HDMI/Component/Composite-Audio output: Composite (Stereo)/HDMI (Surround)-Subtitle support: A5S/SSA/SMI/SRT/SUB-Scaling options: FullScreen/4:3 Mode/16:9 "Mode1"/16:9 "Mode2"/Keep Aspect-Video Codecs: o RM/RMVB: 1024x576 Max o MJPEG: 640x480 Max o MPEG1/MPEG2 (Max Bitrate 15M), MOV (Max 2 audio channels), DivX, XviD: 720x576 Max-Audio Codecs: MP3/OGG/WAV/M4A/AAC/AC3-Container support: RM/RMVB/AVI/MP4/MPG/MOV/DAT This review was modfied by poster @ 04-15-11 03:32 PM