Testing
Installation and Navigation
Since this is meant to be a stand-alone box, use of our usual test rig is unnecessary. We installed a 5400RPM hard drive to provide storage, and connected it to a standard 1080p display via HDMI.
Getting the Ultio Pro to turn on seemed to take a while, the power light came on, but it took a full 30 seconds for the menu to appear on screen. According to the manual, the Ultio Pro cycles through its known display settings until it finds one that works with your display. We expected this to be a one-time issue, but all subsequent power on attempts result in that same 30 second wait. Our test display did not have component video, so we were unable to verify if that same issue would occur with an analog connection.
Once it was on, navigating the menus was fairly straightforward at first: arrow keys to move the cursor, ok to select, return to go back. What baffles us is why the remote is so crowded with extra buttons. Many of them never get used, and the important ones are crammed in with the rest with little or no distinguishing marks. The UI itself is a bit clunky, with each button press taking about a quarter second to register. That might not seem like much, but when navigating to a file and opening it up takes a round dozen button presses, the delays really start to add up.
Getting at media files on the hard drive itself was fairly straightforward, as was playing back video from an external DVD drive and a USB thumb drive. Queueing them up in a playlist, however, was painful. One has to back all the way out to the main menu, choose the Playlist option, create a playlist, then browse through the files and use the Select key on each one you want to include, then hit Confirm to save the playlist. Only then can you open the playlist for playback, and then only in sequential order.
Incidentally, Select and Confirm are neither one the same as Enter; Enter is right in the middle of the arrow keys, while Select and Confirm are way off on the bottom row of buttons, for some reason. This sort of baffling arrangement is common: Mute is nowhere near Vol+ and Vol-; Rec is off by itself away from Play, Pause, Stop, Rewind, FF, Skip Back and Skip Forward. Some buttons, like Guide and Teletext, appear to do nothing at all.
PVR and Playback
The A/V pass-through and recording functions worked quite well; output was sufficiently quick to use the Ultio Pro as a pass-through for my Playstation 2. Recording and Time-shifting were both simple to accomplish: hit Rec or Time Shift, use Pause to halt recording temporarily, use Stop to halt it altogether.
Playback of media files was mostly spot on; it handled every file type I could throw at it, with the exception of a few C64 Tracker files (.sid, for those who are interested). Given how incredibly obscure this format is, most should have no problems getting their media files to play. I hit on one snag though, one whose importance may vary. Soft-subtitles, which are a staple in foreign language releases, were very poorly handled; text was rendered in a ridiculously large font, with no styling information preserved. Digging through the manual and menus turned up no way to change the font face, or even size. When the lines were more than a half-dozen words long, they wrapped around in weird ways, causing the subtitle to take up nearly 1/3rd of the screen. Each line in the subtitles also showed up about half a second late, which can be problematic with rapid-fire exchanges of dialog. If you never watch subtitled content, or if your shows come with the subtitles “burnt-in” to the video track, you will not care. That said, this is a really simple thing to do, and it is disappointing to see it mishandled so.
Networking and Streaming
Rather more disappointing is how the Ultio Pro handles streaming video services—or rather, how it does not. There is no support for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon VOD, or any of the other popular streaming services. The one content channel that delivers something other than tiny chunks of text is the YouTube plugin. This plugin is slow, unresponsive, and doesn’t allow for anything more than basic viewing. The promised support for Netflix, Hulu, et al is DLNA streaming through PlayOn, a streaming service that requires both an additional monthly fee and an always-on PC to stream content to the Ultio Pro. Given that this level of functionality is starting to be built into the TV itself, this is hardly worth trumpeting in a dedicated box.
The promised BitTorrent client and samba streaming support never materialized. Neither one is available out of the box; the manual instructs you to go to their website, download an install package, and put it on a USB thumb drive. Every attempt to do so ended in the words “Installation failed”. Updating the firmware did nothing to resolve this issue, and attempts to contact Mvix support went unanswered. Playback of files from other samba shares on the local network functioned without issue, however.
Thoughts and Conclusion
Ultimately, our impression of the Mvix Ultio Pro was disappointing. The clunky UI, limited streaming support and problems with subtitling are frustrating, but not necessarily game-breaking. The broken BT and samba support however, severely limit the utility of this box. The lack of HD inputs for recording is equally puzzling, given how much TV is broadcast in HD these days. While it will serve for basic media playback needs, we think you could do better for the price ($169.99 at time of publication).
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