Background
As my Kaiboer H1055 media player booted far faster that the eGreat M34A network player
I bought some years ago I decided to swap the two over and use the Kaiboer in the lounge where it sees more use that the upstairs player. I then
missed the network capabilities of the eGreat so looked to see if there was a network version of the Kaiboer. There wasn't so far as I could
see but I did find....
The HiMedia 600A
This is a tiny unit which looks quite smart - imo much smarter than the Kaiboer. One annoyance is that it has no on off switch so you have to
either leave it on standby or switch off the power to the wall wart at the mains.
Apart from offering gigabit wired network access this machine can be used with some WiFi dongles to give wireless access too. Compatible dongles
are sold by the UK distributor Futeko who also sell the HiMedia 600C which has built in WiFi. I use my media players in conjunction with a USB hard
drive caddy in the cupboard below it but there is yet another option - the 600B - which has an internal 3.5 inch drive bay.
Networking support is pretty comprehensive but I only use the Samba client mode to access files on my NAS so can't comment on how well anything
else works. I may try the only WiFi dongle I own to see if it will work as the unit is supposed to support streaming direct from
phones and tablets using DLNA. For me that's worth trying but not worth buying a dongle for although I can see that for many people this
may even be the "killer app" that pushes them to buy one of these units.
Like the Kaiboer and unlike the Eaget the firmware offers full control over subtitles including suppressing them.
So far I have not found anything it will not play. It even managed to play some WMF files which defeated the eGreat.
The firmware can present the files it finds in a variety of ways but I find it far easier to just use the file manager to find what
I want to play. I had to change a setup default to get this in plain text form rather than a series of useless icons. I have noticed a bug in
the firmware which I initially though was a bad media file. Sometimes a good way into playing a video file the sound becomes garbled. This does
eventually clear and can sometimes be sorted out with a bit of juggling back and forth although I've not found exactly what is needed to fix it
yet or what media formats are susceptible to it. I'm keeping an eye open for a firmware update but as the manufacturers are Chinese I haven't
attempted to report it as a fault. ==== Well I've found one way around this which has worked every time although it is a bit of a pain...
Stop playback. Power off. Power back on. Locate what you were playing. Select "Resume" in the popup box that appears.
Conclusion
This is another bargain basement media player which actually doesn't look too bad. I'd have preferred all connectors to be on the back and the
firmware fault with sound is annoying but overall a good value unit.
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