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TESTING METHODOLOGY - RESULTS

   After thinking it over i have decided on performing the same exact tests for all the Media Players i review. This occurred right after some of you emailed me while on my previous position asking for a more reliable methodology when testing such players/recorders. To be honest this may complicate things but it should also save me quite a bit of time in the process. So from now and on testing will be performed with the help of 4 specific MKV media files and several BDISO (when possible), MOV, RMVB and AVI ones, with bitrates of up to 35Mbps, something which as many of you know is not easy to come by. Of course the 4 specific MKV files are ones i ripped myself from 4 Blu-Ray titles i currently own in order to not only manage to hit the desired bitrate of up to 35Mbps but also use specific, high detailed scenes. My good old SONY 55A2000 (already 3+ years old but still my favorite) along with my latest Panasonic TX-P42S20 are the two screens i will be using for testing. In due time and when i finally see a 3D Screen that really makes me want to buy it i will also start using 3D material for testing but currently that is simply not possible and so i can't comment on 3D results. As for sound the audio/video amplifiers used with the two screens are the Yamaha RX-650 and the Yamaha RX-V463 coupled with 5.1 systems by TANNOY and Crystal Audio.

     Up until today android OS based hardware media players have been far from perfect since they could hardly handle high/heavy bitrate media files and the same applied with the XIOS DS Media Play! roughly two months ago when it arrived here (the installed KMPlayer was not strong enough). Of course issues always occur when you test the very first software release regardless of what type of device it is you are testing so that didn't really surprise me. Luckily two months later the support team over at Pivos along with the guys over at XMBC have managed to elevate the XIOS DS Media Play to a whole new level and so it can now reproduce even the heaviest media files (i even ripped the latest Avengers BD which is over 30GB in size just to test the unit) with very good image and audio quality. Of course although the XIOS DS Media Play! supports Dolby Digital and DTS that's only through an HDMI pass-through enabled A/V amplifier since it lacks both optical and coaxial outputs something which i personally didn't enjoy that much (especially since only 1 out of my 2 amps features HDMI pass-through). I did enjoy however playing angry birds, watching YouTube clips and installing various android apps like i do on my smartphones (although most people get a hardware media player for what it does best and that's to reproduce media files).

     Bellow you will find 4 different screenshots from the 4 specific MKV media files i mentioned above featuring bit rates between 20 and 35Mbps. The resolution has remained unchanged (however the files are compressed to JPEG to save space on the server) at 1920x1080.