Mp3 player review top

The high-definition (HD) era is upon us. And once you've been to the mountaintop, there's almost no going back to standard-definition (SD) TV. The difference is so startling, it puts into painful perspective just how bad most SD content looks, in much the same way DVD players revealed how poor VHS video quality was. There's a holy trinity of media types that any decent digital media adapters must be able to present: audio, digital pictures, and video. Digital media adapters (DMAs) have typically tried to keep their prices low (around the $250-300 mark) to improve mass-market appeal.

Roku, a young company comprised of former ReplayTV crew members, is taking a different approach in a number of fundamental ways:

Its HD1000 DMA has output up to 1080i. The HD1000 is $500 -- well above other DMAs currently on the market. It doesn't offer robust video support (yet), opting instead focus its efforts on delivering HD audio and photos. Roku has published a developer's SDK to foster the creation of community-built apps that can run on the Linux-based HD1000.

There are some very interesting things afoot to further flesh out the HD1000's capabilities (including some dramatic video features) but they're not here yet. We got a taste of what's to come, and the HD1000 is going to be one of the most interesting DMAs on the market. The key term here is "going to be," so the dilemma remains: do you spend $500 on a product whose feature set is still maturing? We're inclined to say yes -- and we'll tell you why.

The HD1000 uses ATI's Xilleon 220 system-on-a-chip processor, which features a 300MHz MIPS CPU core, and has the ability to handle high-definition video content. This particular chip is aimed at the broadcast market, and can time-shift multiple video streams from multiple tuners. Its MPEG-2 decoder can handle two HD streams, or eight SD streams of video content. The Xilleon also has a 2D/3D graphics engine that supports Direct3D and OpenGL. Its video engine can do flicker removal, spatial-temporal adaptive deinterlacing, line doubling, and video scaling for video-in-a-window applications. All told, it's a pretty versatile processor whose image quality running at 720p impressed us.

Here's the HD1000's core plumbing:

ATI Xilleon 220 system-on-a-chip 300MHz MIPS CPU HD MPEG2 Hardware Decode Engine 16MB of internal flash memory 64MB DDR DRAM Memory Card Slots: CompactFlash, SD/MMC, Memory Stick/Memory Stick PRO, SmartMedia

As for the rest of the HD1000, it offers a wealth of inputs and output to integrate it without your home entertainment system.

Video Output: Component Y/Pr/Pb: 1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i VGA: 1080i, 720p, 480p S-Video: 480i Composite: 480i

Video In (Pass-Through) Component Y/Pr/Pb: 1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i S-Video: 480i Composite: 480i

Audio Output Analog Left, Right Digital S/PDIF Coax

Audio In Analog Left, Right

The Roku HD1000 is based on the Roku OS, an open platform that includes Roku's advanced media APIs and the Linux Kernel. Roku has released an SDK to allow developers to create custom applications for the Roku HD1000 that can use its TV-centric user interface elements, network and memory card access, MP3, MPEG, windowing system, graphics library, and other media engines. In addition to the option to write C or C++ code using Roku's SDK, custom installers can completely control the HD1000 without the SDK by using simple ASCII control commands over the serial or Ethernet ports.

The input/output list is missing two things. The first is DVI output, which would offer superior connectivity to digital flat panels than the current analog VGA connector. Granted the component video output worked fine at 720p (our test display's native HD resolution), but having the option of going DVI would be a welcome addition. The other missing input would be S/PDIF audio input to complement the analog audio input, which can currently be used for audio pass-through, and will allow you to send audio into a future Roku app that will generate visualizers.

We did run several objective tests, but most of our testing consisted of inspection tests. We connected to HD1000 to a Gateway 30" LCD HDTV via the Roku's component video output. We also connected the Roku to a 19" PC CRT display using its VGA output.

We tested the HD1000's analog output using RightMark Audio Analyzer 5.3. To do this, we created two reference WAV files (the calibration tone, and the actual test tones), and placed them on a shared Windows volume. We then routed the HD1000's audio output into our Audio Test System (ATS), which is equipped with an Echo Audio MIA, whose measured signal-to-noise ratio is -101dB.

Next, we set up shares to Windows, Linux and Mac test systems to verify Roku's claim that using Samba (SMB), the HD1000 can see content stored on machines running any of these three operating systems.

Next, we played MP3 and WAV audio content back on the Roku, and performed hands-on inspection tests of audio quality, and UI ergonomics. We then did the same with digital photos.

Finally, we tried out a number of Roku applications -- several made available directly from Roku and one from a third-party developer in the Roku user community that transcodes a decrypted DVD VOB file into an MPEG-2 transport stream that the HD1000 can play back.

We tested at the 44KHz/16-bit resolution, since the HD1000 doesn't yet support 96KHz/24-bit. According to Roku, the unit will play 96KHz/16-bit content, but the 24-bit sample depth isn't yet supported. Roku plans on adding support for 96KHz/24-bit in a future firmware update.

When we went to run this test, RMAA's calibration tone only registered as -5dBFS. The actual tone in the WAV file itself peaks at -1dBFS, and that's the output level the unit under test is supposed to generate. However, the HD1000 is calibrated 4dB down, so we had to test using that calibration. As it turns out, we were still able to get a good measurement from the HD1000, and its numbers were solid:

Noise level, dB (A): -91 Very good Dynamic range, dB (A): 89.6 Good THD, %: 0.06 Average IMD, %: 0.08 Good Stereo crosstalk, dB: -91.3 Excellent

For 44KHz/16-bit resolution, the HD1000's dynamic range is about 6dB down from theoretical, which is 96dB. Its distortion numbers are good, though not stellar, while its channel separation is very good.

For the most part, the HD1000's menus are easy to navigate. You're normally presented with this UI:

The HD1000 does a good job of readily presenting the compatible media present on a given network share, breaking it out by media type. If you opt to Browse, you'll only be able to find digital photos, MPEG and MPEG-2 files. However, the only compatible video file type the HD1000 can play at present is what called a Transport Stream, which has a .TS file extension. (More on that in a bit.) MP3 files won't show up in folders, even if they're actually there, in this mode. Conversely, when you opt for the Listen mode, you'll see MP3 files in each of the folders, but not other types of media.

As we began reading through the HD1000's documentation, we had some immediate gripes. For starters, one of the HD1000's coolest features is its extensibility via firmware updates. As it turns out, a new firmware image can only be installed from a CompactFlash media card. So you'll need a PC-based CompactFlash reader to copy the firmware image file to the CF card, and then install it on the HD1000. It's quite annoying that you can't just do the update by getting the new firmware image from a network share. What's more, being a network-aware device, the HD1000 should be able to "phone home," access Roku's Web site, notify you when new firmware is available, and give you the option of downloading/installing it.

The HD1000's back panel has a USB port that, unfortunately, only can be used for connecting a Wi-Fi adapter. We tried connecting a USB flash drive to see if the HD1000 could read the drive's contents, but the Roku OS didn't recognize the flash drive.

The HD1000's remote is a pretty straightforward affair, with only 14 buttons to keep things simple. You do most of your navigating with the four arrow buttons and the select button, in much the same way you'd drive a DVD player. One annoyance here is that none of the menus have "around the block" scrolling. In other words, when you come to the end of a long list of shared volumes, songs, photos, if you hit the down arrow once more, nothing happens. Instead, we'd like to have the ability to automatically return to the top of the list, rather than having to scroll all the way back up. Some holds true for entering text using the onscreen keyboard. You only have to do this to enter login/password information for shared volumes, but the "around the block" feature would help speed the process along.