Articles

INTRODUCTION

   One of the things i really like about the electronics industry is that no matter how many manufacturers there are at this exact moment in time there will always be more around each day that goes by and so although I’ve been testing hardware (standalone) media players for the past 5 years (or so) i have yet to cooperate with all of them something which some of you keep reminding me from time to time (as you should). Xtreamer may not be the most famous hardware media player manufacturer (A.C.Ryan is and unfortunately they are not doing well so that means little nowadays) but they've been around almost from the very beginning (i think they were established in late 2008/ early 2009) and they are known to manufacture cost-effective yet feature-rich solutions. So since their latest media player & streamer is called the Prodigy Black and has been around for over a year we thought it was about time that we took it out for a test drive.

   The Xtreamer was built by several Korean companies backed up fully by the semiconductor chipset manufacturer and launched under the Mvix chain of partners worldwide. It is their purpose to create a device that will compete with DVD and will become a global leader in its online segmented market. The innovative and cutting edge technology in the design and development of the product is expected to bring about dramatic growth since media players have being widely accepted as a real option for playing HD content on TV. The experience and expertise from all manufacturing partners to combine both television and computer technology will make the Xtreamer product highly adaptable to the constantly evolving IT industry. The Xtreamers are distinguished by their aggressive price, innovative features, manufacturing qualities, functionality and design. Our European HQ is located in NL. Our devices are aimed at the online-only market so as to retain a competitive price that will be attractive to the end-user. You will not be able to find them in retail stores anywhere which means you'll pay less. It is our strategy to constantly depend on your input to help make our products great for everyone. It is our way to value your investment of time and money in our devices. By unleashing the creativity from our ever-expanding community of super-users and open source developers, the world's smartest and most passionate consumers, and encouraging our community to work side-by-side with our internal development team, we hope you will get greater value for you money. Welcome to the affordable world of Media Streaming of Xtreamer.

   Xtreamer released two versions of the Prodigy Media Player & Streamer in the market, the silver and the black which is also the unit we have here with us. The only difference between both models is that the black also features an dual DVB-T MPEG4 decoder so unless you need that particular feature you can save a few bucks by going after the silver model (unless you really like black). Specs-wise both the silver and black models feature an Android based OS, the latest Realtek RTD1186DD HD decoding chipset, 512MB SDRAM, 256MB Flash Memory, HDMI 1.4, built-in Wi-Fi, Gigabit LAN, 7.1 pass-through, USB 3.0 host port, card reader and interior space for a 3.5" drive. Now I’m not really much of an Android OS fan when it comes to media players since it's not really "needed" nor was it designed for that specific purpose but leaving that out the Prodigy Black by Xtreamer seems to have pretty much everything one would ever hope to find in a hardware media player. The only thing that remains is to see just how well all these features work together so let's move forward with our testing.