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Sigmatek XM-400 Pro Review (3/3)
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Let's talk about hardware
What is extraordinary with this player?
Nothing, but all is really great:
a very good Mediatek MT1389EE chipset, allowing all prowesses needed for this king of DVD/DivX player
a D/A Video converter 108 Mhz / 12 Bits integrated in the Mediatek chipset, it is actually the best for this price
a D/A Audio converter 102 dB 24-Bit, 192 kHz, 6-Channels from Cirrus Logic, rendering excellent Audio sensation with SACD and DVD Audio
a 70ns flash rom, then you can upgrade your player without any stress
Samsung RAM to process all various operations, etc.
The whole having enough space not to overheat unnecessarily, that gives a very coherent technical unit.
Confidence reigns on this level there, because the player does not have any air output... but it is undoubtedly studied for, because indeed, after several hours of non-stop use, the player is not even tepid.
Inside the player
Robustness and use
Sigmatek XM-400 Pro! during all the length of the test (approximately 7h non-stop), crashed only once. It is rather good sign!
The crash occured during a fast forward action on AVI file (DivX), and this file was a little doubtfull.
However, it seems that the speed is always the same in fast forward/backward (more than 32x). It goes quite simply too quickly all the time and does not matter the selected mode.
Undoubtedly this is a firmware bug that could be fixed later!
Within the player, there is no suspect noise during playing (from the CD/DVD player itself).
Even the night, without other noise, we can't here is is switched one, even after several hours of using.
Using player is rather simple, the interface is in French (or in six other languages) and the majority of the possible actions is intuitive, whether it is by the remote control or by menus from interface.
A defect is present when we switch on or off the player: the auto-commutation to the right AV or TV mode is not done. We need to switch manually to TV mode or AV mode.
This is maybe an hardware problem, we don't know right now.
Some other defects existing elsewhere, are not present here:
the zoom mode in progress disappears after few seconds once chosen (on TV)
during movie launching, remaining time is not displayed by default
In fact details, but can also become annoying without being blocking, when they are present.
One of the Setup menu
Files Formats, Data Structures and Supports
Here is an non-exhaustive list of all that have been tested and validated:
Recognized supports:
DVD Video and DVD Audio (5 / 9)
SACD
HDCD
DVD +R/+RW
DVD -R/-RW
CD R/RW 74/80/90 minutes
Audio CD
SVCD with menus
VCD with menus
Mini DVD (DVD on CD with menus)
Recognized file formats
AVI or DIVX
BIVX (2 audio streams with AC3, MP3 or WMA)
JPEG (JPG: progressive or standard)
MPEG 1 (VCD): MPEG or MPG
MPEG 2 (SVCD / KVCD): MPEG or MPG
VOB (alones)
MP3
WMA
OGG (renamed as AVI)
Supported Codecs
DivX 3.11
DivX 4
DivX 5.x (with Pro options: QPEL and GMC)
XviD 0.x (with Pro options: QPEL and GMC)
XviD 1.x (with Pro options: QPEL - GMC not supported)
MP3 CBR/VBR (alone or in AVI)
WMA 7/8/9 (alone or in AVI)
OGG (renamed as AVI)
PCM (in AVI only)
Notes :
- The audio tracks of BivX are activables by the Audio key and switch from one language to the other quickly
- It is possible to activate a "slideshow" on JPEG
- OGG, OGM and RMVB are visible in the browser but are not supported with the reading (but renaming them in "AVI" allows them to be played) / Now with unofficial firmwares, they are visibles and playable.
- The maximum bitrate video tested is 1500 in normal condition (i.e. on a whole film, with a track MP3 CBR 128)
And what about subtitles?
The subtitles are often forsaken or badly managed, whereas finally, with experience, we realizes that it is not so complicated to support them suitably.
On DVD Video, no problems, they are displayed correctly, with all the characters, all is normal and fortunately.
About the subtitles accompanying the AVI, there is the good news:
2 formats are recognized: SRT and SMI (SMI in multiple language also)
the characters white and are outlined in black, in such way that they are always readable
About 40 characters by lines on 3 lines
the majority of the accented characters (Latin) are well displayed
All that would be great if there were not the two bad following news:
the display of the characters is "ugly", it seems it is related to the outlining which is not correctly anti-aliased, the letters dribble and that becomes almost unreadable
the sentence announcing the use of the subtitles remains displayed permanently on screen as soon as the key "SUBTITLE" is pressed, impossible to remove it.
Fortunately it is possible nevertheless not to have this stagnant message: not to press on key “SUBTITLE”. In this case the first subtitle is played without one asking him…
Note : one year later, we can say thanks to unofficial firmwares, all subtitles format are playable and they are well displayed on TV without defects.
Display of the Latin characters from a SRT file
In conclusion...
Sigmatek XM-400 is a very good player in physical term of completion and quality of made audio and video!
The reading of the principal supports and formats (DVD, DivX, etc) is processed without any particular problem.
But for the purists, there are still some points to polish (subtitles displaying, fast forward, commutation, random reading).
None of these points is blocking, moreover they can all be corrected by update of firmware (I hope). Thus let us hope that Sigmatek will do all so that an update corrects these remaining points.
Currently, this player could be placed in one of the best DivX players of the market, without any doubt!
With an actual price of about 100 Euro (launched at 150 Euro), it is very attractive in regards of the various functionnalities and compatibilities, and especially of the global product quality.
I thus advise it to you without moderation.
European web people can buy at Pixmania if available. Just have a look to the divx-compare web site.
I also remind to you that this site is made to help you to use this player and the forum of the site is opened to all people expericing this player.
On this, good DivX and with soon for another test.
See you for another test...
Dukevador
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