We tried it - iXtreamer, the digital omnipotent
This is not the first time I have made the mistake of finishing a product in advance. Of course, this is the better case, because in this case, positive disappointment is almost guaranteed. That's what happened now. When I learned that I needed to introduce a media gadget, I even booked in advance that I needed to write about another Chinese crap. Well, in a third of the mistakes, it turned out to be true that this structure is also put together in China. On the other hand, the manufacturer is Korean, and the gadget doesn’t seem crappy at all.
Of course, this already became suspicious when I looked at the manufacturer's site and found not a cluttered piece of rubbish, but a jagged-looking page that advertised interesting solutions.
After that, I unpacked the player with a surprising weight out of the cardboard with enough excitement. I didn’t theorize much, a battery got into the remote soon, one end of the HDMI cable slid into the player, the other into the amplifier, and then I had no choice but to insert the WiFi stick into the USB port and press the power button. The logo appeared on the TV, and then the menu was delayed. However, before we dissect the menu of the device, and with it its knowledge, let's take a look at the exterior!
The box that holds the electronics is roughly 25 × 25 × 5 centimeters. The frame is made of brushed aluminum, at the front of which you will find a power button with a blue LED and the window of the infrared receiver. The cover is plastic, but it gives a distinctly quality feeling to a person. The front is glossy, the back is matte black. The glossy part can be pushed back, underneath there is a dock where you can insert Apple products from iPod to iPad via iPhone. It’s not hard to guess that we can also play content stored on these.
On the back, how surprisingly, we find the connectors. When testing their media gadgets, this point is usually one of the water separators, as after counting them, an experienced eye can roughly decide what value the product in their hand represents. If something is missing from here, it will be very much missing when you want to use the player. The back of the iXtremer did not disappoint. There are three ways to deliver an image. You can use HDMI, component or composite output. Sound can also get into the amplifier in three ways. Via an optical or coaxial connector or HDMI. We can't find an analog 5.1 output, but in the age of HDMI, I don't think there would be much demand for it.
On the back, in addition to the above, you will find three more USB connectors. Two of these are used to connect external hardware to the player, which can be mass storage or a USB WiFi antenna that is also included with the device. On the third port, the iXtreamer can be connected as an external storage device to other devices, such as a computer, so that we can easily pump our materials.
Accessing your home network with the included antenna is easy, but if you prefer a wired connection, you don’t have to worry either, as you can also find an Ethernet connector. We can’t go without a word besides the fact that it’s only 10/100, which is nowhere near the gigabit, which isn’t an unimaginable blessing in a home network these days, and in Korea, the internet is slowly pouring into the apartment with such bandwidth. So here, in addition to the many reds, we also have to engrave a black butt.
On the next page we will look at the menu and of course we will explore the iXtreamer!
