Cube B33HD Review Part 1: A look at a Chinese Portable Media Player

About a couple of months back, I was contemplating on purchasing an Apple iPod Touch (3rd Generation). Truly a kickass media player, and much much more – unbelievable multi-touch interface, excellent WiFi browsing on Safari, billions of apps, and so on. However, some of it’s ‘features’ put me off:

• Cannot play most video formats without conversion to its supported formats
• Costs an astounding Rs.18,400 ($386) for the 32GB version in India (costs $275 in US)
• iTunes – Voted BloatWare Winner years in succession by experts

The primary reason I wanted the iTouch is to use it as a personal video player (I already have the excellent Sansa Clip for my audio playback needs). And that is where it falls woefully short. I wouldn’t mind converting, if that didn’t take more than an hour for each movie.

Hence I started the hunt. I zeroed in on the acclaimed Cowon S9 ($199 for 16GB) which has a supposedly brilliant 3.3″ AMOLED screen or the Microsoft Zune HD. Truth be told, neither of these are primarily meant for video, and hence I wasn’t really too keen on going for either of them after reading up and seeing them in action in reviews. This is when I discovered the world of…

Drumroll…

Chinese Media Players!

Now, the first image that usually comes to mind upon hearing the word “Chinese” for a gadget is that of a cheap Apple iPod knockoff, or a mobile phone that doesn’t serve as a dishwasher, but does pretty much everything else for a very cheap price. And if you go to any local electronics bazaar in India, it’s easy to see why this is true.

I admit, I had heard of brands such as Meizu before. However, I had no idea of even the existence of the so-called Chinese PMP market before my chance visit to MP4Nation and HouseOfDap. Both have excellent forums (MP4Nation forum, HOD Forum) with some really helpful people. I quickly discovered the merits of these media players:

• Ability to play AVI (XVid, DivX), VOB, MKV, WMV, FLV (and most commonly used formats) out of the box
• Support for videos up to 720p or even 1080p
• Supports subtitles (in SRT, SUB etc formats) in videos. Yaay!
• Plays files directly from a portable hard drive or a USB pen-drive
• Costs from USD 50 to USD 150
• Screen sizes ranging from 3″ to a mammoth 8.9″ (4.3″ is the most common)
• Screen resolutions are typically 800×480 (iTouch is 480×320)

A little background on these devices. There are a lot of media player brands in China: Ainol, Cube, Onda, Ramos and Teclast are among the popular ones. The software or user interface they use aren’t nearly as slick as the ones on Zune/iTouch but do get the job done. However, their strength lies in the hardware. The main processors they use are, of late, amazingly capable. Almost any video of any resolution is a piece of cake for processors such as the SoChip 9800, or the Telechips TCC8901 for example.

I finally decided upon the Cube B33HD. A cheap player ($69 – a little over Rs3000 at current PayPal exchange rates), it features:

• SoChip 8600 processor – capable of upto 720p (not the very latest, but enough for my standard movie rips)
• A very nice 800×480 resolution screen, 3.6″ diagonal size (slightly larger than the iTouch, but not touchscreen)
• Supports most of the standard video formats, along with support for subtitles (important for me)
• HDMI output (watch on TV directly), USB OTG support

The next part of this review focuses on this player. For now, here’s a pic. Continue reading…

Continue to part 2…

~Raj