Fantec MM-FHDL

The Fantec MM-FHDL is an HD multimedia box that plays films encoded in H.264. Its main advantage however lies in having a control screen. An LCD, it means you can use the box without turning on the TV. For the detail on other advantages and disadvantages, read on.

This is quite a sober box to look at. It has a black brushed metal casing and the front is in glossy black plastic. Although at first it looks pretty, it picks up a lot of finger marks. The real bonus here is the LCD screen. Although quite small (3 cm), it allows you to navigate the menus without having to switch your TV on. And if you want to keep the device flat, there's a specially designed feature to rotate the display. A fan is included to expel hot air. The fan does however tend to speed up rapidly and make quite a bit of noise.

The remote is standard in size and quite thick. The plastic used seems solid but overall the remote lacks a bit of class. It sits well in your hand and the most-frequently used buttons are within easy access of your thumb. The navigation interface leaves something to be desired. While this is pretty much standard for products that use the Realtek decoding chip (see below), the interface has (for once) nice colours and graphics. It is both rapid and easy to get used to. It does however lack up-to-the-minute features such as display of photos with miniatures, or display of film covers. Energy consumption is very good: 1.3 watts standby and 21 watts when playing an HD film.


Decoding: HD, H.264 and MKV

The decoding chip used is the Realtek RTD1073. This model is derived from the RTD1283DD and functions at a slightly reduced frequency (400 MHz against 450 MHz). It plays the most common HD video formats.

Most video codecs are recognised: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP (DivX, XviD), MPEG-4AVC (H.264, x264) and VC-1 (WMV), all in both SD and HD. Numerous containers are also supported: AVI, DVIX, MP4, MKV, MOV, WMV and MTS all worked no problem. Audio support extends to MP3, WMA, OGG and MP4. No problems either for Dolby Digital and DTS. DTS decoding is only supported in stereo downmix. This means that the audio signal is decoded by the device then converted to a stereo signal. This is practical for those who use their TV speakers as such speakers often lack DTS support. A bitstream mode also allows you to send a signal that hasn't been decoded to an external decoder (audio amplifier).

Photo formats supported are as follows: JPEG, BMP, TIF and PNG. High definition JPEGs are accepted up to 21 Mpixels and you need 2 to 3 seconds to move from one photo to the next. DVDs saved as ISOs or RIPs work fine, with menus conserved. Blu-rays are not well handled however: you lose the menus and quality drops down to H.264 HD video level. 10 out of 10 for subtitling: SRT, SUB, SSA, SMI and IDX.

Connectivity: HDMI, network, WiFi and USB

Connectivity is standard: HDMI, YUV, RCA, optical and coaxial. There's also an old-style scart out. Two USB hosts mean you can link up to USB keys and external hard drives. They are however situated at the back of the box. This isn't particuarly practical as it means you have to remove the box from the TV stand to link it to your USB peripheral. We also noticed a rather annoying bug: once our external disk drive was plugged in we couldn't shut the device down completely. The display shuts off but power is still supplied to the drive and you can't then turn the device back on. The only way around this is to unplug the box from the mains and plug it back in.

Networking (see inset) is handled by an Ethernet (10/100 Mbps) socket and you can add a USB Wi-Fi if you want to go wireless. Note that the box is also available as a Wi-Fi version, with a Wi-Fi USB key supplied directly with the device. The key you get is a slowish 802.11g model. If you have a Wi-Fi N router (new Freebox for example), you may as well go for the standard edition and buy a faster Wi-Fi N separately.