Fantec R2750

Elegant with its glossy black coating, complete with digital HD twin tuner, video ins and its SDHC card reader, the Fantec R2750 is a mouthwatering prospect on paper. A multimedia box that doesn't disappoint? Lets see...

Design and build: classical choices from Fantec

The design of the device doesn't leave you cold. Whether you like it or not, you have to say that this box has character. The brilliant black has its effect but not for too long: it'll soon be covered with fingerprints and dust.

At the front there's a small VFD screen. No miracles here: it just gives playback time. You can't use it to browse when the TV is off. Browsing is via a remote that is used for a lot of entry-level products. There are plenty of buttons and they're well-placed. Handling is however not much facilitated by the thickness and the fact that the underside is particularly bulky.


Now's the time to turn the thing on. First disappointment; the fan to expel hot air is noisy. During film playback or when listening to music it's fine, but if you use it in your bedroom, for example, it can be a problem. When recording a program, the noise can be very annoying.


Next we come to the navigation interface, which holds few surprises. It's the same as on all entry-level media centres which use a Realtek chip. Fantec has simply added its own home page; if you take an Emtec V800H, you'll see a strictly identical interface apart from the home page.


The faults are also still the same: poor use of the HD screen display area, unsophisticated graphics and few advanced options. You can't display album covers during playback, or photos in the form of a mosaic. And forget about a video jukebox. The strong points are that the interface is easy to follow and it's nice and responsive.

Compatibility: not bad, with DTS support

Basic compatibility, namely the device's capacity to read different types of multimedia files, is very good. Recent HD video formats are well supported and we especially like being able to decode Dolby Digital and DTS (stereo or 5.1). A bitstream mode also allows you to send the audio signal to an external decoder.

A 24p manual mode (to be activated or not depending on the film) allows you to fluidify films. Films at 23.976 images per second suffer with the display of a horizontal bar which slightly cuts the image.


DVD and Blu-ray backups are supported but you don't get everything. For DVDs first of all: audio tracks and subtitling is conserved. While menus are displayed however, they are done so imperfectly. In practice, it is very difficult to navigate across the interface of a DVD.

For Blu-rays, no ISO backups. You have to fall back on RIPs. Here, the various audio tracks and subtitling is accessible. Menus are replaced by a generic (BD-Lite) menu.

Connectivity: SDHC reader, USB socket and network

There are plenty of audio and video outs with nothing left out: HDMI, component, RCA, scart and optical. An SDHC card reader is placed on the side of the device. You can plug in USB peripherals on one of the USB hosts (one of which is on the side). The USB speed is very good (13 MB/s) and high bandwidth MKV/x264 videos can be played (42 Mbps max).

One annoying bug: when a USB peripheral isn't used for a few minutes, il will no longer be recognised by the device. You then have to unplug it and plug it back in. Annoying!

Network support is via an ethernet 100 Mbps connection. You can access the media centre from a computer (NAS), to access hard drive partitions from the box and make copies. Nevertheless, best to be patient you only get a max of 5 MB/s here! For streaming, most 1080p videos will be jumpy with maximum authorised speed at 28 Mbps.

There are several available internet services: weather, Picasa, Flickr and RSS flow playback. Once again, Fantec hasn't done any restyling and you simply get the standard internet services to be found on all devices with the Realtek chip, with the usual ugly and impractical results. In Picasa for example, you can't access private photos. A gadget then and don't expect anything more.

A BitTorrent client is also included and allows you to download files. A web interface allows you to manage this service from an internet browser. It's austere but practical.