Iamm NTD70

The Iamm NTD70 is a pretty standard media centre on paper: it is HD compatible, has an SDHC reader, a network socket and USB. So, is it enough to offer all this in a nice case, or does it hold any surprises? Answers in our review.

Design and build: a poor interface

The black lacquered casing itself is of good quality and is nice to look at. Watch out for dust and finger marks however!

Once it's connected to the TV, you'll be face to face with an abominably bare interface. The graphics are minimalist, crashes too frequent, slowdowns all too common and use of the surface area of HD screens lamentable.

Don't even think about a video jukebox or displaying photos in the form of mosaic. The only positive point is the display of music album covers.

Compatibility: down on the competition

Generally speaking, compatibility is poor. Firstly, it can't display films shot at 23.976 Hz properly - which is the case for pretty much all Blu-ray films in fact. As a result, when there's use of the dolly or other movements, a blurry bar appears in the middle of the image.


You also need to watch out for H.264/MKV video encoding profiles as they don't all work, especially videos that aren't encoded with mkvmerge. You can also forget Blu-ray backups: whether these be RIPs (large M2TS files) or ISOs, they won't be played.

And the device doesn't really make up any ground with audio playback, with no playback of M4A files (iTunes format) and no Dolby True HD or DTS HD HR decoding.

Connectivity: SDHC reader and Ethernet

Connectivity is standard with HDMI, composite, component and optical outs. The USB Host ports on the right hand side of the device allow you to link up USB keys and external hard drives. Copying to - or from - the internal hard drive is feasible as long as you're patient. 7.5 MB/s, so best not to be in too much of a rush.

In terms of the network (Ethernet 100 Mbps), at 6.8 MB/s it's just about average. Don't expect to get streaming of HD video playback as the maximum speed is 18 Mbps. Beyond that and it isn't fluid.