Sony SMPU10 USB Media Player (Black)

Lots of bad reviews out there so I fugured I would help this product along. While I am sure there are better units out there, this only cost me $33 shipped with no tax. The only downside I see is the lack of network connectivity. I have a Xbox 360 at my main and bought 2 of these. 1 for bedroom and 1 for a motorhome. They are nice and small. About the size of 2 packs of cigarettes. Great remote, HDMI, Digital audio. If you use HDMI the audio will be passed throught the HDMI cable. I tried a 2 gig thumb drive and a USB powered 2.5 external hard drive and it played the AVIs, JPGs and MP3 no problem. Picture was great but the AVIs were not HD, so more like DVD quality. Some minor skips but nothing major.I would not be scared off by all the negative reviews and if you can get it at the $30-40 range it's a steal. I notice the price on these changes daily. The lowest I have seen it was $28.96.

Not recommended unless you want a simple portable that has many limitations. At the right price, it could a handy device for some. Not for the novice or someone who expects all of his existing libraries to just work. Of course, I've NEVER seen one that is SO perfect to never have someone complain about compatibility issues of some kind. This unit really takes the cake on limited support.Player does work fairly well for what it does. Yes menus are a little crude, but they are functional. Big limitation in that it uses only FAT-32 (and FAT-16, ...) for drive formatting which limits the file size (big problem for movies in native format) and makes formatting the drive more work for large partitions (large here means anything over 32GBs, which is actually quite small) by requiring a different format tool download. Also, it has perceived USB power limitations that will not drive some portable USB self-powered drives. Video format support is very limited. Overall, I like how it works, but it's making me jump through hoops to make it usefull. I got a great deal on it, and I'm happy with the price that I paid, but would be disappointed at anywhere near the full price.This is not a "full" featured player with no network support. It has limited support for video; basically AVI and MPG (no HD video format support at all, although it will scale all video it does support to 1080P). It has only 1 USB port, and it does not appear to have full amperage, despite the manual stating that it supports 500ma, to run a typical external USB powered spinning platter harddrive. I've tried a few, three USB powered which one of which failed to run (could be an older drive that was a little power hungry), two that appear to power up normally, and one alternate/external powered with success. It also ONLY has support for up to FAT-32, which has two issues and one additional complication/workaround. FAT-32 file system only supports 32GB partitions when formatted within most version of windows; using native format utilities. To bypass this limitation, you need to use a 3rd party (free, but he would love donations) FAT-32 formatting tool; fat32format.exe. This tool runs under Windows (tested on 7 professional 64-bit) allows you to format up to 2TB disks in FAT-32. I've only tested on a 100MB disk, but with complete success. The other limitation is with file size, and no tool can help with this one. FAT-32 is limited to 4GB per file. Think Sony picked FAT-32 by accident? DVDs are generally 4+GB; 90 minutes of MPEG-2 video found on native DVDs runs about 1GB / 20 minutes of video; aka about 5GB. Many movies are much longer than that. So, the drive cannot take a full movie in native formatting in one file. You can use DiVX AVI format, but i've had very bad luck with differnt converters, including the encoder from DiVX, in converted files. The audio is always out of sync with the video. It's possible that this is related to my source files. Currently, I'm creating named folder's on the root drive and splitting the movie into two pieces. There is a small lag and video break up as the player moves from the end of file 1 to the beginning of file 2. I can live with that. I have seen some video artifacting during playback in some sections of the movie, but very minor and clears quickly. Looks more like pixel smearing, but it's NOT the TV so it must be the player and the decoder or the USB port saturating. So far, I've had no problem with the menu options and features. It does allow for frame by frame paused movement. It does have stop and restart at the point of stopping, but I do not really use that feature. It is difficult to get to a particular section of a movie. You cannot just skip to the middle or 3/4 the way though if format is MPEG, but AVI adds an additional skip ahead function that moves a minute or two ahead per button press. For MPEG files, You can only start it and then fastforward at x3 speed, which is rather slow to get anywher near the end or even the middle. I do like the Sony Bravia HDMI link that works through HDMI cable and allows reuse of a common remote. There are only a couple of buttons that don't work that way. The remote that comes with works nicely and supports some TVs for power, input selection, and volume. It does support full 1080P output across the HDMI, and it does scale the video nicely; most of my captures are standard 720x480 native. They look great at 1080P. Too many reviews complain about things that are not even listed in the feature set. Yes, it does not support MKV, why would you think so just because you have a collection of MKV files? It works for what I wanted, a simple portable video player; however, there are better ones out there that allow a drive to be mounted in the case and are still around the same size as this one. They will make a better portable player.All in all, fun to play with (got it at a phenominal price that I could not turn down) but not for the normal person who wants a robust video player that just works easily; drag and drop files and play.

This has been a great Product easy to use and setup. Was able to purchase a cheaper on amazon. I would recommend this product to save time and hassle.

UPDATE: NEW REVIEW:LOVE THIS FOR >> MY << NEEDS & GOT IT FOR TWENTY BUCKS ... WHICH IS ABOUT ALL IT'S WORTH.I am not HD and use standard TV. Anyway, I can play MP4 movies that I have recorded either from TV/Satellite as well as previously recorded on mt DIRECTV DVR (which was getting full) and they play JUST FINE via FLASH DRIVE ..... OR BETTER YET, You can play directly from a SDHC or mini SHDC card and a decent very inexpensive card reader.Note: The larger the Flash Drive/SDHC (above 8GB) seems to be too much for this unit and it glitches more often.GOOD FOR: 4-8GB of MP4 movies you want to watch (I record them on inexpensive Sandisk Media recorder) and I prefer using SDHC 4GB or 8GB card rather than a flash drive because it seem to work better for me.THIS IS >>NOT<< FOR PEOPLE LOOKING FOR FABULOUS DIGITAL PLAYBACK. On regular Cathode Ray TV's (the regular old kind of TV - not flat panel) the quality is comparable to watching it directly via DirecTV into the set.CON: DOES NOT FUNCTION LIKE A DVD- No Chapter / Chapter Skip- SLOW Fast Forward/ Rewind is max 4x (2,3,4x)- THE LONGER/LARGER THE MP4 (i.e. the longer the movie), The more often regular FAST FORWARD & REWIND cause skipping and crashing errors (not that big a deal - fast reboot/restart ... but slow fast forward if you are 2/3 into the movies you are watching)PRO: WHEN IT WORKS - IT'S GREAT! I have far more trouble with DVD scratching/skips. Also with a 4-8GB card, you can put 5-9 movies (depending on size) on one card and not change DVD's every time you choose a movie to watch.The slowest part for me is loading the MP4 movies from my laptop to the card or a flash drive. It takes 2-4 minutes per movie. But so what.Try to find it for twenty bucks if you can.____________________________________________________________________________________Just got it today. Rushed to try it.1. SIMPLE SIMPLE SIMPLE! TO OPEN, PLUG IN, AND GO!GOT MP4 TO PLAY WITH NO PROBLEMS From MEDIA I RECORDED MYSELF. HAD A FEW GLITCHES/SNAGS PLAYING SOME FILES ... BUT WILL HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHICH CODECS AND PROGRAMS I USED TO CREATE THE FILES THAT WOULDNT PLAY.ONLY TRIED 2 .mpeg files downloaded long ago from internet .... and they played.Had to power off and back on to resolve freezes ... BUT IT RESETS VERY FAST AND PLAYS INSTANTLY ... unlike the long time a DVD player does reading and analyzing disks.SUM _ DONT BUY THIS UNLESS IT IS AT A VERY LOW SALE PRICE AND THINK OF IT AS A TEMPORARY SUPPLEMENT TO WHATEVER MAIN MEDIA SYSTEM YOU ALREADY HAVE. I dont travel, but it seems ideal to travel with and play your own movies anywhere there is a tv.

I was so excited when received the media player and couldn't wait to try it after all its a Sony.Well hooked to HDMI port through the Non supplied HDMI cable attach my Toshiba external HD and wait..a message on the screen tells me the drive is not compatible, switch the drive with my Transcend backup HD and same message appears on screen.Going back to the manual and receive my first chock, this is a Fat 32 support only.Come on Sony who will format his drive with FAT 32 today?...Then I remembered the Flash drive after all they are FAT 32 formats insert one and I got something on my HD screen reminded me with Basic!!!it was terrible menu and most the format claimed to support didn't work. Thank you Sony for this player.

This was a fantastic idea and reasonably priced. I thought I'd use it to play my existing library of mp4 content. It turned out that it didn't support my content, and it didn't support all standard usb drives. I was expecting a plug-n-play device that just worked, and it isn't. Maybe it works fantastically well if you do have the supported media and supported USB drives. I don't know. I returned it. I'd consider the next generation model, but only after reading all the reviews.

Brilliant device, Plays all the British TV I can download...Works on every TV I have, Don't need to drag the PS3 around.

The inconspicuous sleek, little, black box sits on top of my cable box, with my thumb drive plugged in the front. It is connected via the second HDMI port on my TV and has a small blue illuminated dot when turned on. I usually download one of my favorite 10 to 13 episode television series to my 8gb cruzer flash drive plug it in and enjoy. A 720p movie is about 800mb, whereas a 1080i movie is generally larger, sometime 2gig. One of the only drawbacks is it won't work without the remote control, and when that's buried under a cushion or in lost in toy bin somewhere it can be frustrating. The interface is an archaic looking UNIX type BIOS root/file setup with ASCI font, I was a little surprised when I first hooked it up, it is really nothing too glamorous but has a user friendly file browsing layout. The remote control has zoom, file list, full audio control and subtitle functions. The pause, advance , rewind and fast forward act much like the controls on you average blu-ray player. I can setup a photo slide show and listen to my mp3s on it too, so its great for a party. Unfortunately it doesn't support .mkv files which is unfortunate because they seem to be one of the better formats.