BeWan iMedia HD100

The BeWan iMedia HD100 looks very good on paper - technically identical to the WD TV Live. No bad thing at all, this gives the Bewan faultless HD compatibility and networking, all in a very small box. Does the navigation interface measure up though and what about handling of music and phtotos?

From a design point of view, we quite like it. Small, the casing of the device combines glossy black and white. Nice to look at, then, but picks up finger marks all too easily.

Still no screen at the front of the device, which is a shame for music lovers as you have to turn on the TV to navigate the menus. On the other hand, a jack allows you to link up an external infra-red receiver (not supplied). This is practical if you want to place the box inside a cabinet with only the small receiver showing.

The remote is similar to the minimalist model you get with the WD TV Live. It's a shame that the manufacturer didn't go for a nicer-looking model. What we get instead is an ugly looking plastic thing with unpleasant buttons. Apart from how it looks, we were also disappointed not to see any volume control buttons on it. As with the Western Digital, you need to use the TV or speaker remote to turn the volume up and down.

A word on energy consuption: when playing it scores an excellent 5.6W (one of the best) but on standby the device doesn't shut down fully and scores 4.4W (one of the worst).

Decoding: all HD and MKVs

Here we have the very recent Sigma Designs SMP8655 decoding chip. It offers the same decoding capacity as the 8643 used on the PopcornHour C-200, but without Blu-ray player support. All HD video formats are supported no problem, including those encapsulated in MKV containers.

In detail, the iMedia HD100 can decode the following codecs: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP (DivX, XviD), MPEG-4 AVC (H.264, AVCHD etc) and VC-1. Both SD and HD video is decoded without any problem for these codecs. The box is also well set for containers as it can read the following file formats: AVI, DVIX, MOV, MKV, WMV, MTS or M2TS.

Audio support is however rather poor. It recognises plenty of formats: MP3, AAC, WMA and OGG. The problem comes with support for DTS and Dolby Digital and multi-track videos. First lets look at DTS and Dolby Digital: only one bitstream mode (falsely named pass-through by the manufacturer) is available. This means you need an external decoder (audio amplifier) to play these tracks. There's no PCM mode for those who use their TV speakers. There's no support for HD versions (DTS MA/HR, DD Plus/True HD) moreover.

The other downside is how multiple audio tracks are handled in the containers. Only MP4 is supported. With AVI, DIVX or MKV, it recognises the secondary audio tracks but you can only listen to the first track.

And it doesn't really make up for these deficiencies when it comes to sub-titling support. It does read quite a few formats including SRT, SSA, SMI or IDX, but once again support in containers is the problem. Only MKVs benefit from subtitling support.

To round up this section lets look at photo formats. Here quite a few are supported: JPG, BMP, GIF, TIF and PNG. No problems for high res photos (21 Mpixels) and you can move from one to the next in 3 seconds.

Connectivity: HDMI, USB and Ethernet

Connectivity isn't as extensive as it could be: There's an HDMI 1.3 for HD TVs, a set of RCA connectors for SD TVs and an optical out for the bitstream mode (it doesn't work via the HDMI). There's also a USB socket at the front of the device for plugging in your USB keys or external hard drive. You need to use the Ethernet 10/100 Mbps for connection to a network as there's no Wi-Fi.

There are two ways of a reading files from a computer on the iMedia HD100. It supports both Samba (folder sharing) and UPNP. You can use compatible software such as Windows Media Player or TVersity to read files at a distance. We did note a bug however: if you try and play an HD MKV video shared with Windows Live Media Player, the box plays the last SD video you played instead. Then, when you press the "Stop" button on the remote, it crashes and restarts automatically.