Micca MPLAY-HD Mini 1080P Full-HD Digital Media Player for USB Drives and SD Cards

History: I've been a bit hesitant to get one of these. I have a Visio smart TV that's around 5-6 years old. While it works great, I have a lot of shows and movies I like to watch stored on my computer and it does play them via USB flash drive sometimes. The extension has to be a .mp4 or a .m4v or the TV won't even show it on the list. I have a lot of .mkv and after a bit of research, I learned you could simply change the extension of a .mkv to a .mp4 and it works most of the time. Sometimes the video would play, but it would have a problem with the audio codec and there was no sound. Okay, so I just run it through a converter, except of course this takes anywhere from half an hour to several hours per video. Oh, and when I call up the media player on the TV, it won't recognize 128GB or larger flash drives and the more videos you have on the drive, the longer it takes to display on the TV - up to a couple of minutes. So I'm ready to sit down and watch a video and it's always a roll of the dice as to how long it take to just see the list of videos on the TV and whether or not they'll play. I recently had a problem with the 32GB flash drive I was using, so I transferred everything to a 128GB drive and the TV couldn't see it. Transferred one video to smaller drives twice and twice the video played to exact same spot and froze even though the timer kept running. I had enough and decided to give this a try.Review: I've been researching these on and off for a year. I was set to buy the older version for ten bucks less, but it would take several days whereas the new one was available next day, so I went with the new one. A very quick comparison between the two: the new one has a micoSD card slot whereas the old one uses a standard SD slot; new one has newer firmware (although I imagine both can easily be upgraded, more on that later); I *think* the old one uses a coin battery for the remote whereas the new one uses two AAA batteries (I read about remote complaints that ultimately came from poor batteries shipped with the remote). In addition to the remote problems, I read about fast forward issues that could be fixed with newer firmware.So I received the unit and took it out of the box. Nice, simple, solid-feeling. I was expecting a coin battery for the remote and was ready to test the battery before I put it in, but low and behold, it requires two AAA batteries that were not included. Perfectly fine by me, I keep good brand name batteries stocked at home, so I knew the batteries going into the remote were reliable from the get-go, though I tested them before I installed them to be extra sure. Next, I hooked it up to my TV then stopped and went to the manufacturer's website to get the latest firmware. It's miccatron dot com. From there you select the device you have from the home page, then, on the product page, scroll to the bottom and click on the downloads tab. Under Firmware, click on Download. File is zipped, so once you download it, unzip it and save the .img file to a USB flash drive. Don't put it in a folder in the flash drive or the player may not see it. From there put it into the media player, go into the menu and choose update firmware. Before commencing, the player will display the version of the firmware currently on the player and the version of the new firmware on the flash drive. I attempted to look at the downloaded firmware file as well as the setting menu in the player to see which version each one was, but it's not clear from the names. However, once you choose to update the firmware, you'll be shown which version you have and which you're about to load beforehand. I had something like version 3.89 whereas the new firmware was 3.93, so I went ahead and updated it before I used the player. The instructions are a little confusing as step 3 says select update firmware and press okay but step 4 says if you want to do it manually, press the little reset button on the player. Step 4 should really be in parenthesis at the end of step 3 or simply added as an aside at the bottom of the instructions. There is no need to press the reset button on the player to install the firmware if in the update menu and you're allowed to select the old or new firmware.Okay, so how does it work? Well, I've only used it for a couple of days, but so far it's been excellent! The picture quality is superb and the video that was always freezing when using the TV media player had zero issues on the Micca. It takes next to no time to turn on. It's now faster for me to turn on the TV, switch inputs via TV remote, turn on the Micca and get into the USB flash drive files. The Visio TV media player would bypass any and all folder names and display every file in a random order. So if I had 150 videos, the TV would display about ten of them on one page, so I'd have to scroll through 15 pages of video names in no discernible order. With the Micca, you have to choose USB, then video, then you're presented your files like you'd see on your computer, folder names and all. To boot, they're in alphabetical order so it's easy to navigate to want you want quickly. When the player is on, the blue LED is on, when it is off, there is a red LED. Both are a little bright, especially the blue, but I always have some ambient light on, so it's not distracting or blinding. If you watch TV with all the lights off, then it could be an annoyance. Based on the reviews I read, I was prepared to pop it open and replace the resistor inside with a bigger one to reduce the brightness, but the player is well sealed - no removing a few screws from the bottom to open it. If this is a big problem for you, I'd suggest covering the LED with a small piece of electrical tape - just enough to cover the LED - too big a piece and you'll cover up the remote sensor. As best I could tell, when the player is off (red LED), the USB drive is powered off as well - the one I used doesn't have a light, but it was cool to the touch - it usually gets warm when powered up. I was a bit worried the USB drive would be powered 24/7 if left in the player which would ultimately shorten its life, but this does not appear to be the case here. Awesome sauce. Ultimately, this is a great player and much less cumbersome than hooking up an old laptop to the TV, waiting for it to boot every time I want to watch a video, then having a special remote or keyboard with a mousepad laying in the living room.

Just got the player and LOVE IT! This thing is amazing! It just so easily works!! I was so happy this one now plays video files over 4 GB? I have many around 6-7 GB and the old player would shut off after 3/4 way through so I saw they had this one out and I ordered it.In a world of everything on a phone or online with videos and pictures flying through the air there is compression and lag and what not always degrading picture quality and problems streaming with slow connections. Well this thing is hardwired to what ever you want to play or show to someone and take anywhere! It is small and plays absolutely beautiful footage of whatever I throw at it! I think it actually displays my files better than when I play them on my computer with other player software! It also is super fast to load menus and files, has really handy remote with every function you could possibly want and super easy to use!! Did I say I love this thing?However, I do have one little problem, and I will work around until I guess they come out with a firmware update (I asked and they know about the problem). When I hit the fast forward button like 1.5x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, 32x, it will fast forward for a while but then revert back to just the regular play speed after only a few seconds of fast forward. I have been using the skip ahead 30 sec. button and that works nice, but would like to have the other option also.Go get yourself one! Load it up with whatever you want to have fun showing relatives, friends etc. and see for yourself how nice it works and fun it is to flip through your photo/video memories with so much ease and control!Thank you Micca for making such a awesome little inexpensive gadget!! I look forward to the 4k and h265 version some day.UPDATE: I am installing the firmware update that now fixes the problem mentioned above plus other improvements they made! It is perfect now! Thank you Micca! 5+++ !Can someone please give me a thumbs up on this review?? I feel like I write these things just for myself. Come on man!