8. Codec Check: Rare Breeds Are Out Of Luck

We at Tom's Hardware wanted to know more, so we installed several codec packages on the PC. This gave us not only all older DivX and MPEG4 codecs, but also several less familiar ones. We also installed the DivX 5.2 Pro codec on our test computer. As a test file for the MVP Player, we converted 2 minutes of raw footage from a DVD movie into each of the AVI codecs. For the sound we used an MP3 codec from the Fraunhofer Institute and the Lame MP3 codec. The pictures below show the video and audio codecs used. A smiley shows whether the demo file will work on the MVP Player. Surprisingly the player supports DVD or VOB. Several SVCDs (MPEG2 format) showed the limits of the device. Here there were more output errors than usable image material. According to our research, this was not the fault of the box but of the incorrectly coded MPEG-2 GOPs (group of pictures). In those instances, the GOPs were too long and sent the encoder chip spinning. But if you stick with the MPEG-2 standard you won't get these image errors.

The box does as well with photos as it does with any JPEG format. Because most digital cameras save files with a JPEG extension, the box is ideal for viewing photos on the TV. On the other hand, the player ignores not only uncompressed TIFF files but also BMP, PCX or TGA.